Emotional Autoimmunity: Dealing with the emotional issues of chronic illness

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Irrational thoughts, otherwise known in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy circles as Cognitive Distortions are something that everyone experiences.  The problem with these irrational thoughts is that they can and do influence our behaviour, emotions, beliefs and relationships and they are key contributors to high levels of stress.  They are also the biggest driv...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text When you live with chronic illness, chances are high that you have experienced many moments of fear, overwhelm and grief and for so many of us in the chronic illness community, it can lead to such despair that you give up all hope.  Hope of ever feeling better, hope of ever finding someone to help you, hope of being believed and hope of ever creating a bette...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text One of the biggest issues of living with chronic illness is that people don't "get it". They don't understand what it is, how much it impacts every part of your daily life and the complex emotions that go along with it. And because people don't get it and there's so much lack of knowledge and acceptance, you can be left feeling...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text October 8th was my 9th anniversary of the Hashimoto's diagnosis that left me sitting in the ruin of my life, cognitively and physically disabled with no idea if I was going to survive or ever have a chance of recovery. Because my descent into chronic illness was a year long, worsening process of what I thought at the time was terrible perimenopause symp...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text We all know that one of the biggest frustrations about living with chronic illness is the unsolicited ‘have you tried….?’ suggestions.  Especially when it’s being given by someone who has no experience or knowledge about what living in your body with your illness is actually like.  Even worse when it's being given by another person with chronic illness...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text When you live with chronic illness, one of the things you may hear quite often is a version of "not letting the illness define you" either as a caution or warning from other people or as a fear that you hold yourself as you struggle to hang on to your former life, abilities and identity. Where does this thing about "not letting the illness def...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Changing how you eat to manage chronic illness can be a very triggering and divisive topic for so many in our chronic illness community because how and what we eat is about so much more than simply satisfying hunger.  Food is family, community, culture,  comfort, tradition, belonging and in many cases, the only sanctioned way to 'treat' or "in...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text How do you know if you are a people pleaser? If you say yes to 3 or more of these statements, you definitely have some people pleasing characteristics which could be making your chronic illness symptoms worse. You find it really hard to say no to requests You often find yourself overcommitting to plans, events or responsibilities You rarely ever disagree wit...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text One of the biggest emotional issues that the people around us can't seem to understand is how becoming chronically ill feels like losing your old life and your old self.  It's one of those big, intensely personal catastrophic events where you can clearly see and describe how you used to be and how you are now, the before and the after when everythi...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Way back in 2017 when I was still in the midst of adapting to life with chronic illness, I was searching for some sort of psychological grief model to help me make sense of everything I was going through.  There was nothing out there that I could find that was helpful as most of them were trying to adapt the model that Dr Elizabeth Kübler-Ross created for pa...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text When you become chronically ill, along with all the disbelief, medical gaslighting and accusations of "it's all in your head", you can also meet a lot of armchair psychologists. And they just love to tell you all about the deep seated issues, long hidden trauma and other weird and wonderful subconscious things that not only created your chroni...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text If you have ever experienced body hypervigilance before, then you will know how debilitating it can be. Hypervigilance is a symptom of trauma and PTSD where you are left scanning your environment constantly for any potential external threat.  When you have body hypervigilance, the threat is internal and it can feel like your constant awareness and vigilance...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Dating no matter what your age or situation is absolutely guaranteed to bring out all of your insecurities and living with chronic illness adds a whole new level of difficulties.  How do you deal with feeling "less than" you were before? How much do you share about your illness? How do you work around dietary issues? How and when do you disclose yo...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text If you live with chronic illness, then you have probably experienced some form of Medical Gaslighting.   In fact, having an experience of Medical Gaslighting seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Gaslighting in any setting is a form of emotional abuse, however Medical Gaslighting is not only emotionally damaging, it can result in disability, unnece...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text So there I was, home from my second hospitalisation with Diabetic Ketoacidosis, physically frail, very underweight and emotionally traumatised. I had my diagnosis of LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults) and was left to sort out my new life as an insulin dependant person.  Chronic illness isn't just the physical issues though. The emotional issues...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text After several months of worsening health, extreme weight loss and becoming physically unable to care for myself, I was admitted to hospital and spent 5 days in intensive care where I came close to dying. I emerged a week later with a new diagnosis of type 1.5 LADA (Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults) that I had difficulty accepting, feeling traumatised by...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text We all know that acceptance is key to living your best life with chronic illness. But how can you accept something that has so dramatically changed your life and taken so much from you? In this episode, I share with you a very special mind shift technique that I normally only share with my clients and take you through a visualisation exercise so that you can...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text On one level, we know that chronic illness is life changing and that it has a huge impact on us physically, emotionally and mentally.  But when it comes down to actually acknowledging that fact in the choices we make or don't make, we can so often expect ourselves to go on exactly as we did before.  Recently I have experienced a severe Celiac flare that...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text There is a lot of research including the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) studies, that show a strong correlation between experiencing trauma in childhood and going on to develop chronic autoimmune disease in later life.  But what other types of research is there between trauma and chronic illness and what impact does having unresolved trauma have on your...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Avoiding the news and fear of the Corona Virus at the moment is pretty much impossible as the whole world goes into lockdown, panic buying is everywhere and there is so much uncertainty and speculation.  But there are opportunities here for those of us with chronic illness to help our friends and family who are getting just a small taste of what we have been...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text When you become chronically ill, your first instinct is to fight for your life against this disease that feels like it has taken so much from you. The illness becomes the enemy, something that you need to battle against and beat. But when you have chronic illness, is this actually the best thing you can do for your health and happiness?  And if fighting does...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text When you become chronically ill, you really want those closest to you to understand what you have lost, why the illness feels so devastating and  how you feel about what chronic illness has done to your life.  But needing people to understand how you feel can be a big emotional hook that you can get stuck on. When the people around you don't understand...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Of all the emotional issues that come with chronic illness, guilt is the most damaging and the most common. In this episode Kerry breaks down the most common reasons that people with chronic illness feel guilt and why it is so damaging to you and the people you love.  Stuck in toxic guilt? Then you need to  listen to this episode! Kerry Jeffery is an award w...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Lisa Douthit developed her first cancer at age 25, having had no prior health issues before. She noticed that she was having trouble breathing when exercising and a few other worrying symptoms. A chest x-ray showed a baseball sized tumour on her heart that required open heart surgery to remove. All in all, Lisa has experienced four different cancers and has...

Enjoyed this episode? Send Kerry a text Four years ago, Jessa Lewis was pregnant with her daughter when she received a diagnosis of Hashimoto's Autoimmune Hypothyroidism Disorder. Her body was attacking her thyroid and threatening the pregnancy, as it likely had with two prior miscarriages. Hashimoto's Autoimmune has 400+ potential symptoms with some of the most common being fatigue, sen...