Accept Where You Are in Your Psoriatic Arthritis Journey

I’ve never been a person that knows how to be content. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been this way. Like many young teens, I wanted to be older, then once I got older, I just wanted to be young again.

I’ve always just found it so difficult to just accept where I am, whether that is in life, or in my mental health.

Accept where you are

Through my years with PsA, I’ve learned to push down so much of the reality of life with psoriatic arthritis. I would continue to plow through my daily roles and responsibilities so I could painfully collapse into bed every night.

Like everyone else with PsA, I’m usually in pain or drowning in fatigue. And each day, I find myself fighting to push aside my growing anxiety and the stress and depression that comes with it. The worse it gets, the harder down I shove it into the dark abyss.

How to find acceptance

Over time, attempting to manage daily life in light of these challenges becomes very overwhelming and slowly chips away at my mental health, one bad day at a time. Each morning I get up and do my best to shove down as much stiffness and pain as possible.

You know what I’m talking about, that other 50-60% of the pain and stiffness that my biologic still leaves behind after it's done its thing. After all, life goes on, whether we have pain and fatigue or not. We all have people in our lives who rely on us- work commitments and family obligations.

Hitting the pause button

Much like a backed-up pipe, the more you shove stuff down, the worse it gets. Until you end up with a failure of epic proportions and you find yourself knee-deep in sh*t.

But sometimes, it is smarter and more effective to hit the pause button. Instead of continuing to shove down all of the pain and anxiety that comes with psoriatic arthritis take some time to just sit with it. Acknowledge the pain. Identify anxiety. Take a few moments and process what you are experiencing instead of shoving it down and pushing it aside for another day.

Psoriatic flares brought on by stress

Sometimes it is worth the bit of extra time and energy to just be where you are for a moment. Don't try to get ahead and land where you think you should be. I continue to struggle with this little aspect of PsA life and then I wonder why I’m laid up for a week or more with a stress-induced flare.

Meditate, draw, journal, turn on your favorite tune and dance it out- anything to just take a few moments and acknowledge where you are. Sometimes it isn’t always where we want to be that matters, it is accepting where we are that can make all the difference.