Epilepsy is like a roller coaster ride. It has many highs and lows. There were times when my epilepsy was doing so well that I didn’t feel like a person with epilepsy. I even forget that I had epilepsy. Believe or not. Each day, I lived life according to the limitations I set for myself and followed the diet and lifestyle I created which I knew helped my seizures stay under control. I actually felt normal.
Then eventually a seizure would creep on me and I was reminded that I wasn’t normal. I was a woman who lived life with a serious condition. A woman who had to remember to take her medicine every day. A person who had to live life with limitations and I had to create a lifestyle that wouldn’t cause me to overstress so I would have seizures.
Did I mention that I hate limitations? I’m the type of person that likes to do things her way. A person who is independent and doesn’t like anyone to tell her what to do.
You know how frustrating it is when you know you are capable of accomplishing so much more but you can’t because you if you overdo it you will cause yourself to have a seizure.
When you look in the mirror are you happy with who you see?
When my epilepsy condition is doing fantastic and my seizures are under control it is then when I look in the mirror and I can truly say I like what I see. I am even able to take all the hardships I experienced from my epilepsy and put it behind me.
But when my epilepsy doesn’t do well looking in the mirror isn’t so easy to do. You can be the hottest looking man or woman on the planet, but if you’re not happy with the person you’ve become then looking in the mirror isn’t such an easy task to accomplish.
How do you feel when you’re looking in the mirror at yourself?
When my epilepsy wasn’t doing well I’d look in the mirror and tears would roll down my eyes. I would feel frustrated with life. Angry on the inside, asking myself, “Why me God?” I would become depressed and as the seizures would keep coming, I would feel more and more depressed. I felt like I fell in a deep hole and as each day passed I felt like the hole became deeper.
So, what do you do?
Do you give up and stop looking in the mirror or do you become determined to find that person you once loved when you would look in the mirror? For me, I refused to give up. I wasn’t happy but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling like this and I didn’t want to give up on life even though there were times when life didn’t seem worth living with epilepsy. So this is what I did to save myself.
I wanted a happy life. I deserved it and so do you. Why should I let a condition like epilepsy get the best of me? It’s not fatal. There are many people on this planet who have it a lot worse than me. So this is what I did.
Learning to Love Yourself Again
Self-love may be the greatest and most important love you will ever experience in your life. Learning to love yourself may seem like a difficult task to achieve. Many people try to show a facade. They go around acting happy like nothing is wrong and life could not be better, but inside hey hurt emotionally.
They have emotional chains wrapped around their hearts. Love cannot enter their hearts. Their hearts are locked so they cannot let the gift of love flow from their hearts into someone else’s heart. They walk around with pain and emotional suffering because they are angry, perhaps because they have epilepsy. They may feel different because others can drive and they cannot. For whatever the reason, they are drowning in hidden pain that no one knows about, but them.
Now you can stop all this. It is time to find the key and unlock the chains wrapped around your heart. It is time to learn to love yourself once again. An important way to love yourself is to take care of yourself emotionally, physically and spiritually. You need to take time out for yourself. Do things that strike your interest that you enjoy doing.
You need to go out and have fun. Go out to dinner, go dancing, go see a movie, go to a baseball game, take a walk on the beach. Don’t sit home and analyze yourself. Do not criticize yourself.
You may get angry and criticize yourself and your life. You need to stop those negative thoughts and actions and replace them with positive thoughts. No one is perfect.” We all have something. When you begin to think negative, immediately stop yourself, and change your thought into a positive one. If you tell yourself that you are a failure, you are much more likely to fail than if you picture yourself as a success. There is nothing wrong to give yourself a pat on the back. You need to give yourself a little boost to be a winner.
Reward yourself when you do something to better yourself, give yourself something special. Take time to each day to tell yourself, “I accept that I have epilepsy”, “I am no different than anyone else”, “I am beautiful and bright” or “I love my myself,” “I am loving, caring, and worthy of love and life” or “I believe in myself.” Write these quotes down and put them where you can see them every day.
You must realize that what is most important is not what others think about you it is how you feel about yourself. In order to feel good about yourself, you need to accept yourself. You must look at yourself positively and realize that there is no such thing as a perfect person.
What is most important in our life is that we try to master the daily troubles that come our way, and overcome the problems that have already occurred in our lives. Now, this should be considered a triumph. If you are unhappy with yourself then you need to do something about it. Ignoring your problems and emotions, not dealing with them, is the easy way out. To face them and to deal with then are accomplishments. Accepting ourselves helps us grow mentally, physically and spiritually.
Remember, it is not how we look on the outside that is important. It is how we feel on the inside that matters the most. In this life in order to survive, it is important that we accept ourselves for who we are. We need to feel good about ourselves and carry an inner strength so we can live a healthy, happy, and productive life.
When we are young, we have people in our lives that help to mold us. They help us develop strength, wisdom, and knowledge. These are the characteristics we need to survive in this world. Yet many of us forget what we learned and focus on what is unimportant, such as how we look on the outside.
The results are in the end you are going to end up feeling emotionally drained and unable to live a productive life. Everyone is on this earth here for a reason. We need to pass on what we have learned along to others.
It is selfish and pure laziness to pity ourselves. You must learn to accept and love yourself. You are not alone, many people feel unhappy with themselves.
To live with and accept yourself, you need to open your heart and listen to what your heart is telling you. Your heart will never lie to you. Your heart always tells the truth. You must have the courage to ask your heart why you refuse to love yourself.
You need to help yourself by accepting yourself and loving yourself for who you are. This is the first step in order to heal yourself and feel good about who you are as a person.
I have listed seven steps to help you learn to love and accept yourself.
Step 1
Accept your epilepsy – it’s not going away, so accept and move forward in life.
Step 2
Look at life from a positive perspective. Don’t be one of those people who say, well there’s nothing good in my life because I guarantee you there is a lot of good things in your life.
Step 3
Focus on your strengths. Look at the positive strengths in your life.
Step 4
Changing your outlook on epilepsy. This means not letting your epilepsy take control of you. As I was growing up, I always made believe that I did not have epilepsy. By doing this, I was only hurting myself. Accepting epilepsy into my life has helped me tremendously. I have released much of the anger that I held inside myself, and have focused on other parts of my life. As a result, I have become a stronger person, extremely proud of the person I have become in life. You need to do the same. It may take time to get to this point.
Step 5
Have patience. Rome was built in a day.
Step 6
Believe in yourself. You need to believe you can do anything you put your mind to. If you believe in yourself then others will believe in you too.
Step 7
Have a tremendous amount of pride in yourself
Bottom line
In order to change and strengthen yourself, you must accept yourself and learn how to live with yourself. You need to look at life in a positive way. You need to say to yourself, “OK, I’m not happy with the person, I see in that mirror. I need to change and this is what I am going to do about it.” Don’t say, “I can’t.” You can. Be proud of who you are. Be thankful each morning that you can wake up and feel the warmth of the sun and the beauty that surrounds us all.
Love yourself, be good to yourself, and treat yourself well. The more you love yourself, the more you will be able to give love to others and the more others will want to be around you. Loving yourself will help the lives of others around you, as well as your own life.