Accept your Limitations

‘Know your limits but never stop trying to exceed them’

Anonymous

You are the only one who knows how you really feel.  If you don’t feel physically capable of doing something then you have to learn to say no without feeling guilty.  Accepting the limitations imposed by having a chronic illness is one of the most significant things (and one of the hardest) you have to do, and learning to embrace the changes.

I always used to mentally berate myself if, for example, the housework didn’t get done, or if there were things I wanted to do that I wasn’t able to.  I would give myself such a hard time.  But then I learnt that it wasn’t my fault, I wasn’t being weak or lazy; I just wasn’t physically capable of doing everything.

I wrote a list of my priorities and it wasn’t until I finished it that it dawned on me that I’d left myself off the list!  Obviously – for me – my children have always been my top priority and as long as they’re happy and healthy then I’m clearly doing something right.  Family, friends and work all rank up there as being very important, but it took me a very long time to recondition my brain to put myself in the mix as well.

Generally by the time I would finish work and collect my boys from school I always felt fairly exhausted.  So housework suffered, but then so what?  I tried keeping everything relatively clean, I would cook meals too, but then again ready meals sometimes crept in but that’s all part of the balancing act.  I also learnt to ask other people to take on chores to lighten my own load.

Acceptance is key, but equally, make sure you don’t create any limitations of your own that don’t exist.  I realised that I was creating some of my own limitations; I was telling myself whether I could or could not do something.  I gave in to negative thinking and ran myself down when I should have been telling myself that anything is possible and I should have had more faith in myself and my capabilities.