In our last blog post, we discussed the importance of acceptance in living a better life with psoriasis. It helps to replace self consciousness with self-love and lack of self-esteem with confidence.
Acceptance means rational thinking and emotional stability to ensure that psoriasis doesn’t become a monster that hijack the whole purpose of your life.
Acceptance stands for coming to terms with the reality that you are dealing with a chronic skin condition that does not have a cure, but can be treated and managed. Understanding that psoriasis is a non-contagious and non-fatal skin condition with a variety of treatment options available. Hence, there is nothing to hide about or feel ashamed of.
When you understand these facts about psoriasis with a positive attitude, you do not make psoriasis the central point of attention in your life. Rather, you continue to focus on your personal and professional life goals and live a fulfilling life.
You should not confuse acceptance with losing hope or giving up.
Acceptance simply means to embrace the skin you are in and making efforts to improve it further, without letting psoriasis holding you back or dictating your life decisions. Hence, it is not a pessimistic attitude at all.
To sum up, acceptance is all about discovering the sense of self-love and self-worth so that you can get over of the victim mindset and think beyond the skin challenge.
Acceptance in your life implies healing the skin through the mind. It is the best antidote for stress and anxiety and sometimes, you experience tremendous improvement in your psoriasis symptoms when starts practicing acceptance because reduction in stress is directly linked to improvement in the skin health.
Listed below some of the practice exercises and tips that have helped me and many others to nurture acceptance in our lives and regain the confidence and self-love living with psoriasis.
Make friends with the mirror
Whenever there is a psoriasis flare up, my face and scalp would be the most affected body area. I would develop highly visible psoriasis lesions on the forehead, on the nose, between and around the eyebrows, behind and inside the ears, on the area above the upper lip, on the chin and cheeks.
Hence, facing the mirror was always a challenge for me.
I used to hate seeing myself in the mirror.
Avoiding the mirror was an easy way out to forget about psoriasis.
For that, I would maintain short hairs to avoid the need of combing and facing the mirror.
But, the question is- do we look into the mirror only for combing?
Obviously not.
We look in the mirror to feel good about ourself.
Facing the mirror helps to uncover and nurture self-love, self-esteem and the inner strength to face life’s challenges.
When you look yourself in the mirror with a smile on the face, it gives a message to the subconscious mind that you love yourself.
It’s a confidence building exercise that boosts your morale in minutes.
Coming back to my case, when I stopped seeing myself in the mirror for weeks, I started to lose self-confidence and gradually, stopped taking measures to taking good care of myself.
I was losing the connection that my body has with my brain. It became so mechanical. I would not spend time grooming my personality as I was not feeling good about myself.
I was becoming a sort of reserve personality with social withdrawal symptoms. I stopped hanging out with friends; I stopped spending time on my hobbies; I was barely able to perform on the job.
In short, it has a wide range of negative impact on almost aspect of my life.
This cycle of poor body image, avoiding the mirror and psoriasis flare up continued for a couple of months.
Then I decided to change the things for good. I was sick and tired of continuing a meaningless life that completely revolved around psoriasis.
It was the moment when I hit the rock bottom and now, it’s time to bounce back.
So, I did bounce back by facing my fear head on.
The physical aspect of psoriasis was something that happened to me. But, I was 100% responsible for this psychological aspect and it was far more painful that the physical one. It was killing me bit by bit from inside.
I decided to look myself in the mirror; have a enough look at these psoriasis spots and try to find out if these tiny spots were really so powerful to become the sole purpose of my existence.
I realized that I was giving way more attention and importance to these ‘innocent’ spots. I was so wrong in blaming them for everything wrong in my life.
It was such a liberating experience for me. I felt lighter and fresh as if a heavy emotional burden was off my head.
I was delighted with this experience and continued to practice this mirror practice everyday. Gradually, I discovered that I was not focusing on my physical appearance any more. Instead, having an eye to eye contact with my reflection in the mirror, I was connecting with myself at the deepest level to discover the purpose of life.
It became a meditation for me where I would stand in front of the mirror to spend some time exclusively with myself and look deeper in the eyes with a sense of contentment and compassion.
I realized that the psoriasis treatment does not stop me from enjoying the good things in my life or making my future better. The process of improvement in skin condition does not interfere in my life ambitions. It was actually my negative mindset that played spoiler.
So, I started to recollect my life goals and make efforts to chase them. I was regaining happiness, energy and inspiration in my life. I was becoming the ‘real’ me again.
A lot of good things started to happen in my life automatically. After this big push towards emotional healing, I started to learn and explore various ideas for physical healing of my skin and that’s how I started this blog to document my experiences and learnings.
So, I would request everyone of you to set a time everyday when no one is around and you can give undivided attention to heal your emotional wounds. Simply look at your reflection and try to discover the reality that these psoriasis lesions can’t overpower everything good in your life. In the beginning, you may find it difficult to look at the spots without hating them, but things will start improving gradually. Don’t lose heart and keep going. You may practice positive self-talk and affirmations along side for accelerated results.
Sharing your deep rooted emotions with family and friends
Living with psoriasis is frustrating sometimes and you need a support person to express your emotions with. The support person would be the one who doesn’t judge you for psoriasis and loves you unconditionally with or without psoriasis.
Talking about your problems with a loved one that how psoriasis is affecting your life can be a huge stress buster. (1, 2)
This emotional detoxification is far better than the negative coping mechanisms like smoking, drinking and going into self-isolation.
Psoriasis is triggered by bottling up the emotions. You need a channel to release your deep rooted emotions. So, next time you feel vulnerable or emotionally troubled, try opening up with any of your family member or close friend and feel the difference.
Joining a psoriasis support community
If psoriasis don’t run in your family, if none of your immediate family members or close relatives got psoriasis, you may feel lonely at times because they would never be able to relate to some of your feelings as they don’t have the similar experiences.
Here comes the role of a psoriasis support group, a place where you can interact with other people with psoriasis. It can be either a physical setup near your place or a virtual one such as a Facebook group or an online discussion forum.
You make new friends, take inspiration from their life stories and learn from their treatment experiences.
It’s an incredible environment where everyone gets benefitted by exchanging ideas and tips for better psoriasis management.
Be active and think beyond psoriasis
Try to be physically active such as regular exercise, any outdoor sports, gym workout, or yoga and pranayam. It would lift your mood to de-stress. Also, helps to make you more social and develop a positive attitude.
Have you ever noticed a person active in sports would be more confident and mingle with strangers easily?
Spending time on your hobbies is also very beneficial. It makes you happier, relaxed and boost your confidence.
For instance, if you love dancing and join a dance class, you would step out of your comfort zone to meet new people. It would gradually help overcome the negative emotions to build confidence.