I’m lying on my parents couch. The place I retreat to every time my body breaks drown.
Which, over the past half decade, has pretty much averaged out to once every few weeks.
Yeah, not fun.
For the past 7 years, I’ve been struggling with hypothyroidism. A chronic health issue that’s left me feeling cold, exhausted, weak, depressed, and at one point – nearly bedridden for 6 months.
And while I’ve managed to get 90% better over the past few years, that last 10% still kicks my ass from day to day.1
Not only does it leave me feeling like a zombie half the time, too exhausted to function as a human – but in a cruel M. Night Shyamalan twist – it ALSO causes nightly insomnia!
Definitely not fun.
But despite all that, I actually find myself grateful for everything it’s brought into my life. And no, I’m not saying that to force some “silver lining” bullshit.
I actually mean it.
Struggling with chronic health issues has undoubtedly made me a happier, wiser, more empathetic, aware, and connected human being.
It’s not a path I would’ve ever chosen for myself – but like any epic hero’s quest, it’s trials and tribulations have completely shaped me into who I am today.
It’s been my own personal Everest. Or journey into Mordor.
And without further ado, here’s what I’ve brought back from the mountain…
Creativity Within Constraints
Creativity doesn’t just love constraints;
it thrives under them.
– David Burkus
As a creative, the scariest thing to me is a blank canvas.
If someone just told me to “create” without any further instructions…I wouldn’t know what to do. Where to begin.
But as soon as you give me constraints – ”define beauty using only the items in your trash can” – then my creative mind is suddenly off and running!
Life works similarly.
Constraints in life – such as a debilitating illness or health issue – actually open you up to MORE possibilities. Not less.
They force you to explore the path less travelled. To fully dive into experiences you never would’ve chosen for yourself. To find out who you are when pushed outside your neat little box.
Yes, your shitty health issue isn’t allowing you to live like “everyone else”.
But that’s a gift, not a curse.
So treat your life like art (because it is).
Embrace constraint. And let it open you up to a whole new world of possibility.
Suffering is in the Stories
A funny thing happens when you spend day after day feeling like shit (and night after night unable to sleep).
It becomes a master class on suffering.2
You get to spend countless hours in concentrated shittiness. And like anything you spend a lot of time with, you become quite attuned to it. I’ve basically put in my 10,000 hours into getting to know my bodily suffering.
And in that time, I discovered something fascinating: 95% of the suffering existed only in the STORIES I told myself.
Hell begins and ends in the mind. In the stories I’m telling myself about the past (how I’ve been sick for soooo long and how I’ve missed out on soooo many awesome things). Or the thoughts I’m spinning about the future (how I’ll never figure this out and how the rest of my life is gonna suck as a result).
But when I’m able to drop the stories…there’s a profound relief.
This two ton weight of imagined struggle and hopelessness lifts off, and in it’s place is just the simplicity of this moment.
Breathing. Sunlight. The clacking of the keyboard. Feelings of lethargy.
Without the stories, there’s just THIS moment to moment experience – what’s ACTUALLY happening in reality.
Without the stories, there’s no years of struggle or endless FOMO.
Without the stories…there’s no problem.
And I found that this doesn’t just apply when I’m sick. This holds true for ALL of life.
Anytime you’re suffering. Anytime you’re in deep pain. Check yourself and see where you are.
Are you here, in reality? Or are you off in mind stories and thought land?
Learning the distinction between the two – and constantly spending more and more time in the former – has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Helped Me Connect More (and More Deeply)
When I’m feeling like shit and unable to hang out or stay up late dancing, it’s easy to make-up stories about how my health issues are keeping me from connecting with others.
But the truth is, it’s actually helped me connect with MORE people. And more directly and authentically.
First off, the more I’ve opened up about my health issues, the more others have opened up to me about their own. And man, there’s SO many of us out there!
Nearly EVERYONE I know is going through something heavy. But you wouldn’t know because we’re all hiding it. Thinking we’re the only ones struggling.
