Nobody wants to have a chronic long-term illness. Unfortunately, most of us will have two or more of these conditions during our lives. The goal of self-management is to help people with chronic conditions explore healthy ways to live with challenging physical or mental conditions. This may seem like a strange statement. How can you have an illness and live a healthy life?
To answer this, we must look at what happens with most chronic health problems. It is true that these illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, depression, liver disease, bipolar disorder, emphysema, and other breathing issues, can cause fatigue. They can also result in decreased physical strength and endurance. In addition, chronic long-term illnesses may cause emotional distress, such as frustration, anger, anxiety, or a sense of helplessness.
So how can you be healthy when these things may be happening to you? A healthy way to live with a chronic illness is to seek soundness of body and mind and work to overcome the physical and emotional issues that illness causes. The challenge is to learn how to function at your best regardless of the difficulties that life presents. The goal is to achieve the things you want to do and to get pleasure from life.
What is Self-Management?
Self-management is the use of skills to manage the work of living with your chronic illness, continuing your daily activities, and dealing with emotions brought about by the illness.
Both at home and in the business world, managers are in charge. They do not do everything themselves; they work with others, including consultants, to get the job done. Managers are responsible for making decisions and ensuring that their decisions are carried out.
As a manager of your illness, your job is much the same. You gather information and hire consultants consisting of your physician and other health professionals. Once they have given you their best advice, it is up to you to follow through. All chronic illnesses need day-to-day management.
The keys to success in any undertaking are: 1) define the problem, 2) decide what you want to do 3) decide how you are going to do it, and 4) learn a set of skills and practicing them until you master them.
What are Self-Management Skills?
Some essential self-management skills include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Problem solving and action planning to make positive changes in your life.
- Making active and informed decisions about your health, such as when to seek medical help and what treatments you should consider.
- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle consisting of regular exercise, healthy eating, good sleep habits, and active stress management.
- Finding and using public health resources that are available in your area.
- Understanding and managing your condition.
- Understanding and managing your symptoms.
- Working effectively with your health care team.
- Using medications and assistive devices for your condition(s) safely and effectively.
- Talking about your illness with family and friends.
- Adapting social activities.
- Managing your work life.
You do not have to learn and use all these self-management skills. You can just learn and practice the ones that are most-useful to you. Also, you do not have to learn all these skills at once. Slow and steady wins the race.
What Makes a good Self Manager?
Good self managers are people who have learned three types of skills:
- Dealing with illness.
Any illness requires that you do new things. It means more-frequent interactions with your doctor and health care system. Sometimes you need to adopt new exercises or a new diet. Even diseases, such as cancer, require self-management. Chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery can all be made easier through good day-to-day self-management. - Continuing your normal life.
Just because you have a chronic illness does not mean that life does not go on. There are still chores to do, friendships to maintain, jobs to perform, and relationships to continue. In the face of illness, things you once took for granted can become much more complicated. You may need to learn new skills or adapt the way you do things to keep doing the things you still want to do. - Dealing with emotions.
When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, your future changes, and with this comes changes in plans and changes in emotions. Many of the new emotions are negative. They may include anger (“Why me? It’s not fair”), fear (“I am afraid of becoming dependent on others”), depression (“I can’t do anything anymore, so what’s the use?”), frustration (“No matter what I do, it doesn’t make any difference”), isolation (“No one understands, no one wants to be around someone who is sick”) or thinking the worst (“I have cancer and I am going to die”).
Navigating the path of chronic illness means learning skills to work with these negative emotions.
Reference
- Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions, 5th Edition, Bull Publishing Company.
