NOT so many years ago, I discovered I was ‘at risk’ of one of those degenerative conditions we all dread.
I still remember the news being delivered. Two ‘senior’ family members sat me down, at the kitchen table, to deliver the blow.
I would need to seek medical advice, decide whether I wanted to take the test and, potentially, make plans for my future.
At first, I was in shock. It didn’t sink in properly.
This was one of those terrifying conditions we see depicted in TV dramas, where we watch the characters’ lives — and abilities — tragically slip away from them; either that, or we follow our protagonist as they decide to take the future into their own hands and book a one-way ticket to one of those special Swiss clinics.
It didn’t feel real. This couldn’t be happening. I had a wife, a family, big plans for the future.
It didn’t feel real. This couldn’t be happening. I had a wife, a family, big plans for the future.
Over the coming weeks, I went through the gamut of emotions, fear being right at the forefront. I researched the condition as much as I could, and everything I found brought up nothing but dread and despair.
Grief
I went from shock, to stress to anxiety. So many tears. Depression hit. And guilt. So much guilt for the loved ones who may have to nurse me through the very worst of times, whilst simultaneously trying to manage their own grief.
And what of our financial future? I’d fairly recently leapt from my ‘safe’ corporate career, into the heady world of self-employment. It was early days and my cashflow was a long way from stable. How could my cards be aligning like this?
Stupid. Stupid. STUPID! Why couldn’t I have just managed my emotions and stayed put?
Stupid. Stupid. STUPID! Why couldn’t I have just managed my emotions and stayed put? In that case, my wife would at least have been properly provided for, should the worst happen.
All kinds of thoughts ran through my head — I went to the darkest of places.
I was, quite literally, making myself ill, feeling weaker and struggling to get through each day, purely through the fear of becoming sick and debilitated.
Worst case scenario
I still remember the visit to my GP, and the subsequent meeting with the hospital specialist, as if it was yesterday.
Knuckles white as I gripped my wife’s hand, the specialist drilled the very worst case scenario into me.
There was no room for finding positives, no space for optimism, just a blow-by-blow account of precisely how my mind, and body, would begin to break down, until nothing was left and there was only one way out.
I had, apparently, a 25% chance of developing a condition nobody would wish on their worst enemy, and the medical experts wanted to make absolutely sure I knew what that would entail, in full, glorious technicolour.
With shoulders low and my mood even lower, everything was a blur as I shuffled through those sterile, hospital corridors to the car park.
I had no idea what to do, how to cope.
More fear. More anxiety. More deep, spiralling depression. And that made things worse… depression was one of the early indicators of this condition; maybe I’d been carrying it for years and my declining future health was inevitable.
Psychology /physiology
It’s been said, many times, by people far cleverer than I, that our psychology becomes our physiology. It’s easy to ‘manifest’ illness when we’re in the depths of despair, let alone our propensity to start joining the dots and convincing ourselves we’re on a one-way ticket to the worst possible outcome.
I don’t recall how long I stayed in that space, how many ‘viruses’ I succumbed to, and came through, before I recognised the futility of the mindset I’d adopted.
If I had a 25% chance of developing a degenerative condition, didn’t that mean I also had a 75% chance of being absolutely, perfectly fine?
I’d take those odds!
Why couldn’t people point that out to me at the time? Why did all the emphasis need to be on the potential for illness, and death, instead of the very real possibility for a full, happy, healthy life?
Yes, of course, we need to understand all the facts we’re dealing with, but there ARE two sides to every coin and, in focusing only on the negatives — particularly with those odds — we are dicing with people’s health.
Yes, of course, we need to understand all the facts we’re dealing with, but there ARE two sides to every coin and, in focusing only on the negatives — particularly with those odds — we are dicing with people’s health.
Emotional health and mental health, for sure, and, if we listen to those who tell us elevated levels of stress, anxiety and depression lower immunity, we’re putting people’s physical health at risk too.
