8 Important Ways on How to Navigate Life After Health Challenges
As a woman, a serious health issue can affect various aspects of your life, whether it is a threatening or chronic illness or a significant health event like a debilitating injury, heart attack, or stroke. Severe health challenges often develop unexpectedly and upset your life balance.
You might feel overwhelmed by difficult emotions such as grief, despair, sadness, worry, fear, or numbness. However, regardless of your diagnosis or emotional responses, you must know how to navigate life and are not powerless.
You can take specific steps to cope with your new reality while easing the mental anguish, risk factors, and stress that come with serious illness. In this blog, we will explore how you can navigate life after being diagnosed with a significant health challenge.
1. Face your emotions
You can be easily frightened when faced with a life-threatening or chronic condition. Sometimes, you might even think that acting brave, bottling up your emotions, or forcing yourself to be happy and positive can bring about a change.
Facing the reality of your situation and negative emotions will not affect your recovery. Instead, the opposite might be the case. Bottling up your feelings also can increase your stress, increase your pain, and even make you vulnerable to depression and anxiety. Not facing your fears leads to the pain, sadness, and hopelessness that often come with battling a major illness.
Research shows that facing your emotions, even the most fearful or painful ones, can ease your suffering and stress and help you understand your situation. Many people are often taught as children to internalize emotions like anger, grief, and fear. Then, when they grow up, they find it difficult to manage these feelings. However, you can learn to deal with your emotions.
2. Maintain open communication
Communicate openly and transparently with family members in person or on social media. This can help you build trust with your health care team. Building trust makes you comfortable sharing preferences, questions, and concerns and ensures you get the best care possible from family and friends.
3. Seek support
When faced with a significant illness, you can sometimes feel alone and cut off from people who are close to you. Sometimes, you may feel others cannot understand what you are going through.
You might be concerned about being a burden to others if you tell them what you are experiencing or if those around you are so positive. Don’t you feel like opening up or expressing how you feel? Irrespective of your situation, you shouldn’t go back to your shell.
Consider reaching out for support. It can positively affect your mental health, especially when facing the stress of a medical condition. For example, an individual suffering from mesothelioma can consider mesothelioma support groups to remain connected to others and enjoy social activities.
Additionally, you will need practical assistance, such as aiding with household chores and driving you to medical appointments. The right support group can help you with this. After serious health issues, the person you choose to confide in or share information about your medical situation is your personal decision. You should not tough it out alone, as it will deny you access to support from people who love and care about you.
Look for support from family, loved ones, friends, and a social worker. When you find a confidant, ensure it is someone you can listen to compassionately and attentively without judging you, distracting you, or telling you how you should feel or think.
Join a support group where you can talk about your situation and get coping tips from people going through similar situations. Ensure that you try different groups until you find the one that fits you best.
4. Create realistic goals
Set short—and long-term goals to help you manage your health. Additionally, celebrate your resilience. It would be best not to underestimate the power of celebrating little victories.
They can help you remain motivated on how to navigate life. Recognize your resilience and inner strength. You have overcome some challenges, and you can continue to do so.
5. Learn to manage stress.
Stress often adds to and aggravates various health issues, including wound and post-operative healing, chronic pain, gastrointestinal disorders, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular diseases.
When facing significant health challenges, learn to practice stress techniques to help you manage your health problems. For example, after heart surgery or a heart attack, stress management can strengthen the benefits of cardiac rehabilitation and also lower the amount of medication required to control blood pressure.
When dealing with a cancer diagnosis, managing stress can help you alleviate sleep disturbances, fatigue, and anxiety and boost your mood. Stress management tips can help you enhance your overall well-being and health regardless of diagnosis.
6. Learn about your illness.
Ensure you make time to learn about your health condition. This knowledge can empower you to make an informed decision about your treatment care. Also, ensure you keep up with advancements in treatment and medical research related to your condition.
7. Tackle depression and anxiety.
When battling severe sickness, you may feel sad about your medical condition and think about things that you might have lost due to your illness. It is expected to feel worried about your future or anxious about some treatments.
However, when this feeling becomes continuous and affects your daily life, then you might be suffering from anxiety or depression. Even though mood disorders such as depression and anxiety are common in individuals who are dealing with major illnesses, they can cause a domino effect. Significant diseases can cause depression and anxiety, which affects your overall health and impacts the illness treatments.
8. Seek joy
Irrespective of your medical condition, it is crucial to find those moments of lightness. Learn not to be defined by your illness. Instead, seek activities that bring your life meaning, joy, and purpose.
Consider reaffirming that these things define you, not your chronic health situation, injury, or illness. Every person has a unique way of experiencing joy and meaning. If your medical situation makes it hard to pursue some of the activities that bring you joy and meaning you previously enjoyed, then opt for new activities that enrich and nourish your spirit and lower stress levels.
Consider starting a new hobby or a long-neglected hobby. Join a club or take a class to help you pursue a new hobby and increase your social network to manage stress at the same time. Learn something new, like a new sport, game, foreign language, or instrument. Put yourself out there by being involved in your community or online support groups.
Volunteer for a cause or local event that is crucial to you. Enjoy the arts by visiting museums, taking up photography or painting, joining a book club, or attending a play, physical activity, or concert. Write about your experiences, memoirs, or a how-to book. Lastly, spending time in nature by walking a dog in the park, deep breathing, fishing, taking a scenic hike, or working in your yard can be therapeutic.
Endnote
After being diagnosed with a significant illness, it’s perfectly normal to experience various emotions. You might feel ashamed, sad, angry, or scared. Receiving a diagnosis is the first step towards working out the best treatment option and starting to feel better.
It can also help you learn more about your illness. Remember that life continues after diagnosis, and having the proper support can ensure you get tips on how to navigate life post-diagnosis.
