Superpowers Earned Through Chronic Illness

1. Endurance -  the fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.

Endurance is simply a given when you are living with a chronic illness. Everyday you wake up with a difficult and unpleasant circumstances that you are guaranteed to contend with. Regardless what else comes your way throughout your day, at-least in your body, it is a given for you that everyday you will wake to face the pain fatigue discomfort and numerous other unpleasant symptoms of your illness each and every day.
The capacity to keep getting out of bed each morning is itself a win. But to continue to do so greeting your day to the best of your capabilities, as the best version of yourself possible, continuing to treat others with compassion, and try in your life shows superhuman endurance.

1. Persistence - firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

Persistence is very similar to Endurance with one key difference. Endurance speaks to our capacity to carry the weight of our chronic illness while persistence speaks to our capacity to continue showing up for the rest of our lives, while enduring chronic illness.
Many people do not try in the face of no resistance and you wake guaranteed to face it and still press onward.
This is something to acknowledge and celebrate in yourself regardless what your output is on a given day.
You have not only made the decision not to give up on yourself or your life but to continue trying to show up for yourself, your life, and others, as the best version of yourself possible.
When many would not blame you to throw up your hands and give up on life, on yourself, or allow your pain to swallow and define you; you choose again and again and again day after day to keep the course.
The capacity to live as well as possible when you are chronically unwell shows incredible drive and persistence.

1. Resilience - the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

  We are experts at toughness. Wherever we stood with this skill-set before we got ill: resilience is a basic requirement for the chronically ill to exist; to merely live and breathe and function in this life each day.
However we manage to emotionally, psychologically, physically, and practically cope with our illness each day: which may cause us to tend to think we are not resilient and tough but weak; the truth is that resilience is inbuilt into chronic illness. Each day in spite of a variety of difficulties you consistently keep moving forward through life. Having to have constant stress and chronic resilience let alone the barrage of symptoms and obstacles created by living with your chronic illness is incredibly difficult and stressful. Even chronic illness warriors are mere humans and so occasionally break down or don't cope as effectively as may have been possible. Humans have an innate physiological stress threshold. And yours is being pressurized every moment of everyday, how could you not have moments of weakness in your experience, give yourself the gift of grace.
Realize your life forced you into a place where, overall, resilience is a guaranteed skill you excel at.
"We don't know how strong we can be until we have no other choice."

1. Coping Skills- The methods a person uses to deal with stressful situations. These may help a person face a situation, take action, and be flexible and persistent in solving problems.

It may have been a little rocky of a road and not straight forward at first but over time you have come to understand deep internal tools to help you cope with and adapt to your chronic illness. You may not be perfect but no one is. And you may slip backward from time to time or choose less than the healthiest most effective coping strategies, especially during a flare, but overall through this process you have learned valuable coping skills. Numerous healthy helpful positive coping skills not only to maneuver and endure your illness adapt your life and self around your illness but coping skills and stress management capabilities that can  be expanded to your life overall. Just a few of these skills are those mentioned in this blog post but there are many others such as letting go, adaptation, monitoring your moods and interactions with others, balancing your priorities, to name just a few.

1. Gratitude - The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

It may seem counterintuitive that enduring the daily struggles, loss, adaptation of your life, and symptoms of your illness, would make you a more grateful individual but it has this very affect. We have two options when we are faced with a life altering debilitating and chronic diagnosis to get better or get bitter. We may not have realized just how blessed we were when we could simply wake up in the morning and move across the room with ease or reach and grasp a glass of water without shaking hands. The constant pain and constant difficulties and minor annoyances and interruptions due to our illness has made us literally painfully aware of how blessed we once were to be healthy. We, as most able bodied people do not, likely took it for granted until it was gone. Our chronic illness life existence makes us exceptionally aware of the tiniest blessings in this life so as not to take anything else we may have for granted. Losing something so integral to your life as your physical functioning to a chronic illness makes you truly deeply aware how fragile everything is how time limited everything may be. We are hyper aware of our blessings we are also hyper-vigilant for our blessings as it is one of the coping skills that helps us carry on in our conditions.

