Why You Should Be Curious & Nonjudgmental About Your Illness

Curiosity and nonjudgmental awareness are important tools for healing when you have a chronic illness. I’m not saying, cure the illness, but rather to increase our pain tolerance, decrease our stress levels, and heal from any associated wounds from our illness. This becomes even more important if you have a trauma background, which as we know from all the research on the subject, is very common when you have a chronic illness. Myself included in that statement, “little t” trauma that lasted for 5 years in elementary and junior high, something I initially scoffed at as possibly being considered trauma until I learned more about what trauma is, and how it has contributed to my current health. I didn’t process any of it until I was an adult, seeking psychotherapy for pain and stress, and it eventually came out because I was having difficulties in adult friendships… all stemming back to the “little t” trauma from my childhood (let me know if you want more information on little t and big t trauma, I’ve written about them before but can again).

What should we be curious and nonjudgmental about?

I mean a part of me just wants to say EVERYTHING! Because there are definitely huge advantages to approaching life this way. However, it is completely unrealistic to think we could experience life this way all the time. We’re human and it’s totally normal to make judgments (evolutionarily, it helped our species stay alive!) When it comes to chronic illness there are 4 things I think are really important to be curious and nonjudgmental about (this is, as always, based on my own lived experience as well as what I’ve seen in clinical practice).

1. Our Thoughts – even the ones that are “judging” in the first place. Can you notice your thoughts without thinking about them or getting swept away by them? I find it interesting to see not only the content of my thoughts but also how they come and go, with some being more sticky than others.
2. Our Emotions – like our thoughts, they tend to come and go, but typically can stick around for longer periods of time. Not only should we explore what we are feeling, but where we are feeling it in our bodies. All emotions have related sensations. What can we notice about them by just sticking to the facts?
3. Our Behaviours – why do we do the things we do? It’s fascinating to notice how I act in certain ways or do certain things and how that changes with time or on a different day. It’s equally as fascinating to observe how my behaviours change when my thoughts and feelings are in different states.
4. Our Sensations – not only the ones associated with our emotions, but all the sensations in our bodies – hunger, fatigue, pain. Noticing the quality, where it is, what it feels like, even what we imagine it looks like.

How can we become more curious and nonjudgmental?

There are a lot of ways we can learn to become curious and nonjudgmental. I think of myself as being a curious child, discovering something new for the first time, and approaching whatever it is – thought, emotion, behaviour or sensation – just in that way. But I’ll be more specific:

• Describe it – using only facts, not your interpretations or judgments. Here is anxiety. Here is a sharp sensation in my leg. Here is a worry thought.
• Notice and Name it – I am noticing the thought that… or I’m noticing the feeling of…
• Send your breath into it – rather than judge the sensation or emotion as good or bad, see if you can just pause and send your breath to the area of you feel it the most, giving it some room.
• Practice meditation – in meditation all you’re really doing is noticing your experience as it comes and goes. This can be a good way to learn to interact with your thoughts, feelings and behaviours nonjudgmentally because the whole point is to be open and nonjudgmental. Check this one out.
• Do a body scan – this is another way to really be open to any feelings and sensations present in your body. We often notice that the intensities change and that sensations do often come and go. Find a short version here.
• Offer yourself some kindness – it’s so easy to be harsh and judgmental about your experience. Kind self-talk or kind self-touch can be useful to counteract what our minds are doing. Check out this kind hand exercise.

It can be hard to think that things can get better, but I’ve had the first-hand experience of my life improving from doing these kinds of practices and really just changing my experience of life. I hope this helps you to keep making the most of it!

What Can We Control When We Have a Chronic Illness?

Here’s how I see it: in my life there are things that are out of my control. No matter what I do, I cannot change them. And then there are things in my life that are totally within my control, and I do what I can to change them. Seems pretty simple, right? Well, yes and no. There is this concept in psychology called ‘locus of control’ that has been vigorously studied. It basically describes how people make sense of different influences on their life. There are two types of locus of control. The first is internal, in which we believe what happens to us is caused by our own actions. The second is external, in which we believe that what happens to us is caused by outside forces. Would you believe that having a high internal locus of control is helpful? Especially for those of us with chronic illness or pain? Well, that’s what the research says…

Image from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/locus-of-control.html

There have been a ton of studies showing that people with high internal locus of control tend to have better health habits overall, are more likely to be screened and tested for health conditions, and actually have better mental health after being diagnosed with an illness. Janowski et al. (2013) found this was the case across chronic health conditions in their study. According to a study by Brown et al. (2018), people with high external locus of control have a lower quality of life, in their study on cancer patients. The great thing is, this is information we can utilize to make our lives better with our chronic illnesses. But how, you might ask?