Nope. Not true. At all.
Secondly, because of the hell I’ve gone through, I can truly empathize when someone tells me about the hell they’re going through.
I don’t just nod my head and feel sorry for them, as I might’ve in the past. Nowadays, I feel deep within me what that actually feels like – because I’ve touched a version of that pain myself.
And that’s allowed me to connect with people in a deeper, more visceral way.
Not connecting through the concepts in my head. Not by thinking about their experience. But by DIRECTLY plugging in and feeling it myself.
Interestingly, the more pain I’ve experienced, the more deeply connected and plugged in I feel to the humanity all around me.3
What a gift.
And finally, being sick forces you to clarify the relationships in your life.
Being sick strips you of your shiny facade. It forces you out of inauthenticity for the sheer fact that you don’t have the energy to put up a front. To try and be anything else.
Here, you find out who can meet you in this space. Who isn’t scared away. Who can truly connect with you – all of you – not just when you’re at your shiny “best”.
You quickly find out which connections feel draining. Which sap you of energy. Make you feel less-than.
And which feel nurturing. Enlivening. Make you feel whole.
When you have such little energy to spare, you’ll have no choice but to cut out the former and gravitate towards the latter.
You’re forced to be intentional about who you spend time with, the same way you become intentional about what you put into your body.
To see the connections in your life as more than just enjoyable or fun. But for what they really are: medicine.
Happiness Isn’t Internal OR External – It’s Physiological.
I spent the first 20 years of my life believing that happiness was external. That it was in getting the girlfriend, the film career, the nomadic lifestyle.
When that failed, I spent the next 5 years thinking happiness was internal. In having the right mindset. Thinking positive thoughts. Having the right belief systems.
While this got me closer, it still didn’t hit the mark.
Then my hypothyroidism got so bad, I was pretty much bedridden for 6 months at my parents house.
During that time, my life was exactly the same from day-to-day. I didn’t hang out with people or leave the house. The variables never changed.
And yet, it blew my mind how vastly my experience of the world would transform, depending on how my body felt that day.
Same environment, same variables, absolutely nothing different – yet one day I’d wake up feeling like the world was full of pain and misery, people who didn’t give a shit, and like everything was conspiring against me.
And the next day, I’d wake up feeling like the world was full of hope and beauty, people who cared, and like everything was conspiring FOR me.
It was a night and day difference.
This blew my mind and put into stark contrast how strongly my physiological state affected my entirely outlook on the world.
(And not just my perceptions of the world…even my personality shifted with my health changes! When I had more or less energy, I’d become more generous or selfish, more loving or judgmental, more easy-going or easily triggered.)
Sure, external and internal factors obviously matter too. But in my experience, MUCH less than we’ve been taught.[/footnote]This experience has really made me wonder how many people’s debilitating life issues are actually due to unrealized health problems. I have a feeling that it’s much more than we think…[/footnote]
On days where my health is doing great, I could get my car towed and not bat an eye. But when my health is compromised, seeing a dirty dish would make me curl up into a ball and want to give up on life.
It doesn’t matter how many thousands of hours I’ve spent meditating. Or how fulfilling my career or social life is. If my health is out of whack, then everything else follows suit.
Ever since then, anytime it feels like the world is caving in on me – instead of looking at external or internal factors, I immediately investigate my physiology.
And that’s usually where the problem is.
Once that gets corrected, it becomes THAT much easier to work on everything else.
Learning to Surrender
Hearing about my struggles with fatigue and sleep, my friend remarked, “Wow, you’re so resilient. How do you fight this every day, for years on end?”
The funny thing is, I’m NOT resilient. Or a fighter.
Trying to “fight” this thing would’ve killed me years ago!
Instead, I’ve learned the wisdom in doing the opposite: learning to surrender. To go with the flow.
Now “going with the flow” has gotten a bad rap in our culture. As if you’re just throwing your hands up and letting the river of life sweep you wherever it wants to go.
