“Nothing is permanent in this world, not even our troubles.” ~Charlie Chaplin
At thirteen, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. At first, I patiently waited for my doctor to give me medicine. When he didn’t, I patiently waited (for several years) for someone to find the cure.
As the years went on I wasn’t getting any better. Though I went to more doctors than I could count, none had any new advice for me, and the medical community wasn’t any closer to figuring out how to heal this illness.
Life was unpredictable. I didn’t know what I’d be able to do each day, let alone in the future. Some days I could lead a relatively normal life, going to class and hanging out with friends—as long as we didn’t do anything too active. Some days I could barely get out of bed to go to the bathroom.
I had always been ambitious growing up. I loved playing sports, I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to travel the world. As I got into my early twenties, I started questioning if I’d be able to achieve any of these goals when my health was so unpredictable.
I had managed to finish high school and attend university. But attending classes and trying to write essays with brain fog was a challenge for which my grades would suffer. When I was twenty-one I had a big crash. I couldn’t attend any classes or do any work. I couldn’t do my laundry or cook dinner. All I could do was survive.
I hadn’t sought help from a doctor in many years; they had been so disappointing when I was younger. But now I knew I needed help. I found a holistic health center where I saw an occupational therapist, a nutritionist, a counselor, and a doctor. It’s also where I got my first taste of yoga and meditation.
Yoga and meditation helped me embrace the unpredictableness of my health.
Before beginning my yoga practice, I was searching for assurance. I wanted a doctor to know what to do. I wanted a medication that would make my symptoms go away. I wanted to know that I could get well and stay well. I wanted an assurance that didn’t exist in reality. Waiting for this assurance had held me back from seeking a partial recovery or recovery on my own.
As my yoga and meditation practice advanced I became better tuned to my body and learned what energized me and what made me feel worse. But the most important concept I learned from my studies was impermanence. Sure, my energetic days didn’t last as long as I hoped. But my fatigued days didn’t last as long as I had feared.
I began to ride this impermanence like the waves I ride when floating in the sea (which was all I could manage to do when I was very ill, despite swimming competitively when growing up).
When I first became ill, most of the advice I was given was to “try to push through.”
Doctors told me to “drink a coca cola at lunch” if I felt tired. They told me that I needed to do everything I could to finish my school assignments and get to classes so I didn’t get left behind. But all of this pushing was exhausting. Like trying to swim against the current, it didn’t serve me to try to do what my body would not allow at the times when I was feeling very ill.
As anyone with a chronic illness can tell you, good days come with fear. I used to try to do everything I possibly could on the days I was feeling well because I didn’t know when I’d get a chance to catch up on everything I needed to do (including laundry and school papers but also fun things like getting coffee with a friend).
Every time I got better, I waited to get worse again. Yet I came to realize that I didn’t apply this logic when I was feeling my worst. When I was feeling terrible I wasn’t waiting for it to get better; I was in bed feeling sorry for myself and fearing it would get worse.
When I began to see the fallacy in this way of thinking, things started changing for me. When I had a bad day, I allowed myself to rest without wallowing. It was frustrating if I had a looming deadline or social event I wanted to go to that I couldn’t meet. But setting those boundaries for myself was invaluable.
I didn’t need to ‘push through it’ because I’d get another chance. I could take that course again, or reschedule with my friend. This state of being bedridden was not forever. But it was a time for me to rest, to practice meditation or a gentle yoga session. A time for me to read books that brought me joy, a time to search inward for peace, acceptance, and joy.
Understanding that the only thing that’s permanent is change helped me to accept my illness. It helped me end fatalistic thoughts like “I’ll never be able to achieve my dreams,” which seemed reasonable at the time but weren’t helpful to my recovery, or to achieving those dreams.
Learning how to ride this impermanence has helped me achieve more than I thought was possible. I was able to graduate university, work full time, travel around the world, and even take part in triathlons!
When going through a hard time, it’s easy to feel defeated. It’s easy to feel like there’s no hope, and that our lives are irrevocably changed. But by embracing that change, by knowing that our lives will always change and that nothing will last forever, we can better overcome adversity.
