Our minds keep us moving, in one direction or the other. We can use our CYCOLOGY to move in a good direction. What we think matters, it creates our beliefs and actions. Take the twists and turns of psychology, look at basic human nature, and see what we get. By keeping it simple, we can use CYCOLOGY to help us keep moving through chronic illness.
What We Think Helps To Determine Our Health
That simple = what runs through our minds affects the health of our bodies. Our thoughts can calm us or stress us.
Psychological disorders can be the cause or the result of chronic illness. Meaning, it can be the psychology that causes the chronic illness or the chronic illness can be cause of psychological disorders.
Science of psychology on health…
- Health Psychology: Where Are We And Where Do We Go From Here? ~ NCBI
- Emotional dimensions of chronic disease ~ NCBI
- Psychological effects of illness in adolescence. I. Anxiety, self-esteem, and perception of control ~ NCBI
Living a healthy life means making lifestyle choices that support your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being. Managing your health can be challenging at times; while one facet of your wellness demands more attention than others, you may end up struggling to maintain a good balance in other areas. To be of sound body, mind, and spirit, it’s important to pay attention to all aspects of health—your mental, emotional, and spiritual sides all play a role in your physical welfare, and vice versa. A state of optimal well-being means more than just the absence of disease or disorder; it also means having the resources to cope with problems and circumstances beyond your control and recover from difficult or troubling situations. This intersection between health and behavior can help you prevent or at least delay chronic illness, and steer you to make better decisions about your well-being.
~ Psychology Today
Psychology
- is the scientific study of the mind and behavior
- includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, as well as feeling and thought
- is the study of the mind, how it works, and how it might affect behavior
Many who are chronically ill need the added benefit of a trained and experienced licensed psychologist. During chronic illness, the struggles are immense and our minds are challenged beyond limits we ever imagined. Having counseling for this struggle is normal and can be of great value to your physical health.
When looking for a trained psychologist, it is very important that part of their qualifications are that they have been chronically ill before. No human can understand unless they have been there, done that!! No amount of books or classrooms can teach the experience of chronic illness.
Ideas have more power on genes at some level and they (ideas) are infectious. We need to start exerting an immunity to false and dangerous information.
~ Sayer Ji (minute 33:30)
Psychological science can make important contributions to treatment of chronic illness.
CYCOLOGY = Psychology on Wheels
In an attempt to keep laughing at (and with) myself, CYCOLOGY is simply a play on words. Cycle, bicycle, movement. Psychology on wheels, traveling encyclopedia salesman. There is some humor in CYCOLOGY along with truth and seriousness.
Here, on this blog, my contribution is dealing with CYCOLOGY. Although I am not a trained psychologist, I do have education through numourous college psychology classes and the training and certification in the psychology of eating which has opened up a whole new world of CYCOLOGY.
To move forward, we have to be able to accept ourselves, right where we are. During chronic illness, pretty much all we want is to get to a different place. We become engaged in a war with our bodies, with food, with the medical system, with others. That conflict can keep us very ill.
I have lived the intense suffering through decades of chronic illness; the physical pain, the emotional stress
That experience has given me (and you) the badge of courage and bravery. The courage to speak up in the midst of adversity. The bravery to face chronic illness head on no matter how afraid we may be.
I now wear my badge with great honor. I am through the worse of it, like many others have done. Without using CYCOLOGY I would not have made it through. My body would not have been able to heal without a safe calm and “I can do this” mindset.
CYCOLOGY Wheels
Movement is easily understood in a wheel. There are all kinds of wheels. Baby strollers, tricycles, bikes, motorcycles, four-wheelers, off-road, and semi-trucks. We go through different stages of CYCOLOGY wheels and we need different types of wheels at different times.
We would not give a baby a motorcycle, they need the wheels of a stroller.
We would not give a middle-schooler a semi-truck.
We need what we need, when we need it.
That is the challenge of chronic illness — figuring out what we need when we need it.
It takes a thinking mind to think that out.
During illness the mind not only is hampered by physical illness, but it is also altered by our whole worlds getting turned upside-down. Illness puts us in a position of having to re-think a lot of our beliefs.
One of the biggest beliefs that I struggled with was resting, giving myself permission to completely rest. It took total concentration to get the rest
Hope is usually the biggest psychological dilemma that people face during chronic illness. Being deathly ill for a very long time does not produce hope. We have to find hope inside of ourselves. That is incredibly hard to do in the state of illness. Yet, our minds can get there when we allow for it.
Chronic illness comes with many opportunities. Learning CYCOLOGY is just one of the treats. As we no longer have a the-sky-is-falling mentality, we open up our minds for unusual successes we can have from the chronic illness experience.
Keep moving!!! Stagnation is the habitat of disease. Let your mind explore the possibilities.
Mental Illness
Hummm, so controversial. Let’s apply CYCOLOGY to mental illness — simply keeping it simple!!
Just maybe we would not have as much mental illness if we were healthier in our body and mind. The better we take care of ourselves, the more we heal in body and mind.
Dig Deeper, Learn More
Two of my favorite people;
Sayer Ji is a thought leader!! He is the founder of Greenmedinfo.com. It is the world’s most widely referenced, evidence-based natural medical resource. Greenmedinfo deeply believes that education equals empowerment and, that with education, people have the power to change their lives and lives of others.
Marc David is the founder of Institute of the Psychology of Eating – (where I obtained one of my certifications)
Half way through, they transition from the mindset of immunity through vaccinations to immunity of mind-body mindset…
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