If you’re feeling badly about your job — too much to do, not interesting enough stuff to do or you dislike what you do — it’s easy to blame this on living with chronic illness. Do you find yourself thinking, “If only I wasn’t sick, things would be different”.
It’s easy to forget that this stuff wasn’t any better when you were healthy. Or to ignore the possibility that this might not be a result of living with illness. Yes, you might have had more choices if you were healthy. Now, does acknowledging that make the situation any better?
Not very likely. But, we can look at our behavior and that’s where have some leverage. Whether you’re having trouble managing others, working for others or working with others, any of this can drive you nuts. Or maybe it’s your personal work habits, such as procrastination, poor time management, sloppy workspace that gets the bad reports. Or maybe you’re doing a job that you don’t like (such as being in sales or a manager)? Any of this can feel much worse when you’re also struggling with managing your health.
Have you found that a chronic illness can make a mildly difficult situation feel toxic? I have. That’s why we have to put our energy on the stuff that we can improve
So, I suggest that you ask yourself, honestly, is the chronic illness making this difficult or is this something that’s been with me anyway? When you can answer this honestly, you’ve got a shot at improving the situation.
Rosalind
Sherril says
“So, I suggest that you ask yourself, honestly, is the chronic illness making this difficult or is this something that’s been with me anyway? When you can answer this honestly, you’ve got a shot at improving the situation.
But I can’t seem to tell if it’s the chronic illness making a thing difficult or if it’s something that’s been with me anyway. The illnesses have been with me for so long that I can only barely remember what I was like BI (Before Illness). And I was so much younger then. How to tell the difference between what the illnesses are causing and what natural aging is causing? Is there even any way to know for sure?
Rosalind Joffe says
That’s such a great comment, Sherril. The point I was trying to make is that we want to pay attention to the behavior that we can change and use whatever tools we’ve go to do that. If you’ve had problem taking directions from someone since the first job you ever had, that’s probably a behavioral (aka attitude) issue that is deeper and might take a lot of re directing and coaching. But if you find that you’re having trouble following new material and making mistakes, you can guess it’s illness related, and some slight modifications might help. Most importantly, we have to figure out what’s caused by the illness now so we can make smart long term plans.
Rosalind