If you’re going through a hard time right now, I encourage you to use this time to listen to your body and what it needs. As you start to do this, you’ll start to notice that things change from day to day. One day you might have a searing pain in your head. The next it may be a dull throb. The next, only a faint whisper of the pain before coming back to a searing pain again.
Instead of feeling downtrodden that pain has returned, embrace that it has changed. That this state of pain—whether it is emotional or physical—is not a permanent state.
Embracing impermanence has shifted every area of my life. I’m a freelance writer, which means I don’t have a set salary. Some months can go well and others…not so much. But I don’t get stuck in the bad months because I know it will change again. I still have bad health days, but I know the healthy energetic days far outweigh the bad, and I’m able to take the bad days as they come.
For those of us who are chronically ill, it’s easy to feel like healthy people feel great every day. They don’t. They have bad days as well. But dwelling on the number of bad days or bad feelings won’t make them go away any faster, just as trying to cram everything you can into a good day won’t make the good day last any longer.
As you become in tune with the rhythms of your body and better attuned to the way your body changes, you’ll learn how to better nourish yourself. Watch as you move between pain and no pain, fatigue and energy and enjoy the time of much-needed rest as much as those of activity.
If you’ve also struggled with a chronic illness, it might help to:
Keep a journal and record how you feel each day. Review this journal at the end of each week so you can see how much change you face even in just a week.
Start a daily mindfulness practice. This can be yoga and meditation, but it can also be another mindful activity such as walking or taking a hot bath. Anything that helps you tune into your body and mind and assess the rhythms of your thoughts, pain, and energy levels. This will help you keep an accurate journal, and see how things can change even from breath to breath.
Commit to eliminating fatalistic thinking—thoughts that contain information you could not possibly know. Thoughts like “I’ll always be in pain” or “I’ll never get better” when you have no idea what the future holds are examples of fatalistic thinking.
Write down those thoughts in a diary and then write the truth next to them. For example, “I’m in pain right now,” or “I don’t feel well today.” None of us can tell the future; don’t let your mind trick you into thinking that it can.
And lastly, take rest when you need rest, and find a moment of joy in every day.
About Kayla Kurin
Kayla helps people living with chronic illnesses find relief through yoga. Her goal is to make yoga accessible so that people of all abilities can participate in her classes from around the world. Learn more about her work at arogayoga.com or check out her new book, Yoga for Chronic Pain: 7 Steps to Aid Recovery from Fibromyalgia Through Yoga.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine.
I totally understand how you can see the Buddhist teaching of impermanence, but I struggle with this teaching on another level. Is your cfs going change in a sense of full recovery? Because living with chronic illness where you do not recover doesnt feel like impermanence to me. You can see impermanence within the day to day reality of living with cfs, but ultimately if you never recover then how can buddha say everything is impermanent, how does that help those people who never recover and have to live with the illness for the rest of their life. Do they have to accept impermanence to them will be when they die, which ultimately is the reality of us all, so yh everything is impermanent.
Its nice to give people hope .. however I have CRPS and a very serious type of arthritis … I had an accident over 24 years ago. Your title is off .. and telling people the way to positive thinking is helpful .. however Meditation, Drugs and Herbs only go so far. Many people are praying on people in pain because they will pay Anything to get rid of it. This has been going on for thousands of years. Once people except what they have .. then and only then can they deal with it. If we listen to those who state they took this that or the other thing and have paid for a book and now they feel “no pain” good for them. But … for many of us that have gone down that path and still feel pain .. have to be reminded that they have not failed. Feeling useless and depressed because they failed leads to suicide and it does increase the pain overall. Hope is a great thing … my piece of advise is … please do not feel like you failed if meditation / positive thinking / Drugs / Herbs have not worked … please except what you have .. do less and be HAPPY about what you have done even if its just waking up .. its a start.
Thank you for the article ..
Thank you so much for this. I feel it could be describing my own experience. After having medical problems with nausea and balance for a year and a half, I started feeling like that there were few good days and almost all bad ones. I started to keep track of how I felt at different times of the day on a simple three point scale and discovered that I was overemphasizing how often I felt awful and not remembering the times I felt pretty good. Now when I have two or three really bad days in a row, I go back in my journal to remind myself of times when I felt better. It’s also given me insight into better and worse times to schedule things and what things I do that help/don’t help.
