Living With Chronic Illness - What De-Cluttering, Organizing, and Simplifying Really Mean

Coping With Chronic Illness - What De-Clutter, Organize, and Simplify Mean

I do not thrive in cluttered surroundings. 

I hate living with over stuffed closets, shelves, and rooms – they exude a feeling of chaos, of imminent attack, of sensory overload.  

They make everything more difficult and complex for me.  Getting dressed becomes an ordeal.   Thinking is harder.  

And I trip a lot – which is bad for someone who can barely walk. 

Coping With Chronic Illness - For Better Health - Laugh!

Coping With Chronic Illness - For Better Health - Laugh!

"Good-natured laughter does more than brighten a person’s day. According to some Japanese doctors, it also normalizes imbalances in the endocrine, nervous, and immune systems, stabilizes heartbeat and breathing, and can bring temporary relief to sufferers of rheumatism. 

Laughter stimulates sympathetic nerves, thereby boosting the blood flow to muscles and increasing brain activity.

When we laugh heartily, we also exercise our muscles. In a test cited in the IHT Asahi Shimbun newspaper, one laughing subject’s abdominal muscles “showed the same level of exertion as required by sit-ups.

Coping With Chronic Illness - Exercise Part 3 - How To Build Strength While Ill

There are different levels of illness.  Likewise, there are different levels of exercise.

There are high intensity activities – like jogging, swimming laps, sports, brisk walking, etc…  I don’t know your illness – but for me these are all out.

Then there are low intensity activities – like gardening, gentle walking, housework, water exercises.  Stretching is considered an exercise. 

And then there is truly low intensity activity – like walking from your room to your kitchen and back, or doing some range of movement exercises from your bed, or doing deep breathing exercises.  Or lifting your leg once.  These feel very intense when they are all you can do.

5 Ways To Maintane Independence While Chronically Ill

I know, I know – we don’t want to be independent.  We want to be inter-dependent.  No man is an island and all that.  I agree with that.

I’m not flying in the face of that wisdom when I am talking about this issue of independence.  But we are looking at things from the viewpoint of a person who is chronically ill.  This is a person who’s body betrays them daily.  This is a person who is forced against their will to rely on people all the time for basic necessities.  Their world, their dignity, and their sense of self are being assaulted.