Being ill sucks, but recovery can suck even harder.

When you’re at the worst of whatever you’re suffering from, you likely don’t care about much else. You’re too busy feeling miserable, the discomfort of whatever is ailing you taking up all the space in your mind and body.

Time lasts forever, and is no time at all.

But once you’re out of the worst of it, and you start feeling better, well, then the real work begins. You need to let your body heal and rest.

Yet all you want is for the illness to be over.

You got through it, didn’t you? You overcame the adversity of whatever you had, and now you should be able to get on with your life. Right?

Sadly, it doesn’t work like that.

Rush back? Relapse

If you rush back to ‘normal’ life without making sure you’re fully healed, you are likely to relapse, and it may take you even longer to be 100 percent better.

It’s a bit like antibiotics.

If you don’t finish the antibiotics that your doctor gave you because you decide you now feel okay, the remaining bacteria – which are often more hardy than the rest as they’ve survived so far – can continue to multiply, develop antibiotic resistance, and your original illness could come back.

The Reality of Healing

I had covid recently, which was horrible, but what was a lot worse for me was the post-covid symptoms I developed. A few days after I tested negative, I woke up with some of the worst nausea, dizziness, vertigo, and vision issues I have ever experienced.

I couldn’t move or do anything on my own, and had to lie down in the dark for more than a week. It was bad enough that my partner had to get my mum (which is no easy feat as she lives in another country) to come help look after me so I didn’t have to go to the hospital.

After a couple of weeks I started to feel better.

I was ready for it to be done…

But when I saw the neurologist, he told me it would likely take two months for all the symptoms to be gone.

TWO MONTHS!

I had things to do! Places to go! People to meet! And mostly, work to do, as I had a big backlog that had mounted up while I was sick.

And, so, wincing, I realised that this was yet again another opportunity for me to practise self-care. Here are five of my most useful learnings.

1. Engage with your healthcare

At my worst, there wasn’t much I could to do contribute to my healthcare, except rest and take the pills I was given. My whole being was taken up with processing the unpleasant things happening in my body.

But once I was a bit better, I was able to engage. I read up on my condition, which helped get rid of some of the anxiety around it. Awful though it was, I discovered it was a common after-effect of covid. I also went to a neurologist, to get checked and ensure that I wasn’t missing something.

I was given some balancing exercises I could do to help myself. Being active in your own health changes your experience and can help you progress faster – having a positive effect on body and mind.

Action: Find out about your condition – while the internet can be a helpful source, a medical professional and a diagnosis is likely to give you better, more targeted information. What can you do yourself to help yourself get better?

2. Balance rest and action

Of course, once given the all clear to get up and work, and to do exercises, that then led to me overdoing it almost immediately and being back in bed.

An easy to hear, hard to apply, lesson for me that one.

You’re still going to need rest. Even though you are able to work all day and night, that will have consequences. Much better to work out the balance of activity and rest you need.  

I looked at my diary and made proactive decisions. In the first week, I had to cancel some non-essential activities, like my Thai lesson and some social time. Having had to miss some work, that was the priority, so that went in first. Then, rest blocks. Stopping and resting while I still had some energy turned out to be a lot better for me than burning through my reserves and then crashing.

Action: Look ahead at each day, and plan in blocks of activity. What can you cancel? What is essential? And is it really essential?! Which activities drain you, and which energise you? Make sure you have a balance of these, plus plenty of rest.

3. Listen to your body

That leads to the next tip. The more in touch with your body you are, the more you tune in to its signals and what it’s telling you, the better your planning for that balance of rest and action will be.

I’ll admit, sometimes I didn’t want to listen to my body. It was easier to concentrate on other things, to muffle its voice, and not to hear its discomfort or pleas for rest.

But taking that one single moment regularly to ask myself the question ‘What do I need right now?’, kept me on track. Did I need more painkillers, a sit down, a nap, or even a hug?

Action: Ask yourself regularly – what does my body need right now? Be more responsive than usual. Keep plans flexible where you can, and allow yourself to rest.

4. Let others support you

Being vulnerable is hard. When you’re recuperating from illness, you’re exposed. That perfect front you try and put up to those around you under normal circumstances is destroyed, as you have to cancel plans, let people down, and ask for help for the simplest of things. You have to surrender some control of the situation, and feelings such as shame might surface.

What you might not realise is that research shows people like being asked for help.

They want to make a difference to people’s lives, and have positive feelings when they are able to be kind to others. There may be other reasons they can’t help – time, other commitments, resources – but even if they say no to your request, it’s not a rejection of you.

One of my biggest struggles was asking for help while walking. Dizziness and vertigo mean your balance is off, and even now, several months later, especially when I’m tired, I can stumble or veer off in the wrong direction without meaning to.

Linking arms with someone makes a huge difference, plus there’s the added physical connection of being able to get and give an affectionate squeeze. I just had to get over being embarrassed that I couldn’t do something as simple as walking on my own.

Action: What are you finding hardest during your recovery? What simple thing can you ask someone close to you to help with? Take up any offers of help you have been given.

5. Be kind to yourself

The mental messages we bombard our brain with are perhaps one of the most challenging things we deal with. That constant chatter inside our head sends us unhelpful messages when we’re convalescing: “why aren’t I better yet?” “I’m broken” “I’ll never be the same” “do they think I’m weak?”.

These don’t help us heal.

Self-compassion, and talking to ourselves as if we’re a kind, loving caregiver, has been shown to help us to recover more effectively.

Action: Be aware of the messages you’re sending yourself inside your head. What do they say? Rephrase them as if your best friend was talking to you instead.

It’s a long slow road, but there’s a path

It may take time to recover, but it’s worth putting the effort in, it’s worth taking care of yourself during this vital period so you don’t relapse.

Self-care is best as maintenance, but it can help just as much in our recuperation from illness.

Now, time for me to take my own medicine and have a nap!