This is a good conversation. I was ill with CFS for 10 years from when I was 35-45 years old. Yoga with several other sick people taught me to love my frail body again.
It took another 10 years to zipper back into a well “normal” lifestyle.
Now that I’m in my 60’s and feeling physical limits of aging and a crappy immune system (I had the flu then pneumonia 2x this year). I am still grateful everyday for the wonderful strength and energy that I reclaimed. I learned to have fun looking at a tree and that means a lot more than the words.
Thank you Kayla. Impermanence is a good way to accept our chronic “limiting” conditions. I try to be a practicing Buddhist. Impermanence, as one of the foundations of Buddhism, is the lens through which I try to view everything in my life. I live with chronic pain from spinal injuries and 2 autoimmune diseases. I welcome them into my life as my “teachers” and I pray my gratitude for them. Like you, I have my good days….and my not-so-good days. I vision taking my good days as gifts of pearls. Every good day is a pearl that I receive from the eternal. In my vision I image taking each of those pearls and stringing them together….first into a bracelet, and as the string gets longer, into a necklace. Right now I am building a string to reach the moon. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom.
Thank you so much for this article. It is so much about the impermanence. Living with Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia and a very rare neurological dis-ease, has taught me so much about how we choose to see these ailments in our new normal. I so remember having days when they were so good I would exhaust myself just trying to grab it all in. And then I learned that being my own health advocate and doing kinesiology, body testing and meditation allowed me to finally find a way to live my life again. I was told I would never walk again, and would have to live in a nursing home. I said thank you, that is your opinion not mine. And I taught myself how to walk, and drive again and the other day went hiking and climbing. So hear our own inner compass, that is our way to health and vibrancy. I am a big believer in yes we can. And have completely changed my thoughts about what illness is. So happy to read this article. In peace and gratitude, ariel
Thank you for this article… It’s so amazing that this article came my way a few hours after praying to God about my condition. I was born with an autoimmune disorder, then I got Lyme disease when I was 14, although I didn’t find out until this past year (6 years later!). Doctor after doctor didn’t know what to do, even the one who got a Lyme test for me knows nothing about it.
I had a bad crash last December. I’ve been trying my hardest to stay in tune with God and keep my spirits up. It has been -so- hard. Today was a particularly bad day… I’ve been depressed from being so sick that I can’t work, go to college, or travel elsewhere. I needed to read this. I struggle with feeling worthless and lazy being in bed, even though I also know that I can’t blame myself for being too weak to stand some days…
Thank you, thank you. I hope this reaches the hearts of many who suffer like you or I have. I’m glad to know I am not alone (although I would -never- wish this on anyone). You give me hope that someday I too will be able to achieve my dreams.
And I hope any others who read this comment are encouraged too. I pray for healing and peace for all of you.
I really love this! I have CPTSD which can be very debilitating just like a chronic illness. I never know when something is going to trigger an emotional flashback that is going to leave me dissociated and dysfunctional for days on end. It’s scary knowing that the next one is always somewhere around the corner.
I too recently started approaching my bad days differently. Before I used to try to push through it (unsuccessfully) and beat myself up for not being able to do what I wanted to do. But once I started to embrace my bad days and allow myself grace over the things that really were outside of my control I actually started to recover faster.
Living with a chronic illness takes so much strength and people that don’t go through it themselves don’t understand. So congrats to you on all your success and great article!
Hi Carl, I definitely understand your concern and I in no way meant to imply that anyone is to blame for their own pain, or that positive thinking can make pain go away. The message I was trying to convey is that none of us can read the future, but if we listen to the present, we will see our pain is not constant. Unfortunately, that means that yes, your pain can get worse. But if it can get worse, that means there is also the possibility it can also get better.
It’s so inspiring that you’ve found ways to find joy and happiness even if you’re not feeling well!