But I see it less like floating, and more like skillfully surfing.
You may have lots of ideas about the direction you’re supposed to go in and how fast you want to get there. But what if the waves are going in the opposite direction?
Do you fight with all your might and try to push against it, sticking to your original plan?
Or do you let go? Capitalize on this current moment, ride that wave, and see where it takes you instead?
Being sick, the waves of my life often went in different directions than I’d hoped for.
It’s hard to stick to that workout routine, tackle those creative endeavors, or cultivate a bustling social life when you spend most days struggling to function as a person, much less get out of bed.
The more I fought against that wave and tried to push through no matter what – the more I drowned.
But something amazing happened when I finally learned to surrender.
I finally let go of what I thought SHOULD happen. And began to embrace what WAS happening.
Feeling too low to meet up with friends or tackle that creative project?
No problem. That’s 100% okay.
That old opportunity is gone. No sense in beating myself up over it.
So what new opportunity is now in it’s place?
Is it possible that there might be value in hunkering down, hibernating, and spending time with yourself for once? To stop running from one thing to the next, in an endless effort to distract yourself from feeling empty – and to simply slow down and just BE with what arises?
Turns out there’s a shit ton of opportunity there.
And in surrendering to the opportunities life was bringing me, I’ve come to appreciate my “lows” and my “downtime” in such a beautiful way.
Instead of seeing my “hibernation mode” as lesser way of being, I now see it as completely equal to my “energized/extroverted mode”.
There are so many gifts to be mined there (as you can tell from this blog post). And I would’ve missed them all if I spent my entire time “fighting against” rather than “surrendering to”.
Forces You Off the Beaten Path (and Onto Your Own Path)
I’ve spent most of my life assuming that the most widespread, mainstream ideas were the best ones. From trusting Western medicine for all things health related. Or accepting the Standard American Diet (SAD) as the way to nutrition.
If most people are doing it, then it must be right…right?
But I totally ignored that most people in America aren’t really doing so great. Until I started not doing so great either.
One of the gifts of sickness (and suffering in general) is that it FORCES you to explore off the beaten path.
It forces you to open up your mind. To challenge preconceived notions. To swallow your pride and explore things that, prior, you might’ve seen as weird or fringe.
Like using heat lamps and a grounding device to heal my thyroid. Or drinking mother’s milk from cows to heal my gut. Or realizing that my “super healthy” autoimmune diet and green smoothies were actually killing me.
Any of these ideas, I would’ve scoffed at a year ago.
But the funny thing about being sick is that it forces you to drop the ego.
To throw out everything that you thought you knew. To stop taking what everyone says for granted. And actually find out what works firsthand. By testing things out on yourself. On the laboratory that is your body/mind.
When your life is on the line, you can’t afford to be cute about your ideas.
And all this has taught me something very important: there is no one-size-fits-all approach. What works for someone else won’t always (or often) work for you.
You have to find and develop what works for YOU and you alone.
But carving out your own path is hard. And confusing. There’s no clear trailheads to follow. No one to tell you if you’re going the right way.
It’s no walk in the park.
Which is why most of us don’t do it until we’re absolutely forced to. Forced to challenge our preconceived notions. Forced to open up our minds.
Whether it’s by illness or otherwise, being forced to walk YOUR authentic, unique path is a gift that keeps on giving – long after your health issues have been resolved.
Embrace the Dark Side
I’m convinced that there’s two kinds of people in our culture. And you can tell by your answer to the question, “How are you doing?”
There are those who flinch when you respond, “Not so great.”
And there are those who become empathetic and curious.
Unfortunately, most of us are in the first category. And this is symptomatic of a greater problem in our culture. We’re terrified of darkness. Of anything possibly “uncomfortable” or not “happy happy joy joy” all the time.
This is a huge fucking problem.
Fear of facing the uncomfortable is how you stay stuck in arrested development. In ignorance.
