43 Bad Habits of Chronic Illness Fighters

Do you ever talk to yourself? I know I do. I talk to myself all the time, and most of the time I am beating myself  up. One of the biggest issues that we face with chronic illness is letting ourselves fall into a cycle of self doubt. We begin to form a wide variety of bad habits that cause us to lose hope, and hope is the only cure to our chronic illness.

In the past week I have been polling chronic illness fighters to understand what habits they have that need to change. I believe that the first step in self improvement is a realization that there are some habits that just need to go away. I will be the first to admit, I was overwhelmed with the feedback that I received. Hundreds of people responded with their top bad habits.

My hope is that you will take this list, and start to reflect on your own bad habits. I tried to summarize the feedback I received into a total of 43 tips you will find below. What habits do you need to change?

1. Believing your thoughts are the truth.
2. Feeling guilt and anxiety.
3. Spending all of your time searching the internet about your illness.
4. Blaming yourself for your illness.
5. Worrying about what other people think.
6. Explaining yourself to others.
7. Making excuses.
8. Staying in a non supportive relationship.
9. Not laughing for fear that people may mistake your smile for feeling healthy.
10. Eating unhealthy
11. Letting your pain stop you from being mobile.
12. Watching too much television.
13. Worrying about tomorrow.
14. Focusing on what you can’t do, concentrate on HOW you can do it!
15. Comparing yourself to others with chronic illness.
16. Not taking accountability for the things that you can change to improve your life.
17. Selling your capabilities short due to fear.
18. Not letting yourself love, live, and be happy despite the disease,
19. Not living your life when it’s the only one we get.Top of Form
20. Stressing out about limits.
21. Pushing past your limits just because other people say you can’t.
22. Calling yourself negative names when frustrated.
23. Listening to other people that have NEVER been where you are.
24. Using chronic illness as an excuse to stay disconnected from doing things you would like to do.
25. Thinking that everything you feel is caused by your chronic illness.
26. Hanging around negative and toxic people.
27. Letting your illness define who you are. Only you can define yourself.
28. Spending to much time on social media.
29. Over thinking the “what if’s” in life. Chronic Illness affects each of us differently.
30. Comparing yourself to your former self.
31. Over doing it when you feel good.
32. Saying sorry for every little thing you can not control.
33. Letting people think you are disabled when you are a normal person.
34. Having self doubts.
35. Expecting your family and friends to understand what you’re feeling.
36. Trying to accommodate other people’s needs.
37. Denying or hiding your limitations.
38. Thinking your disease is a weakness of character, you’re not lazy, you have a chronic illness.
39. Staying up late at night. You have get regular sleep and enough of it.
40. The all or nothing mentality, think PROGRESS.
41. Asking “am I doing everything I can to help myself?” No one can do everything.
42. Being a perfectionist and feeling like if you didn’t get something done you failed.
43. Worrying about the future. Our thoughts can bring so much fear. Focus on Now.

Did I miss any habits that I should have included?? Lets build this list together. Comment below.

Let’s start to build a better life together,

Dave