Could your expectations be sabotaging your healing?
When we begin the journey to healing multiple sclerosis, we usually believe that we will gradually improve day by day until we’ve arrived, fully recovered. In this month’s series, Eva M Clark explains what the journey is truly like and how our expectations could sabotage our success.
The Journey to Healing Multiple Sclerosis
What We Envision Will Happen
This is what we envision the road to health will be like. But is anything ever like this in reality?
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The Journey to Healing Multiple Sclerosis
The reality though is much more like our adventures in remodeling a kitchen and all its detours and unexpected discoveries. The journey sometimes seems worse than where we were at initially. But that doesn’t mean we are not progressing. Also we need to take into account that using complementary therapies, such as hypnotherapy and diet, do not necessarily have an immediate effect on symptoms. There might be a lag of time until the body begins to respond. Unfortunately, we might call it quits before the therapy has a chance to work.Guidelines for the Road to Healing
Thus, in order to be successful on your journey to health, take into account the following guidelines:
- Track your changes in the long run. What you experience today does not mean you’ll continue to experience it tomorrow. A good resource to track those changes is the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life Questionnaire (MSQOL-54). You can download a copy here: Quality of Life 54.
- Don’t try something once or for a week and then give up on it. Change can take time. Be persistent.
- Be grateful and celebrate each small improvement and manage expectations of what healing should look like.
- Give yourself plenty of time. It always takes longer than we expect.
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