Reclaim your emotional health blog archive
These blogs will help you to feel better in yourself, more calm and to look towards the future.
- Make sense of what has happened
- Move beyond feelings of anger, loss and fear
- Feel balanced emotionally
- Take back control
- Regain your independence
- Minimise and manage stress in your life
- Develop a positive self-image
- Learn to live with the uncertainty that comes with many serious illnesses and chronic conditions
- Decipher what your day and night dreams are telling you
You may find some of these blogs in another category too.
How to increase your self-worth after illness or injury
Trying to increase your self-worth after illness or injury can feel like a mammoth task. You’ve been thrown into this unknown land of serious illness or injury, you can’t do what you once did, and you don’t know what to do to feel better. Feeling like you have lost...
Why adjusting your personal high standards after illness or injury helps
Adjusting your personal high standards after illness or injury often helps people to live well with the impact but can be such a hard thing to do. So when clients say to me they have personal high standards for themselves, they are proud of them because they have...
Depression and serious illness are not a good combination, aim for positivity
Depression and serious illness or injury is reckoned not to be a good combination. Being positive is often seen to be the better choice. For example, I often hear people say, ‘Well, you can either get depressed and upset or you can be positive,’ in relation to living...
Managing your expectations of yourself when returning to work after a serious illness
Managing your expectations of yourself when returning to work after a serious illness or injury is key for a successful transition. But because it is about you managing your expectations of yourself, it can be one of the hardest things to do. You are someone who...
Support for carers – 4 things to consider to help you care effectively
There is good support for carers out there, but I’ve found there are some things which aren’t always explicitly talked about. And if carers knew about them, which are often of a psychological nature, they would realise what they are experiencing is normal. This...
Dealing with anger as a carer so you don’t end up operating from the dark side of helping
Dealing with anger as a carer of someone with a serious health issue can be really tough. You may also be dealing with rejection from them, feel crap about the situation generally but also genuinely wondering what you can to help and how to manage the situation. We...
What the dark side of helping people who have a serious health issue is like – Part 2
We continue our series on the dark side of helping people affected by illness or injury by talking about the reasons they may not want your offers of help (however well-meaning they are). As I said in the earlier post, helping others is a good thing and recognised as...
What the dark side of helping people who have a serious health issue is like – Part 1
The dark side of helping is the theme for the next four blogs. Someone who reads my newsletter and blogs asked me to write about what to do when you are living with a visible disability, someone helps you, but you didn’t ask for their help and don’t want or need it....
10 tips to manage scanxiety during medical procedures
You may need to manage scanxiety – scan anxiety – when living with illness every few months, once a year or on the occasion when something isn’t right and you need to get it checked out. This type of anxiety can also apply to other medical investigative tests. It’s...
How to restore purpose and meaning in your life when living with illness
Restoring purpose and meaning in your life when living with a limiting illness or injury can feel nigh on impossible at times. Particularly if the illness or injury means your symptoms fluctuate unpredictably, or you don’t get support you need, and/or you have to...
Does your self-doubt kill your New Year’s resolutions?
Setting New Year’s resolutions, or goals, objectives, priorities, dreams call it what you will, is all over the internet at the moment. And there is a lot of good advice out there. But it can be tough when you have a serious health issue. You may want to do and...
You can transform the struggle of a serious health issue into acceptance – Part 2
Last week I described what Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) is, and how it can help you transform the struggle of a serious health issue to acceptance. I focused on two of its six principles – Contact with the Present Moment and The Observer Self. This week I...
How to transform the struggle of a serious health issue into acceptance – Part 1
I hear the word acceptance a lot in relation to living with a challenging health issue, whether that be an illness, injury and/or disability. My clients often say, I can’t accept this. If I could get to a place where I can accept this. I think my issue is accepting...
How do you know if you need help adapting emotionally to a serious health issue?
How do you know if you need help adapting emotionally to living with a serious health issue? This is a big question. And it raises so many more questions, concerns, and maybe fears. You may wonder if you are going crazy. Or you think should be able to cope on your...
