How do we accept a diagnosis? How do we accept a diagnosis, but not to mention an incurable progressive diagnosis? Right off the bat, we feel like we're being, you know, predispose to complete and utter failure. Self-acceptance is hard, and it requires us to really be comfortable with our present situation. And let's face it, there are so many, so many parts about living with multiple sclerosis or, you know, any chronic condition that are not considered comfortable for me. I can almost wrap my head more around someone else inflicting pain or torture, or a difficult situation onto myself, rather than myself being the cause of why I am going through this. We're continually being attacked by our bodies. That's what autoimmune disease is. It's your body, you know, continually attacking itself. So, self-acceptance, when you're dealing with, you know, a disease that is incurable, progressive, and completely unreliable, is a really, really tricky place to navigate around.
I believe that the key to sustainable self-acceptance really relies on our ability to stay present while not setting an unrealistic expectation for ourselves. Staying in the now. I have found to be the most vital and the most valuable tool that I can walk through when dealing with living with an autoimmune, multiple autoimmune diseases I might add. But we can be really, really good at beating ourselves up, can't we? We talk ourselves on a daily basis constantly. The dinner I made was crap. I didn't finish the housework. I couldn't muster up the energy to get to my son's basketball game. I never, you know, called my uncle back. I, I don't know. It's just, it, it's like this constant, I suck. I couldn't do this. You know, I, I forgot to give my dog his Prozac true story, true story. I always forget to give Chico his Prozac.
And now he's like wigging out because mummy's spaced and he's stress nibbling on all of the pillows. It doesn't help that we live in an era where competition is all around us. You know, our, our status in society can easily be determined based on how many likes we get, how many followers we have, what car we drive, what our zip code is, what our job is. You know, it's, it's easy to feel like we're in constant competition with the world. It's 2022 guys, this is not an uncommon thing to feel like you need to keep up with the Joneses. And it, it, it hasn't been a new thing either. So what good is it to be in competition with ourselves? We're already competing with our neighbors and with our coworkers and with our best friends and our families and our cousins and whatever. Why are we in constant competition with ourselves?
We kick ourselves because some days operate a little bit differently. We struggle to keep up with our loved ones. We get, you know, disappointed in ourselves for not being able to do certain things that we used to be able to do pre-diagnosis. We get frustrated. I know I get frustrated that, you know, my shoe collection has primarily turned into a sneaker collection because staying balanced nowadays is like my very own circus act. You know? Um, and it's the, oh, I wish I could wear that, or I wish I could, you know, do that or go there. And this is putting us only in competition with the past version of ourselves pre-diagnosis. So we're constantly looking over our shoulder at what once was, but isn't presently. That's not a good place to be. That is not allowing you to stay in the now that is consistently comparing yourself with an older version of yourself.
Look, I would love to compare myself with the 21 year old version of I was in great shape. I was dancing. I was in New York, performing and auditioning. Um, you know, I, I was built like a brick house and now I'm 34, and I'm like, yeah, things are different. Things are definitely different, but you know what, they're different for the better. I have seen myself be able to grow into a better version of myself. And while I appreciate the 20 year, you know, 21 year old version of Britney, I feel like there was value in, you know, the things that I was doing. It all has added up to who I can, you know, enter into the world now as 34 year old Brittany. So I think a huge key factor in becoming more accepting of yourself self-acceptance is, and you guys have heard me say this, and I'll say it again because I I I, I try to regurgitate the more important things that I really want you guys to like, get ingrained in your, in your skull, that you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
You have to stop the need to feel control, like naturally. We wanna have control over situations. Feeling a sense of control is more comfortable, it's more familiar. You know, it doesn't offer too much. You know, in terms of fear, if we know what to expect, and we've talked about fear, we know that that's stemming from a place of uncertainty, and there is a ton of uncertainty with MS and chronic illness and whatnot. But staying in the now allows us to only look at what is currently in front of us instead of comparing ourselves to an alternative version of someone we once knew. I like to approach my day with metaphorical horse blinders on to only look at what's in front of me. And this is really, really hard. This is really hard if you are somebody that has a lot of empathy and, you know, kind of likes to be analytical and pick things apart, because it's really hard to stay focused on just the now without worrying and without, you know, projecting, well, what about this and what about that?
Now I have to stress out about this. And it's like, I will tell you like, I know my name. It does nothing. And it's really, really an unhealthy position for you to put yourself in. You wind up worrying about things that haven't even happened yet, which is stupid. It's stupid. So how do you navigate around self-acceptance with a incurable, progressive chronic illness? You get really good at chameleon yourself. And I don't know if that's a word, but I just made it one chameleon eyes yourself adapt. You know, the quicker that we learn to go with the flow of what our body decides to do, the easier it really is going to be to accept the changes that we're faced with. If we're, you know, stuck in this box of, no, there can't be any changes, and I have to get, you know, from point A to B smoothly without, you know, steps 1, 2, 3, and four in the middle, you're gonna set yourself up for failure.
