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| Pamela Hsieh Rehab Revolution |
As always, I encourage you to leave feedback in the comments section below, or e-mail me if you'd like to give input to what I've said.
I'd like to encourage anyone who's feeling a little hopeless right now to start taking action.
I know I talk about this all the time, but in the journey toward healing, you really need a balance of repetition, gentle encouragement, and tough love to keep you going. So on days I don't have a specific discovery to share or a particular therapy technique I feel like getting into, I try to put a new spin on the most basic principle to rehabilitation there is: doing something about your situation. After all, this site is about a rehab revolution, and it's all about attacking your setbacks as best you can to raise yourself above your injury/ies. And you can't do it without it coming first from your mentality, so although it seems simplistic to say "It's all mental," I can't stress more how true that is and will always do my best to keep you going.
So do know that I try to approach all aspects of healing and rehab (and not even limited to traumatic injury, but wounds of all sorts) with the utmost kindness as possible, but if someone is not going to be receptive to my encouragement, it may be time for me to pull out my right hand and give 'em a light slap across the arm or something, remind him why I'm even saying what I'm saying. This is the big picture, folks.
It is kindness to be close to someone as she tries her best to concentrate on picking up pegs with an affected hand, or to listen with a sympathetic ear as she vents her frustrations. It is also kindness to remind her to try challenging her affected side by doing something difficult, like holding a cup of water with her weak hand. And it is the toughest, but greatest, of kindnesses to always be patient with her.
It is disrespect to get annoyed with her for taking longer to do things than you. It is disrespect to yell at her for forgetting to challenge herself. To abandon your relationship with her because it's too taxing for you. (On that note . . . if you think it's a hindrance on you, what the heck do you think it must be like for her?) It is, ultimately, DISRESPECT to ever treat her as though her condition is her fault. Nobody in his right mind wishes this kind of thing on himself, so please try to find the empathy within your heart to understand this. It is also disrespectful to treat her as though she is her condition alone (psst, this is for those of you who met the person post-injury), a separate entity from the entire person that she is. Just because her body may have betrayed her doesn't mean you have to, too.
Patients, sufferers of injury -- this does not get you off the hook, either. For you, it is kind to always compensate for your inconveniences: get up a little earlier, anticipate your more time consuming activities. To apologize when you realize you may be trying someone else's patience. (Let's not overdo it; excuse yourself the once or twice, but don't give off the impression that you're in absolute control of the situation.) It is kindness to gently explain your needs, and especially if your condition isn't immediately obvious to the naked eye, give a few polite reminders if you feel neglected. It is disrespect to use your condition as an excuse to do socially impolite things, or to gain unwarranted pity from others. Remember that no matter how bad your situation is, there is always, always someone who's had it worse. (On that note, I'm quite humbled to follow that aforementioned breast cancer survivor, Eloise's story in The Forefront, University of Chicago Hospitals' newsletter.)
It's not that you should ever compare your own story of adversity to anyone else's. You really shouldn't. In the arena of human suffering, there is far too much to ever be able to comprehensively compare any individual situations. Each one of us lives a life of infinite facets, some measurable and some immeasurable -- and infinite possibilities: Perhaps one person may, like Eloise, suffer from something multiple times, or another, like me, only once (knock on wood). Some injuries are slight and quick, insignificant (it's not like we go around saying things like, "Hey, remember the paper cut from 2006?"); others heavy and long-lasting (like neurological injuries). But bottom line is, whether you've met someone or not, there is always going to be some poor soul who has had it worse off.
Remembering that there are people who have gone through something worse than you is not about looking down at them and joyfully shouting, "Suckahs!!" It's about remaining humble enough to know that you should not stay a victim forever.
This can be applied to wounds of all magnitudes. If you lost a lover, this can be a profound and life-changing experience, a spiritual injury. It'll knock you down and put you "out of commission" for possibly quite a long time. It doesn't mean you won't find a better, more loyal partner in the future or that you're not loved otherwise. There are people out there who have been married for decades and lose their spouse to a spontaneous accident. And then, to one-up them, also people married for decades who lose their spouses after a long bout of terminal illness. There are also people who have never lived the beauty of romantic love at all, who yearn for it desperately and crave it like air.
I remember a few months after my hospitalization, this girl I knew (who didn't know about it yet) tried to make me feel sorry for her because she'd been at the doctor's office all day long. "I even had to take an MRI!" she exclaimed, and, being nineteen and not so enlightened or mature, I practically burst out laughing. At that point, I'd had more MRIs and CT scans than I even knew, and had "lived inpatient" at two different hospitals for two and a half months. One day at the doctor's, and a measly, painless MRI? This is kind of what it's like when anyone chooses to stay the victim and keep complaining. While clearly my example is inane, I think it provokes a fairly appropriate response.
People who've lost a parent: Surely, yet another deep spiritual wound. What about children orphaned before they've even hit the double digits?
If you've lost a leg -- there are people who've lost two. Yet others with not a single limb.
Need I go on, or do you get the picture? I don't mean at all to make light of any of these situations, as everyone experiences and deals with pain differently.
I just want to give you a nudge, provoke you a little, to see the grander scale. You do not have a monopoly on human suffering. To be sure, you get to mourn; you get to feel upset or depressed and feel sorry for yourself.
But you shouldn't do it forever. There comes a point where wallowing in victimhood becomes simply toxic to your life, and to others'.
My best friend shared a piece of great wisdom with me once, and it went something like, "This is what 'Misery loves company' means, not that people feeling sorry for themselves love to wallow and vent together, but that people who are miserable slowly spread their misery from person to person, taking down many people in their paths, until everyone gets down."
This is why it is important to be aware of stories like mine or Eloise's, or whoever else who's been through "it all" and made it out alive and well. Because we are the revolutionaries, the warriors who give up "woe is me" for "WHOA! . . . is me." It only takes an instant.
You can decide in this moment, right now, to quit fighting the encouragement and positivity, and do what's right for you and everyone else. Join the revolution and fight for your quality of life.
It can be hell. It can be the hardest thing you have ever done in your whole life. This will test you to the very limits of your own tolerance and strength, but you are the only one who can heal you, and it's truly your decision. Clearly, I think the right choice is clear.
If you don't pick yourself back up and improve your situation, the outcome will be dire. It will get worse, so please do yourself and everyone else a favor and put your ego away. Have the humility to honestly face yourself and, with self-kindness, remove those blocks, the resistance to helping yourself heal.
Would you rather sit around moaning and groaning because life is too hard, losing friends and other loved ones because of your unceasing negativity, or shake it off and realize nothing is going to change if you don't change something? Have you truly tried to work on it? And didn't something come out of it?
That's what I thought.
To our healing,
Pamela
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