Pride… oh how much we all love our pride!
One of the best things you can do for yourself living with chronic illness is learn to not let your pride get in your way of asking help. Most people in our lives, friends, family, neighbors, teachers, peers, coworkers, actually want nothing more but to help us as they see us constantly struggle in life with chronic illness… they often just don’t know how to help!
Setting your pride to the side a bit and reaching out and asking people to help us in our struggles is one of the best things we can do to help our quality of life. Heck, we all know life is hard even without chronic illness, we all need a hand sometimes, those of us with chronic illness just may need a hand a bit more often.
Do not overstep though, do not lean too much on one person for help, and do not ask for too large of tasks. It can be very helpful to write a list of small easy to achieve tasks which you can ask for help with, and then ask the people in your life if they would be able to chose just one task off the list to help you within a given day or week.
For example, you could ask your parents if they would walk your dog for you once a day, could ask your neighbor if they would pick you up an item from the grocery store, ask your partner/spouse, to stop by the pharmacy for your prescription, and ask your friend if she would drive you to your doctor appointment next week.
Keep tasks reasonably short, cater to what you know your friends and family each like to do, or at least don’t mind doing, and don’t ask for more than one favor at a time. Don’t worry, with time, patience, practice, and learning more about those around you, it will get much easier to ask for help when you need it!
Comments