Managing A Condition? Help Your Friends & Family Help You

While it’s unfortunate that we cannot decide if or how we might experience a health condition at a certain time in our lives, we can decide to exercise control over one thing that matters, namely, the choice not to go it alone. 

While it’s true that our friends, family and other trusted contacts may not be able to relate perfectly with what you’re going through, they can empathize, and often want to do nothing but help you. Managing a condition and doing so with care requires diligence, attentiveness, and communication.

But it’s easy to make a condition like this so much harder to manage if we close ourselves off and prevent people from providing the help they so desperately want to give. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have your own personal time or time to reflect and recharge alone, but overall, helping people help you is one of the best things you can do for your daily wellbeing.

In this post, then, we’ll discuss how you can achieve this to the point where leaning on those you love feels rational and a positive step forward. With that in mind, let’s consider:

Talk To Them About Your Condition (When You Feel Comfortable)

While certain members of your family may be learning about a given condition for the first time alongside you, they can’t help or feel in the know if you don’t communicate with them. Of course, you’re not obligated to give a minute-by-minute report of everything you’re feeling, nor do you need to express all of your emotions in one conversation.

But when you’re comfortable, it can be thoroughly healthy to talk to them about the new norm you will both be experiencing, including advice from your doctor. If you can do that then you’re much more likely to get the help when you need it. You can also move through the process with support, be that reading hearing aid selection tips together and weighing up your best option, or heading to certain clinics for treatment every week.

While a health condition is a singularly experienced issue, a problem shared is often a problem halved.

Discuss Your Day To Day

When managing a health condition, it’s important to curate your day-to-day lifestyle in a way that grants you further quality of life and the confidence to look to the future with potential.

Discussing your day to day, in this light, can help your friends and family make the allocations that you need. For instance, perhaps having your medication delivered to the door is key, and always ensuring someone is at your home to help accept and sign for it is important. Perhaps you need to avoid certain foods at the strong recommendation of your doctor, and so ensuring that none of those could possibly slip into meals cookies for you (and that you cook), can be very important.

Don’t Be Afraid To Moan

It’s important not to make your family and friends into punching bags, complaining to them all the while, treating them poorly or dismissing them because of your emotions. It’s natural to feel confused and frustrated when managing a new condition, but it’s important to vent that properly.

That said, it’s important that you do vent it. An appropriately timed moan, be that speaking to someone you really trust, writing that down, or infusing that into art can be fantastic. Support groups often exist for this purpose too, as health groups know the benefit of bringing like-minded people together and letting them unload in a judgement-free zone. Your family and friends will no doubt also love to help.

Set Some Worthwhile Goals

It’s always good to set some worthwhile goals for managing and even improving a condition. For instance, it might be that after an accident, you’ve had to use a prosthetic. The new condition could involve being an amputee or experiencing another incredible life change like this.

But even someone with such misfortune can make progress in their goals – attending physiotherapy each weak, learning to walk with a little more confidence, regaining the ‘who’ they were before the difficulty took place. To achieve that, you need to set some goals and consider how long it’d take for you to reach them.

Over time, this can aid you in feeling more empowered and worthwhile. Some people undergoing vast odds give public talks and can inspire millions, for instance. But all of this comes down to speaking with your family and friends and helping them understand and aid you in your goals also, providing that pep in your step you may really need.

With this advice, you’re sure to manage a condition while gratefully and gracefully using your friends and family for help.