Navigating Chronic Illness and Jealousy

Navigating Chronic Illness and Jealousy

I need to confess something, sometimes I get jealous. When living with a chronic illness, it becomes glaringly clear what you have lost and the things you may have done before that you are no longer able to do. I sometimes experience bouts of jealousy when I get into thoughtful moments about how my life was before my illness got really bad with all its complications.

Although I’ve had my illness my entire life, I didn’t truly suffer daily because of it until my bout with bacterial meningitis after a routine surgery in 2014 which basically “activated” a bunch of complications that I now deal with on a constant basis. And because of our human condition, I didn’t fully grasp how well my body worked or how easily I could function until those simply functions got taken away. So often we take the simple things we can do for granted, because like I said, we’re human; and if we were super focused on everything we did we’d get overwhelmed. But when you’re no longer able to do something as easily as before or not at all, you can’t help but notice. This doesn’t make you ungrateful, it makes you human.

And when you see people doing things you so easily used to be able to do, sometimes you get jealous. I want to make it clear that when I experience jealousy towards people I see who are able to do things I used to do with ease, I don’t feel anything negative or unkind towards them, it’s never about the individual person I see doing something, it’s the sadness of remembering myself from years before without ever considering even or a second that one day I might not be able to do those things again.

There are two other main things I find myself getting jealous of when it comes to my past “Normally functioning” self. I miss the freedom that comes with your body working properly. Before my complications arose, I was a busy person. I went to school full time, worked, and had a social life. If my friends wanted to go out and do something, if I was free I ddin’t think twice, I just went. I was all about going on spontaneous adventures, no planning required, just getting up and going. Now with my illness and the complications that come with it I have to plan everything, and even with planning, so often I have to throw my plans out the window to stay home and rest or recover. Now I have to make sure I limit the amount of things I do in a day to not overwhelm my body and have it needing major recovery the following day. The amount of things you miss out on when you live with a chronic illness is a high one, even when you do everything right, you still aren’t in control of how your body is going to behave.

With a chronic illness, you often experience debilitating fatigue and with that, a large reduction in the amount of “useable hours” you have in a day. Before getting my illness complications I would be able to get up and go all day until going to bed 16-20 hours later and get up the next day and do it all again. Now, dealing with complications and my illness, I have several fewer “useable hours” in a day. And the number of useable hours I have depends on what I do, how I feel when I get up, and several other factors, some of which are completely out of my control, like many folks living with chronic illnesses.

If you’re human, you’ve experienced jealousy. And rather than beat yourself up about it, there’s a process I’m learning to put into practice to work through these moments of jealousy rather than shove them down and pretend they don’t happen.

First step, don’t try and ignore the emotions. We get a range of emotions for a reason. We aren’t meant to be in a constant state of happiness; life is about variety and the experiences that shape us, and not all of them are going to be positive. So when you get those feelings of jealousy, don’t try to ignore them or shove them down because we all know that when that happens they jus wind up blowing up in our faces so much worse than would have been if we would have just felt them initially.

Next you want to name that emotion you’re feeling. When you name what you’re feeling, you can recognize it. And when we recognize it we take its power away. By giving what we’re feeling a name, we take control and that makes it harder for that emotion to overpower us and lead us.

This next step might be difficult but you’re going to want to accept the emotions you’re having. You are having them for a reason and when you accept them, you can work through them and learn quicker how to acknowledge and move on from them.

Now you’re going to want to forgive yourself for feeling them, you’re human, you’re allowed. Like I said, we can’t have perfectly positive emotions all the time, that’s some horror movie level unsettling. Negative emotions don’t make you a bad person, being jealous doesn’t make you a bad person. Wanting something you once had doesn’t make you a bad person; it makes you human. So rather than beating yourself up for feeling those things and having that make you spiral, forgive yourself.

Finally, you’ll want to shift your focus to something of gratitude. This isn’t about denying your negative emotions but it’s about priming yourself to focus on the good in your life. It takes practice and it isn’t perfect, but it helps, and that’s all we can ask for.

Being chronically ill causes many unexpected emotions to come up, one of them being jealousy. But never forget that having that emotion doesn’t make you a bad person. You’re doing the best you can and that’s enough. Take care of yourself. Cheers!

Youtube video: https://youtu.be/YWQizEOErro