1. Strength  - the capacity of an object or substance to withstand great force or pressure

Every day those with chronic illnesses are pummeled with a seemingly endless barrage of symptoms. For some sufferers this can mean constant unrelenting symptoms every second of the day. For others it is frequent bouts with pain and or obstacles and interference they must overcome and endure throughout each day. When people think of the chronically ill this often conjures up images of weakness and fragility, what they fail to take into account is, just how incredibly strong a person must become to battle against their own body every single day, while still somehow managing to uphold their attitude, obligations, relationships, and all that now constitutes their lives. Superficially they may seem weak because their body is not functioning fully any longer however beneath the surface lies immense and immeasurable strength of will, human spirit, and even physicality. Imagine what strength it must take to face every day from the moment you open your eyes until you shut them again at night, and for some thorough the night as well pain and other symptoms interfere with sleeping as-well, to simply carry onward in a painful compromised body with a restricted limited life and still attempt to be decent grateful, considerate, contributory humans beings. Further to still attempt to express the fullest potential they are capable of reaching  given the limitations of their situation: is an incredible example of true and enduring strength; as this is a lifelong battle every-single day with ones own body. It takes a toll on not only your body but your emotional, psychological health and stability, and impacts every area of your life from work to relationships to simple day to day self care. To be willing to stare down the barrel of this battle every day takes formidable strengths of will, spirit, character, resilience, endurance, and physical resiliency.

1. Priorities - the fact or condition of being regarded or treated as more important.

It can  be a difficult process for anyone to put their priorities in order. Where we invest our time, energy, attention, and money is what our priorities are. This doesn't necessarily line up with what we "think" is most important to us. It can be helpful to examine on occasion if what you believe to be the most important things in life and your life are really being demonstrated in your daily life accurately through the time, energy, attention, and money you are spending on your desired priorities. Priorities also evolve and change overtime as what constitutes our lives and selves changes overtime. It is important to have the skill of being able to rank order properly what is most important in your life in a given season accurately and devote a healthy amount of necessary energies towards those elements in order to obtain and maintain the most important aspects of our lives and self. What we give attention and energy to is what grows what we neglect begins to slip away and degrade potentially to fall away or apart completely. What we prioritize on a daily basis truly dictates the quality of our lives and demonstrates the quality of our character.
For people with chronic illnesses they are not only limited and restricted in what constitutes their lives: as after an illness one must adapt to an entirely new way of living and mourn what was and could have been settling in to this new more restricted bubble of existence; but they have less of everything I mentioned that we invest into our priorities to invest. A chronically ill individual faces a chronic deficit of energy, attention, time, and money.  Being chronically ill taxes the whole system draining energy and attention, even if the illness itself doesn't have diminished attention or energy as a symptom, chronic sickness is exhausting and stressful creating fatigue and inattention as a given. Due to the symptoms of the illness, exacerbation's, flares, medical treatments, regular appointments, inefficiency of adapted styles of approaching activity to mention a few their is a great reduction in available time for the chronically ill. Also everything in life takes money. Medications, doctors, devices, copay's, hospital stays, insurance for instance are a few of the ways that chronic illness cuts into ones finances. That is if the individual is well enough to still be earning an income of some kind. All too often a disease or illness reaches a level of severity where an individual is no longer physically or neurologically capable of holding down employment.
So just as every other human must make the critical choice of what is a priority in life and my life specifically so to do the chronically ill. They however face allocating extremely limited resources very thoughtfully, carefully, and intentionally. Living in a chronically debilitating and day to day varying and over time evolving situation of chronic illness forces and trains us to be very intentional and thoughtful of where, how, and who must receive our severely limited resources: in order to continue to have a life worth fighting for and a character we can love and respect; despite that our lives and futures aren't going to be what we had once imagined we thoughtfully and tactfully allocate every available drop each day to what truly matters. Often we still wish to, and feel guilt for, not being able to give more to what and whom we love and hold most dear. In the worst of moments we may even feel like nothing more than a burden to those we most cherish. But the truth is we are far more conscientious and considerate of whom and what gets our energies, attention, time, and money; what gets our priority, dedication, and devotion than most are because we have to be. We squeeze every available last drop from ourselves of these limited resources out of ourselves with great care and thoughtfulness everyday. Being chronically ill forces you to be very aware of what your priorities are and vigilant and attentive to maximizing and managing your available reserves to the right things in life as not to neglect what truly matters.  When giving your all is still giving little you learn quickly what truly matters and where to allocate yourself each day, whatever you have to offer on a given day, you are amazingly focused and clear about where it will go.
Lastly to have something that is so often taken for granted as the capacity to merely wake and move and live without constant chronic awareness and vigilance and impedance of your body; when you lose your health; you automatically after adjusting get a very stark reminder of what is and is not truly valuable in this life.
The chronically ill are masters of the awareness of and daily dedication to their priorities.

1. Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Our bodies are the tool through which we participate in and experience our lives. Once you lose something as integral to every element of your life as the quality of your health, indefinitely not temporarily, it alters the course and content of your entire life. There is not an element of your life: your dreams, your relationships, your career, education, daily existence; that doesn't involve the body. People who have been diagnosed with a chronic and disabling physical condition will go through a period of grieving. This is normal and to be expected though it may be surprising news to those who do not suffer from a chronic illness to learn or understand. People with disabling conditions are still able to do amazing things and be amazing people. However depending on how severe their illness is overall, or at a given time period, they may not be able to live a life that has any resemblance to the life they once lived and the dreams they had for themselves. They have to mourn the loss of their former identity and capabilities hopes and dreams before they can begin to adapt and adjust to a new lifestyle and new self identity that is greatly constricted and highly determined by the symptoms or the obstacles placed on them due to their illness. Most people can cope with being severely ill for a period of time, to the extent that it interferes with their ability to live their own life, having to come to a place where you can accept this as a way of life from now on is a whole other level of loss grief struggle adaptation and eventual acceptance. You never get used to having your chronic illness, just as one would never get used to having a severe toothache, simply because it never ends just makes them more exhausted overtime. Some people can't handle it and give up entirely. It is difficult on ones psychology to endure a chronic illness as well and secondary diagnosis of anxiety, depression, or addictions is not entirely out of the question but they are the results of living with, not the cause of, the illness.

So you find your whole world constricted shrunken indefinitely, and have to change and adjust the life you want to live, into that which you are capable to living. There's not an area of your life it doesn't impact nor a day that goes by where your life is not impacted with enduring pain, exhaustion, malaise, or a litany of other symptoms depending on the diagnosis you have. Everything changes and everyday you suffer and everyday you are reminded through symptoms, situations, or difficulties that you are ill and that you suffer and that you will suffer for a long time potentially all time.
Losing something so profoundly impactful and integral to life as your health causes you profound compassion for anyone else suffering from any physical challenges of any kind regardless if they are the same or different than your own. Before I got sick I thought I had sympathy at a minimum for those with health challenges. I can say now that I truly had not enough comprehension of what life like this is like to even begin to have sympathy let alone empathy.
And when empathy, even sympathy, expands in one area it tends to bleed over into other areas of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions in life about life on whole and towards others.

Often times having a chronic illness can leave you feeling isolated and misunderstood, depending upon the illness, it can literally have you end up alone and isolated, not merely feeling as though you are: But once you connect to other individuals suffering chronic illnesses and disabilities you will be moved by the level of their compassion and empathy.

I personally would gladly trade my chronic illness for a cure, but so far that is not looking possible. it has been and is a long and difficult road, I am beyond grateful for having a social network of others who can relate.

And it is for them, for their situations, strength, brilliance, resilience, compassion, and impression they have left on me: not for myself that I dedicate and write this specific blog;  though it is unfair that bad things happen to good people and chronic illnesses happen to be our bad things I wanted them to know that through because of and in-spite of their struggles they have become superhuman and inspirations.