I’ve been unwell for the past two weekends. I’ve had one of my chronic migraines last weekend and this week, I’ve been having a headache with chills. Having chronic pain to me is worse than being outright sick like having a flu, because at least with a flu, you know it is going to go away eventually with the appropriate treatment. And it is not your fault that you are infected with a virus.
With chronic pain though, I start to wonder what went wrong and when. Was it my diet? Have I been thinking too much? Lack of exercise? Each time I try to do anything with my brain – think, read, write, all the favorite things I like to do, my pain and fatigue worsens.
I haven’t been sick for two weeks straight, in a very long while. It is making me ask myself some difficult questions. I have always been constitutionally weaker than the average person I would guess, in a different way. I don’t get colds or flus as much, but any shifts in my diet, sleep or environment will trigger something from a full spectrum of chronic issues.
I wonder if I have a finite unchangeable amount of energy I need to be careful of depleting, and if that means from now on I just have to be really picky about the things I choose to exert my energy on? I’ve just been reading a lot of research on chronic migraines, and apparently migraine sufferers have a different brain structure. It makes me wonder how much of it I can change, and how much of it is about learning how to cope.
It may mean that despite my obvious enjoyment and satisfaction from activities that require thinking, I may have to cut them down while I try to regain some balance to my health. It will take a lot of experimenting, and it may be possible that this can be something I cannot change, and therefore I need to decide where I want to focus my finite energy on.
I guess it is also a timely reminder that like everything else, life requires balance, and there’s perhaps no way I can get away with infinitely thinking without suffering any consequences. It is now time to incorporate less-thinking activities into my life – yoga, meditation, any suggestions?