Living with Chronic Illness: Learning to Live with Constant Interruptions Through Art Therapy
- Ellen
- Jul 16
- 3 min read
No one really talks about this but...living with a chronic illness means living with interruptions and lots of them.
You know what it's like.
Pain arrives randomly, stealing your focus during a conversation.
A flare-up changes your plans for the entire weekend.
An old ache taps you on the shoulder as if to remind you it still exists. A new mystery symptom sends us sliding down a search spiral when we should be getting to sleep.
We've all been there.
You might've been doing so well for a while.
Then along comes sleeplessness, brain fog and anxiety to interrupt your days and add pressure to your nights. What joy!
In small irritating ways and let's not forget those huge life altering ways, chronic illness could be described as the greatest of all time interrupter.
How We Learn to Adapt to Chronic Illness
Look no one is perfect all the time, but many of us who live with chronic illness become remarkably skilled at adapting to these constant interruptions.
We learn to;
pace ourselves
protect our sleep
watch what we eat
schedule rest
recognise the warning signs
set clear boundaries
Over time, we morph into highly skilled, super flexible experts at picking ourselves up and beginning again.
But becoming resilient doesn't make the interruptions any less frustrating or real.
These interruptions have changed your life.
They deserve to be acknowledged.
That's what you can bring to Art therapy with me.
What Your Art Can Reveal About Your Life
I'm guessing that if we spoke about your life with chronic illness we might notice some patterns emerging.
Perhaps your energy peaks and crashes like waves at certain times of the month or year
Maybe specific people or particular stressors cause spikes in your symptoms.
Perhaps your experience with chronic illness looks like repeating circles, returning again and again to familiar places.
Maybe you notice a tendency to take "two steps forward, one step back".
How would these patterns look if you were to draw them out?
You see, it is kind of amazing but your art can literally illustrate how you speak about or think about life.
& that's not all...
&
show you a way to break free from it.
Using Art Therapy to Respond to Chronic Illness
If you think about it every piece of art is shaped by adjustments, choices and pivots.
A line changes direction.
Paint lands somewhere unexpected.
The colours we imagined don't quite work together.
That's life isn't it! Sometimes the picture diverges from what we had in mind.
Art is a self led way to practice adapting and responding to things not going quite how we imagined.
Because truthfully no one really teaches us how to pivot around the interruptions of a life with chronic illness. We learn that skill with time, trial, error and a lot of creativity.
Letting go of perfect pictures
Your art and let's face it your life, will never be quite as you imagined.
That's not always a bad thing is it?
I find perfect symmetry and photo realism impressive but dull if I'm honest.
I know it is all too tempting to paint a pretty picture of life and skip over the tricky or messy parts. But we both know that there is immense value and beauty in what is real.
That might mean sharing a story of your life that is full of pauses, redirections and interruptions. That is the real story and it deserves to be shared.
Art when you need it most
Next time you find yourself interrupted by pain, a flare up or knocked off your tracks by symptoms allow yourself to create. It doesn't need to be perfect or proper, it it just needs to keep you company when you need it most.
I will leave you with this...
There's a lot we can learn from our art if we just let ourselves make it.
Contact me for a free intro chat and to get started with your own art therapy experience today.
Until we speak,
Stay creative,
Ellen
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