Image from: https://www.miskawaanhealth.com/chronic-disease-prevention/

I want you to take a moment and ask these questions to yourself. What do I have most control over in my life? What do I have the least control over?
We often focus on things that are not in our control, such as the behaviour of others, actually getting an illness, and our difficult thoughts and feelings that are associated with all of this (and are an important part of being human). When we focus on these things we end up feeling helpless, hopeless, angry, anxious, guilty, sad, and so on (the struggle switch). We get stuck on these stories of “if I wasn’t sick my life would be good” or “my life will be great when I’m not in pain anymore, and will be miserable until that day comes.” This is common when you have an illness or a severe injury (like a concussion for example). The problem is, we don’t know if or when we will ever be without our illness or pain or injury, etc.

I didn’t have control over getting sick, nor can I stop my thoughts and feelings from occurring (they’re part of being human).

What we can do instead is start focusing our time and energy on what is in our control, such as our actions/behaviours/whatever you want to call it. Self-empowerment is one of those now almost silly terms that was hijacked by the self-help life coach world, but essentially, having a high internal locus of control and then taking control of what we can is the epitome of self-empowerment. The better health behaviours we have = the better quality of life we have (even with illness and pain).

What can we do to take control?

• Unhook from our difficult thoughts and feelings – try this or this.
• Connect with our values to determine how we want to act even with the challenges that we face – listen to this.
• Take action, behaving like the sort of person we want to be, so that we can live the sort of life we want to live – listen to this.

I can take control over my actions and lead a values-based life.

If you currently have a high external locus of control and a low internal one, this switch might be difficult to do. You may need the extra support of a psychotherapist/counsellor, and you will definitely want to give yourself patience, time, and kindness. We all have the opportunity to live a great life, regardless of our health status, so let’s see if this helps us make the most of it!

Why is Emotion Regulation Important For My Physical Health?

I’m going to be the first to admit that when I was younger I often struggled with my emotion regulation. This often came to the forefront in the context of relationships, because I had a “short temper.” I would get angry and yell, pretty quickly. I could always calm down, but I came to realize the older I got that I had to remove myself from the situation in order to get myself to be more calm. I had a really bad breakup geez, almost 5 years ago now, that I also had a difficult time controlling my emotions, especially sadness and rumination. That last time, that was the lesson for me. But we’ll get to that in moment…

A transition from a poor emotion regulation period to a better one.

First, let’s talk about what emotion regulation is, because I know that some of you may never have really heard the term before. Emotion regulation is our attempts to control the experience, expression, time and scale of our emotions. It has been long known to be important for our mental health, and only more recently explored for physical health. These are also skills that many of us learn as children, but often do require practice throughout our lifetimes. I worked in retail for a long time and as I reflect back I can see how customers yelling at me, for let’s be honest, very small things (I had a lady yell at me once because a competitor had an item for a dollar less but she didn’t tell me before she paid – I happily would have matched it… and by yelled I mean screamed bloody murder) and I realize they were exhibiting very poor emotion regulation, which is more harmful for themselves than the stress it caused me.

If you’re yelling at retail workers (or servers, etc) you might want to check on your emotion regulation skills.

Here’s what we know about emotion regulation and physical health:

1. better emotion regulation impacts our overall physical health positively
2. difficulties with emotion regulation, especially with prolonged negative emotion, can make you more at risk at developing heart disease
3. emotional suppression and rumination (part of poor emotion regulation) cause lower energy, greater physical pain, greater disability, and overall lower quality of health
4. difficulties with emotion regulation make it difficult to engage in self-care and health-related behaviours necessary for managing chronic illness
5. better emotion regulation makes it easier to manage stressors in our lives, meaning less flares and relapses of illness
6. better emotion regulation increases medication adherence and sticking with diet and exercise regimes

Back to my story. So, I had this breakup and this very poor emotion regulation following it, and then I had a flare so terrible I ended up in the hospital for pain. I was released the same day, and the pain came down a bit, but it really went back to normal levels when I was able to come out of the depressive funk I was in. I can safely say I have not had a problem regulating my emotions since… and I mean really who wants a flare like that again? So, we’ve answered the question why, and there are lots of “how tos” in regulating emotions, but I’m going to leave you with one to try out.

A much more emotionally regulated period

Learning to self-soothe. Again, many of us learn this skill as children, but not everyone does, and often we do less of it as we get older. Some ideas for practicing self-soothing are to do meditations such as loving kindness (click here) or a relaxation practice like progressive muscle relaxation (click here). Expressive writing about the experience (click here), breathing exercises (click here), and self-care strategies like taking a bubble bath, are more ways to lear to self-soothe. There are many other strategies online so I suggest a Google search if you’re looking for more!

Take care, and keep making the most of it!
–Kelsey