Except that there's gonna be other steps in between going from A to B. Now going with the flow, okay? When you say go with the flow and, you know, self-acceptance, we, we have this like preconceived notion that you have to maintain this optimistic and overly positive attitude all the time, which is garbage. While I believe, and you guys know that I like to approach everything very optimistically and positively, and I laugh things off a lot. gets real, and gets real often, and that's okay. It's unrealistic to, you know, set yourself up for this. Well, I have to stay positive and I have to stay happy. You're gonna fail. So you have to allow yourself to feel, and allowing yourself to feel is so frowned upon. Um, I think that we set really, really high expectations to, you know, maintain this, like, put together, blah, blah, blah.
Life is perfect. It's all crap, guys. It's, it's so stupid. So we've been told, and we've been taught that if we fall apart, we're weak, right? If things get messy, eh, we're a disaster. But giving ourselves permission to experience those emotions we need to experience in the first place, it's vital to staying present. You cannot stay authentically present with what you're going through if you're not allowing yourself the space to feel the emotions that you need to go through in order to navigate around what you're going through. I hope that made sense. It made sense in my head. Hopefully it made sense verbally. Um, you know, again, fear is inevitable, but our reaction to it is a decision. And here I am again, regurgitating things that I want you to ingrain in your beautiful brains. Fear is inevitable, but our reaction to it is a decision.
I truly believe that there is value in perspective to be able to oversee a not so comfortable situation and find an alternative way of observing it that allows sustainability. That's what this is about. You can maintain the positive outlook and the cheerful, you know, life is good and life is perfect, and I'm not worried about anything. But is that really sustainable? It's not you're gonna burn out or you're gonna be like me, you know, a few years ago where it's positive, positive, positive, and then all of a sudden you absolutely snap. So it's not sustainable. Fear, worry and self comparison are also not sustainable. Every single person, you know, living with multiple sclerosis or a chronic progressive disability, you know, experiences something different. We know this, that not two people have the exact same molecular makeup in terms of symptoms, mobility, cognition, whatever have you.
Yet every one of us knows that our reality is different. It might be different, you know, than it was 10 years ago, or it might be different than it was even 10 minutes ago. Either way, changes are happening. So give yourself grace for the love of God, please give yourself some grace, you're going through some pretty profound, heavy stuff, and that is something worthy of praising yourself for. But this constant, you know, narrative of, oh, I can't do this, and oh, I suck, and oh, I'm sorry, the apologies, man. I cannot tell you how many times I used to apologize. I used to apologize like a broken record constantly. And my husband, you know, he, he's kind of given me his, his take on that over the years. You know, when we first met, you know, I had, you know, um, broken from a really, really abusive, both physically, emotionally, mentally, uh, marriage to somebody that I thought was one person, and turns out he was a completely, completely different human being.
Um, but that's a different topic that one day I will dive into and, and fill you guys in on. But when I came out of that, that marriage, and I, you know, escaped from that space of, um, trauma, you know, it took, it took a few years for me to put my pieces back together, but I was still in this like, incessant stage of, I'm sorry, and apologizing and apologizing for everything. And, um, you know, my husband now, when we, when we dated and we first started getting together and, and, um, you know, dating and whatnot, he would say, gosh, Britt, you apologize a lot. Like you don't need to apologize all the time. And I had just been so programmed to, you know, feeling badly for the things that I was doing that weren't even bad things. I was just at the time I was married to, you know, a, a textbook narcissist.
Um, and if you know anything about, you know, narcissistic personalities, then you know that if you are partnered with one and you happen to be an empathic person yourself, this is just a recipe for absolute garbage and disaster. But anyways, I was, you know, vomiting, I'm sorrys all over the place and I'm sharing this now in relation to feeling that that need to, you know, constantly apologize with a chronic illness because again, we're comparing ourselves to the older version of ourselves that we, you know, once we're able to do X, y, and Z, we still may be able to do X, Y, and Z now, but we're certainly making adjustments and our X, Y, and Z now doesn't look the same as what it did, you know, pre-diagnosis or pre to the point where, you know, we didn't know what was going on with our bodies.