Now, nearing a decade from that horrible point in my personal history, I’m pretty sure that 75% rule has played out in my favour. By now, statistically, I’d be showing some pretty obvious signs that the condition had taken hold and, as I’m doing okay, thank you very much, I’m choosing to believe I’m out of the danger zone.
Overcoming
We hear people talking about the power of mind over matter all the time. We hear of people attributing a positive, determined mindset to everything from overcoming cancer to healing after horrific trauma.
Anecdotally, we also hear about people leaving jobs they hate, where they were constantly struggling with colds, fevers, viruses, constant headaches and migraines and generally feeling under par, to ‘miraculously’ moving into fine health when they change their career direction and start working at something they love.
If this article wasn’t long enough already, I could, fairly easily, drop another few chapters in here about studies into the placebo effect, and the power of the body to heal when we believe we’re being given appropriate treatment.
We KNOW how much the power of the mind contributes to overall health.
We KNOW how important it is for us to hold onto hope, to belief, to maintain a place of balance when it comes to facing challenging times.
We KNOW how much the power of the mind contributes to overall health.
We KNOW how important it is for us to hold onto hope, to belief, to maintain a place of balance when it comes to facing challenging times.
Yes, it can be argued that we need to know what we’re dealing with, but we also need to balance that with the potentially positive outcomes, don’t we?
I wonder how different my experience might have been if, at the outset, the medics were putting the emphasis on the 75% potential for wellness, instead of the 25% chance of disastrous, debilitating illness, moving through wheelchairs and feeding tubes before, ultimately, death.
Support
I was lucky to be surrounded by people who were able to help me come to that realisation, to stop searching for symptoms, to stop gripping that hammer and finding/imagining nails in my own body.
I can’t imagine what that scenario might have been like had we been in lockdown. It’s even more unpleasant to imagine that situation had I been locked down, isolated and single, or in a relationship that was less than supportive.
If we agree about the power of the mind when it comes to helping us to keep ourselves happy and healthy, why are we so determined to constantly bombard ourselves with big, scary, negative drama relating to Covid-19?
And so, if we agree about the power of the mind when it comes to helping us to keep ourselves happy and healthy, why are we so determined to constantly bombard ourselves with big, scary, negative drama relating to Covid-19?
Covid journalism
This week, I saw a post from a journalist wanting to hear from people who’d contracted coronavirus and been left with ongoing, severe lung/respiratory issues.
Think about that for a second. Instead of trying to keep the population filled with hope and optimism that we’ll overcome this pandemic, the media are actively conducting searches for stories that will send out more fear and anxiety.
I dared to mention this on my Facebook wall, with my own comment: that I wish we’d ALSO report on people who’d been through covid with relatively mild symptoms, and are now back to health.
I’m absolutely NOT a covid denier. I know it exists. I know it’s dangerous.
I also know the human mind doesn’t generally do well on negative, worst-case outcomes only.
Covid-19 is dramatic enough as it is. We don’t need to dramatise it more.
Surely, we can make clear the very real dangers of this horrendous virus AS WELL AS pointing out that it does not always need to mean a death sentence, or long-term health complications?
Apparently not.
One eminently sensible Facebook pal said my suggestion was tantamount to creating a public information broadcast during the blitz, filming a family in a bombed out house, sitting around a table, saying: “No need to worry — we got bombed and didn’t get killed.”
Cue a string of people firmly driving home the challenges of long covid, people breaking the rules, and how we need to keep telling ‘scarier’ stories to encourage people to comply.
Blame culture
Which brings me to another point… the blame culture that seems to be the norm now when it comes to Covid-19.
So many are venting about covid spread being due to all those people breaking the rules, holding parties and refusing to wear masks.
In fact, according to a recent, fully-referenced report in the British Medical Journal (probably a bit more trustworthy than a tabloid, don’t you think?), we’re at around 90% compliance.
It also talks about the reasons for people breaking self-isolation due to necessity and a lack of support, rather than the much-reported ‘covidiot’ mentality or so-called ‘pandemic fatigue’.
For me, this just goes to show how much we fill in the gaps, create stories and start to believe fiction as fact in situations like this, especially when those stories are reported in the media and perpetuated through social networking.