When you are forced to change because of a health issue and don’t know where to start
Change is often an unexpected but constant presence when you experience the onset of a serious health issue. There is a lot you need to change, but also a lot you don’t know. So making that change can feel very difficult. Sometimes impossible given it’s hard to know...
How to find a hobby to improve your mental health
A month ago I wrote a blog on the 10 ways in which a hobby can improve your mental health when living with the impact of a serious illness or injury. But after writing the blog, I thought of something I did not address in it. It was a question put to me by someone...
How hobbies improve your mental health when living with a health issue
Have you ever thought about how hobbies improve your mental health? Living with the impact of a challenging health issue can be draining in many ways and adversely impact your mental health. The routine of illness/injury can quickly take over. It feels like the...
Is it depressing supporting people living with chronic illness?
Is it depressing supporting people living with chronic illness? I was asked this question on holiday and felt really surprised by it. My response was no, that it was some of the best work to be doing. I also talked about that people living with life-changing health...
Why your mental health is important when living with chronic illness
Your mental health can take a battering as you learn to adjust to with a chronic illness. You may experience anxiety, feel scared of what your future will be like, worrying about every twinge and odd feeling in your body, and feel unbalanced emotionally. You may often...
Learning to trust your body after a serious illness or injury
Learning to trust your body after a serious illness or injury or onset of a long-term condition can take time and involve many mixed emotions. Your body has changed. Forever. You remember what you used to be able to do. And your body has that memory too. So you go to...
How to accept and navigate unwanted change when living with a serious health issue
When a challenging health issue happens to you or you are the carer, you end up having to go through a process to accept and navigate unwanted change. It can be tough. You may have experienced a whirl of strange and overwhelming emotions, which can feel draining....
Make your New Year’s health resolutions stick in 2017
It's a new year and often times this is a great time for evaluating how we are doing and setting some health resolutions. There is a lot of helpful advice out there on how to set health resolutions. But keeping them can be the hard part. You may focus on making the...
How to use your time well when you give yourself a break
Giving yourself a break is a big thing so today I want to share 5 tips on how to use your time well when you do that. It's relevant now given the holiday season is upon us, a time when we may be able to give ourselves a break. But given the holiday season can also a...
How to let yourself take a break
How do you let yourself take a break when you've got a deadline looming plus other important tasks which are competing for your attention? You’ve been focusing on those other things to finish them. But the deadline for that ONE thing arrives and you're thinking, ‘Oh...
Is this all the recovery I’m going to get?
Is this all the recovery I'm going to get? You may be asking yourself this question. Maybe you got seriously ill or injured a few months, a year ago or longer and still not feel great. Sometimes you may feel downright awful. Depsite following the doctor's and other...
Recovery from illness: The process can be sick from assumptions
Let me start off with a real-life example of how the process of recovery from illness can be sick with assumptions. I was once out for a drink with someone who also has Transverse Myelitis (TM) and the bartender asked her why she was using a stick. My friend briefly...
How reaching out for support can help your recovery from illness
How can reaching out for support help your recovery from illness or injury? Imagine this. You, your child or another family member have recently been very ill. To use an idiomatic expression, it has 'knocked you for six'. The illness took you by surprise and changed...
How to heal your health by connecting to yourself
Learning how to heal your health by connecting to yourself may sound a bit strange. But it is an important part of your rehabilitation and living with any long-term impact of the health issue you have (or a loved one has). You could be living with a long-term medical...
Why asking for help is so hard: Because being ‘needy’ is not good
Being 'needy' is not good in our society. You don't want people to think that of you. So you try and do as much as you can on your own rather than ask for help. It's all for good reasons I explained in previously: not wanting to impose on others and wanting to...
When asking for help doesn’t work – Moving beyond no
It can be hard when asking for help doesn't work. It's hard enough to ask for help. So it can feel doubly hard when people refuse to help. You then you ask yourself, 'Now what?' Sometimes the people we expect or hope to readily help us - parents, partners, children,...