So tying the overly apologetic aspect, and with chronic illness, I think the two go hand in hand. We wanna feel that we can keep up. We want to feel like the older version of ourselves because we were used to the older version of ourselves. It's familiar, it's comfortable. So now we're, you know, entering into this place where our body is doing things that we don't understand and, you know, the doctor's appointments and the blood labs and the checkups and the MRIs and the imaging, and it's just like, it's just inundated with maintenance. You know what I mean? It's like we were driving a Toyota years ago that didn't need a whole lot other than, you know, just like annual oil checks or, you know, oil checks whenever you needed them and tire rotations. And now we've got, you know, this piece of Chevy that's s leaking oil.
And we are trying to, you know, complete diagnostic review to find out how much this crap is gonna cost us. So I really think that the apologies are coming from a place of not accepting yourself. If you're accepting your reality and you're accepting, you know, all of the, the good parts and all of the difficult parts and the challenging parts of yourself, you're not gonna feel like you need to apologize. You, you're, you're set. You are secure. And I think the most valuable thing that we can take away from living with a chronic illness is embracing the change and trying to find the good in the suck. And that's really, really, I think, a difficult thing that a lot of us, you know, struggle with. And I know that I struggle with, you know, people, people will, you know, send me dms or, or messages or email me saying, oh, you have it so put together.
And I'm like, I don't know what you're listening to. I'm just brave enough to put my out there. You know what I mean? Um, I like the fact that I am a disaster a lot of the time. I, I have said it and I'll say it again. You know, I think there is value in that, um, you know, being transparent. And because I am able to be transparent, it's allowing the people around me that, you know, are in my family and in my support system to, to really understand what I'm going through. There's no like hidden, eh, I can't share that. I can't talk about that because then it's like, well, then they're not gonna understand. People in our support system and in our circle aren't gonna get it. And I know that's what we want. We want people to get it, and we want people to accept our new reality, but how can we expect other people to accept our new reality if we're not accepting it ourselves?
So please stop the hate talk on yourself. Stop the trash talk. Stop the self comparison. Hey, I can sit here and compare myself to, you know, the six month version of myself where I was, you know, pooping in my diapers and eating materials. Um, you know what I mean? I we're, we're past that. We've grown, we've evolved, we've changed, you know, so stop the self-hate, stop the self trash talking and the comparison of what you can't do and focus on what you can do. Me, myself, I love to go fishing. Um, I grew up fishing, you know, uh, freshwater lakes in Maine and New Hampshire, uh, you know, back on the East coast. And, uh, recently when I, when I met my husband six years ago, I, you know, got into saltwater fishing and I had never really been saltwater fishing before. And we would go off, you know, on on half, half packs of, you know, 50 plus grown men to Catalina Island out here in California, and it was aggressive and it was fast.
And, you know, there's, there's fishing lines all over the place, and you've gotta shove your hand into the bait barrel and, and get your, you know, your little dino. And, um, you know, it, it was aggressive. And it's like, can I do that now? Probably not in my best interest considering my balance is absolute garbage and my legs just like can't withstand the balance needed for, you know, a boat like that. Um, but am I still gonna do it? Hell yeah, I'm still gonna do it. I'm probably just gonna do it where there's maybe 10 people on the boat and not 50, because I don't wanna get hurt and see if there's, you know, a, a chair or like a deck chair available. Um, you know, that I can strap myself to if in case my legs to start to give out. But I'm not gonna say, oh, I can't go fishing anymore.
We have to get creative. We have to, you know, think outside the box and get scrappy. And I think when we allow ourselves the creativity and the, you know, ability to be resourceful in finding alternative ways of doing things for ourselves, we're gonna stop the self comparison. There's not, there's not gonna be anything to look behind us and say, oh, I used to be able to do that, because you're still doing it. You're doing it a different way, but you're still doing it. So get creative, get scrappy, and stop the self-hate talk. Stop trash talking yourself. Um, I would love to connect with you guys. You know more about this topic. Um, I, I always say, please reach out. I'm not, you know, one of those people that like, don't check their messages and, and check their emails, um, that this is why I do what I do, is to connect with people that, you know, are in need of direction, um, or just wanna connect or just wanna, you know, about the, the crap that that comes along with living with MS or a, you know, a chronic illness or disability.
Um, so please, please, um, I always respond, I'll probably respond with a video response because that's how I roll. I like to keep it as, you know, authentic and, and, um, you know, genuine as possible with, with human interaction, interaction of other humanoids. Um, so please, if this is something that you're struggling with in terms of self, self-acceptance, please reach out. I'm always here to chat and talk, and I, I hope that, um, you know, my, my weekly rants are able to bring you to a space of feeling more confident and, um, you know, changing the, the perception that you have on, on certain things when living with chronic illness. Thanks for listening. See you next time.