To quote that BMJ article: “People sitting quietly at home and watching TV does not make a newspaper headline.”
To come back to my sword of Damocles medical threat, and that 25%/75% scenario, remember how much I was spinning myself into fear, making myself ill, finding those similar symptoms and actively searching for evidence that the threatened dis-ease was about to crush the life out of me?
We’re at that time of year where colds, ’flus, ENTs, viral infections and the like are commonplace. How many of those conditions have symptoms the same as, or very similar to, the beginning stages of covid-19?
How many people, already in fear because of all the dramatic headlines, polarisations of views on social media, plus oft confusing, contradictory messages from Government, are going to be making themselves even more ill (emotionally, mentally, physically) from that heady mix of anxiety and, potentially, believing their sore throat will absolutely be covid?
How many people, already in fear because of all the dramatic headlines, polarisations of views on social media, plus oft confusing, contradictory messages from Government, are going to be making themselves even more ill (emotionally, mentally, physically) from that heady mix of anxiety and, potentially, believing their sore throat will absolutely be covid?
Balance
It is ENTIRELY possible for us to keep the important messages front and centre when it comes to staying home, keeping safe, distancing etc, as well as the potential severity of this horrid illness, whilst also reassuring people that not everyone who contracts covid will end up in hospital, on a ventilator or worse.
It is ENTIRELY possible to make sure we’re all aware, and highly vigilant, when it comes to keeping those in vulnerable groups ultra safe.
It is ENTIRELY possible to maintain balance and to keep ourselves positive, and as mentally/emotionally healthy as possible by reporting on the good outcomes as well as the desperately worrying scenarios at the other end of the spectrum.
It is ENTIRELY possible to maintain balance and to keep ourselves positive, and as mentally/emotionally healthy as possible by reporting on the good outcomes as well as the desperately worrying scenarios at the other end of the spectrum.
It is ENTIRELY possible to create clear, impartial, balanced reporting on this.
We don’t need to insult people’s intelligence by buying into the crazy theory that people will only comply if we scare them enough. On the contrary, it’s my belief that if all we do is scare people, we’ll only create more illness, more anxiety, more stress, depression and dis-ease.
Keep it real
So yes, report on the overstretched hospitals, the lack of adequate equipment to deal with the numbers of desperately ill people, and have compassion for those who have lost loved ones through this horrid, unprecedented situation, but let’s ALSO report on those who have come through covid relatively unscathed.
Let people have some perspective!
Perspective doesn’t take away from anything you’ve been through, any losses you’ve experienced, or whatever’s happened to that bloke who shared his terrible struggles in that Facebook group.
Perspective just allows us to get a firmer footing and, perhaps, to replace panic with practicality.
We all need more of that!
Until next time,
#UnleashYourAwesome,
Taz
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Taz Thornton is the author of Awesome Sauce — a free, weekly positive life and business round-up, with good news stories, positivity tips and visibility hacks for your brand. In a few minutes each week, you get a dose of optimism and some awesome advice to get seen and stay happy.
Taz is a best-selling author, inspirational business speaker and multiple TEDx speaker, consultant on confidence, personal brand and visibility, and an award-winning coach (UK’s Best Female Coach 2018 — Best Business Woman Awards, Female Professional Of The Year, Central England, 2020). She is also the creator of the #UnleashYourAwesome and #BrandMastery personal and business development programmes, as well as #UNLEASHED — an affordable confidence, content and cashflow building programme for coaches, healers and therapists, and #LIFEFORCE — an affordable online spiritual empowerment and coaching programme for people wanting to bring more optimism into their lives.
Taz has been featured on BBC, ITV, in HuffPost, Diva, The Daily Mail and countless other newspapers, magazines and podcasts. Taz is also a regular columnist for the America Out Loud talkshow network. In 2019, she was named as one of the most inspirational businesswomen in the UK and, in 2020, she was named as one of the world’s top 50 women in marketing to follow.
Find her on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Insta, Ko-Fi and TazThornton.com.
