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Mental Illness and Being in Tune with My Body

Mental illness makes it hard for me to tell what's going on with my body.

I seem to demonstrate a complete inability to conceptualize time, which may be more related to autism than mental illness, which makes recounting my symptoms to a doctor difficult.

I also have trouble recalling feelings, physical or emotional, when I'm not feeling them right that moment. If I don't think to write them down when I experience them, I may not realize later that I have ever experienced them at all.

Additionally, I have trouble grasping what has and has not happened. I may have a splitting headache on Wednesday, but by Friday, I'm second-guessing myself so much, I'm lucky to be sure that I had a head on Wednesday.

I also used to deal with a tendency to find my identity in and obsess on new medical diagnoses, but this is a thought pattern that I am better, although not perfect, at keeping under control now.

As a chronically ill person, it's important for me to be in tune with my body, and as a mentally ill person, I find that very difficult.

The thing that helps me the most with this is writing down symptoms when they happen and tracking their frequency and severity. My support team, including my therapist, also help me sort out what I have and have not experienced and what is and is not real. I walk into the doctor's office with a detailed list reviewed by my therapist for accuracy, and I don't stray much from it.
Still, this method poses problems because it required me to think about my health as I go. This can cause me to obsess on my body and actually make things worse.

In the end, I've got the mind and body that I've got, and I'm going to do the best I can with it. There are things I love about both my mind and my body. I can memorize things easily. I have small hands and thick hair. I am compassionate. I'll work through the problems with the best strategies I can find.

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