Thank you for your lovely comment, Ariel! And what an amazing and inspiring story – thank you for sharing! Lots of love, Kayla
What an uplifting perspective, Ari! I’m glad you liked the article!
Yes, keeping a journal as a reminder is such a great idea!
Thanks for your comment, Lauren! So uplifting to hear that you started to recover from bad days faster by allowing yourself more grace over things you can’t control!
Hello Beth, well first off I did body testing. I asked my body what it needed. I knew that for autoimmune dis-ease it lived at the base cellular level. And food directly impacts that. So I did testing of what foods would heal. And then followed that.
I have not used practitioners, I have used body wisdom. I go deep into meditation to find answers. And I think we all have the capability to do this.
So I became vegan, no wheat, no sugar, no nightshade veggies. And for the seizures I now use cannabis oil. I have had so much success with that. You can get it in either CBD oil form or a tincture from straight cannabis.
I am really happy to talk to you Beth anytime.
I know that our lives do not have to be dis-ease ridden. I am living proof. So please do know there is loads of options. Let me know how I can help please.
in peace and gratitude, ariel
Thanks for reading and sending lots of love and hugs! I too had my chronic illness when I was young and I know how hard it can be not to be able to do ‘normal’ things like go to college or to work. I was able to go to university part-time but was getting depressed because I didn’t want to make plans for the future when I didn’t know what I’d be able to do. My therapist at the time was the first one who introduced me to this concept (though I’m not sure I realized it at first). I kept asking her if I should cancel or adjust my plans for the future – my plans to travel the world or work a full time job. She asked me if I knew for sure how I would be feeling in 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years. When I told her I didn’t know for sure, she then told me that there was no point in changing any plans when I didn’t know how i would be feeling. I think this part of the session took less than 5 minutes, but it really changed my life!
Thank you. I so hope we get to chat more.
What type of Kinesiology did you have done, Ariel? My Balance Scientist in Neuro-otolgy suggested “Classical Kinesiology” to me for chronic Vestibular Migraine, since no medication has worked for me and Vestibular Rehab exercises made me much worse. And what did types of treatment did your practitioner recommend? Was it nutrition, lifestyle, supplements, or other things? I hope you don’t mind me asking. I’m not sure what to expect. I’m so glad you are feeling much better.
Thanks a lot Ariel, that’s great. I too believe that balancing the body , its systems and brain etc. can be achieved through nutrition, natural supplements etc. If I could rebalance things, I think I would have less symtpoms and be able to finally attempt Vestibular rehab physio without it making me feel even worse. I find medications generally intolerbale and toxic or unhelpful. I already cut out sugar and wheat a long time go. I do meditate (although it’s difficult when I feel really poorly, and I am in pain, so I find it hard to tap into myself, hence probably needing the help of a Practitioner) I also read up on biochemistry etc. to see what mechanisms might be at play at a deeper level than “symptoms”. But it takes time for experimentation to work and I can never quite tell if I’m just jeapordising anything that might help due to other factors I haven’t addressed (inflammatory responses etc.} Kudos to you for taking charge of your own helth and recovery. I hope to do the same if I can get a helping hand knowing what my body needs. You are very kind to offer your help and wisdom. For the moment, I’m waiting on referrals for allergy testing. Hopefully that will give me a good starting place.
oh my how I relate to this thankyou so much . I was diagnosed in my 50’s but suspect I had been suffering for a lot longer. remaining positive, meditation and my amazing family have got me through , now embarking on volunteer work with Demantia has been my new goal , I love it my mantra is going with the flow.
we all need to feel useful and sharing is a wonderful gift, my CFS has enabled me to spread the word, educate people on an invisible illness that I really wouldnt wish on anyone. . x x
I had many health challenges, no chances, still I am alive and total healthy…. What helps at best was always that I though I get it healed… And that I set a time when it is done. And with the help of God everything is possible. When we believe that we can heal our disease, everything is possible. I don’t believe that not any diseases can’t be cured!!! If you believe that your disease might it be it terminal cancer can’t be cured (even my body was entire paralyzed,… ) you will be right, too !!! That is your choice, …we can cure everything with the help of God. And your Godless time will be your problem! Without God everything is B.S.