After years of avoiding it I finally took the plunge and started weekly therapy sessions. After the difficulty of the first session where everything came pouring out I immediately felt a benefit. Just the act of sitting in a quiet room for an hour with nothing to do other than to talk about what's on my mind felt very peaceful.
As we all know the mental health aspect of chronic skin conditions is where the real danger lies. We can’t ignore the profound effects it causes. A clear way to address this is through therapy, I would at the very least suggest giving it a try as I know it doesn’t seem to benefit everyone.
It often feels almost as if the counsellor is facilitating a conversation with yourself, this then leads you to coming to conclusions all on your own about the best ways forward etc.
I thought I’d share a few things that I have found helpful:As skin condition sufferers we regularly have to deal with the catch 22 of someone making an off hand remark about our appearance. Thereby shining a light on the thing we are most insecure about. In that moment I’m instantly plunged into a feeling of almost fight or flight due to the feeling of humiliation. In this same instant I have to analyse the situation and decide how best to respond. I for one usually just want the situation to be over as quickly as possible especially the more eyes this tactless comment has attracted my way. This tied with the fact the comment often doesn’t come from a place of malice and not working to embarrass the person who said it results in me often just laughing it off. Something which my counsellor said which I quite liked was “someone needs to be embarrassed in that situation, why does it always have to be you?”
Another key aspect of this is I don’t want to appear overly sensitive. A comment about someone's face being red for most normal healthy people is quite harmless banter. However, due to another suggestion from my therapist, to counteract this I try to take a step back from the situation and judge it as if it was someone I loved with the skin condition and someone has just made that comment to them. This makes my response feel so much more clearer as I would be far less tolerant if for example my wife deeply suffered with this condition and someone made a tactless comment towards her.
Ultimately for me to just laugh it off to get out of the situation is the coward's way out. If the person isn’t being malicious and they have to feel slightly embarrassed when I explain to them the situation then so be it. If it is malicious then it’s so much easier to hit back.
Something else I have greatly benefitted from is mindfulness, this is wonderful in theory but can be difficult in reality. I like to think of it as your thoughts are like cars driving along a busy motorway. You are not on the road, you're simply standing to the side observing the road. To take that second and observe my thoughts from a more objective outside perspective rather than from inside the emotion of those thoughts can feel very liberating when you get it right.
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