Living with chronic pain isn’t easy. You lose your quality of life, you take a lot of flack from friends and family, and you have to spend tons of money on the hope that there’s something out there that will help you to function better. Oftentimes you are blamed for not functioning as a healthy person, or for not trying hard enough, but the truth is that people who live with chronic pain are awesome. Here are just a few of the reasons why:
1. You live with incredible amounts of pain
You have a real-life superpower. You can withstand incredible amounts of pain that would knock a healthy person flat on their back. You walk around like normal, but inside you are stronger than everyone else because you have been through so much. You spent half your life faking being well, even when you feel like you can’t take another step. You wake up every morning feeling like you got hit by a truck, but you keep on and you don’t give up.
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2. You sympathize with others
You’ve been through so much physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Your whole world has been turned on its head and you’ve had to change how you view your entire self. You know what it’s like to struggle, to be misunderstood, to be ignored, and that’s why you don’t want other people feeling that way. You have the strength to be there for others because you recognize how important it is to have support when you’re going through hard things.
3. You know that bad things happen to good people
People who’ve never experienced struggle or complications in their lives can sometimes maintain the idea that they can control everything that happens to them. They believe that nothing difficult has happened because they’ve lived their life the right way and made all the right decisions. When you live with chronic pain/illness your whole life gets turned upside by something that was not your fault. You made all the right choices and decisions and something unfortunate still happened. You’ve learned from experience that sometimes you get dealt a bad hand in life, and you’ve just got to find a way to deal with it.
4. You’ve learned the importance of self-care
This is a lesson that many people never learn, but when you live with chronic pain you don’t have a choice. You have to learn to put yourself and your health first. Even when pacing fails you, you get back up and keep trying.
5. You can find joy in the smallest things
The limitations of your disease have taught you to take nothing for granted. When you’ve been stuck in bed, or at home, it’s a joy just to be able to go outside or to meet with friends. Even the simplest of connections have meaning when you’ve been deprived of them.
6. You adapt well to change
No one likes change and most people avoid it as much as possible. And yet you face uncertainty every single day and manage to conquer it. Each day you wake up and you have no idea how you’re going to feel and how it’s going to affect your life, it’s a complete guessing game. Yet you manage to adjust to whatever your body throws at you. Uncertainty is scary, and yet you’ve learned to deal with it.
7. You are a medical expert
When you first got sick you thought the doctors would take care of you, but you quickly learned that the medical system doesn’t have room for people in pain. So you waded into the murky waters of the internet trying to find more information. You learned what sources were accurate and what sources should be discarded. You figured out the minutia of your disease and found a way to live with it. You’ve tried a million different things to find what helps make you feel better. You literally know more about your illness than most doctors.
People who live with chronic pain or chronic illness have so many amazing qualities that healthy people overlook. Don’t ever forget that you’re awesome!
This is a great reminder for all us warriors out there! We already are so hard on ourself and so many others are judging our health situation. It’s about time we realise how awesome we are!