Think: the racist uncle who finds it easier to project his anger onto others rather then facing it head on and discovering that it has nothing to do with “those people”, and everything to do with himself.
Or the corporate suit who’s so scared of his existential dread, he spends every waking minutes of his life (unsuccessfully) scrambling to fill the void with money, mindless consumption, and work, work, work.
You get the picture.
This matters because SHITTY people aren’t actually being shitty on purpose. They just have some growing up to do.
And until then, they’ll continue making life shittier for themselves and everyone else around them.
So developing a capacity to face the uncomfortable is in EVERYONE’S best interest. And is crucial to the process of growth and healing.
You can’t change what you’re not aware of.
When we’re afraid of uncomfortable feelings, we don’t get curious about them. We don’t investigate them. We don’t dive deeper and figure out what’s CAUSING them.
We keep running and projecting and blaming.
We stay stuck.
The way to freedom is to turn around and face what we’re running from. Head on.
We can only heal and integrate what we’re willing to face and embrace. This is true both for ourselves individually, and us as a culture.
But the reason we suck at this so much is because it’s SO much easier to keep running. Projecting. Blaming.
That is, unless you’re forced into a situation you can’t run from.
This is why rock bottom – whether it’s from a breakup, addiction, or health issue – can often lead to the greatest opportunities for self-growth.
These huge lows often serve as a crash course in learning to embrace darkness. Difficulty. Struggle.
At least, I found that to be true with my chronic health issues.
When you spend day after day in the throes of pain, darkness stops scaring you so much.
And when something stops scaring you, you can finally face it. Embrace it. And transform it.
But embracing darkness isn’t just great for causing positive change. It’s also the key to tasting life as RICHLY and DEEPLY as possible!
When you start to see the beauty and the gift in the darkness, that’s the moment you stop running from half of life and start to embrace ALL of life.
The light and the dark. The yin and the yang.
You can’t have one without the other, my friend.
And when you go through life embracing one part but rejecting the other, make no mistake, you’re rejecting LIFE itself.
But paradoxically, when you make more room for the darkness, you also make more room for the light.
A rich life isn’t one that’s only happy and blissed out. It’s one that includes ALL the textures and flavors of life: high, low, and in-between.
Without the bitter, baby, the sweet just ain’t as sweet.
And if we want to grow up, it’s time to stop being afraid of the dark.
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
Most of us go through our lives completely ignoring our body.
We push our body to its limits, without caring what it needs and wants. Treat it like a thankless workhorse, a tool to be used, a means to an end – and not like a precious being that needs to be nurtured and cared for.
If we’re really listening, our bodies are constantly crying out for our attention. Anytime we’re doing something that’s hurting it. Whenever we’re pushing it into unhealthy situations and relationships.
But it’s all too easy for us to look the other way.
That is, until we get sick.
Then the cries get so loud, we can no longer ignore them.
If you view the body as a mere tool, like a computer, then you might be really annoyed. Why isn’t this crap working like it’s supposed to? slaps the monitor C’mon!
But what if you viewed it for the alive, sensitive, perceptive being it is?
Just like a newborn baby, it’s not screaming to be an asshole. To ruin your day. To make your life difficult.
It’s screaming for your attention.
It’s a call for love.
See, this whole being sick thing? It’s really just a massive opportunity for self-love.
Forcing yourself to care for your whole being: mind, body, AND spirit.
Not just one or two of those. Not just what’s easy or when it’s convenient.
Relentless and all-encompassing self-care. This is what real self-love looks like.
Being sick is your body DEMANDING you start taking care of yourself.
To slow down and listen. To explore what’s causing it to suffer. To shift away from toxic habits, patterns, and relationships and towards healthy ones.
It’s a call to start loving yourself like your life depends on it.
Because, guess what? It does.
Your body isn’t punishing you. Your body is crying for you.
And there will be no greater opportunity to learn how to love yourself than when your own life depends on it.4
Photo by Nikko Macaspac.
