How to survive (and enjoy!) the festive season with chronic illness

The Rest Room

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, when December rolls around (and you live in a Christian country) there’s a whole lots of special festive stuff going on. Whether it’s invites to dinner or New Year parties, Secret Santa, family meals, festive drinks in a bedecked pub - there’s often a whole lot more social stuff to do, presents to wrap, ugly Christmas jumpers to wear, and Christmas movies to binge.

But if you live with chronic illness, this can be a real challenge. You may want to participate, to be able to do all the things that you’re invited to, to contribute to cooking…but you don’t know how to balance that with your health.

You may be full of festive cheer, but also find it busy and exhausting - and the lights and extra loud music overwhelming.

And even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, there may be lots going on this, or other, times of the year when everything just ramps up. So how do we navigate all the physical and emotional challenges that come with that - whilst finding ways to enjoy things to the fullest?

And that’s exactly what we’ll be exploring today. I’m delighted to welcome back The Rest Room’s resident Occupational Therapist, Jo Southall, to once again share tonnes of practical tips and advice on how to make it through the festive period…or any busy period for that matter!

In this episode we cover:

* The importance of being kind to yourself

* How to manage expectations (your own and from other people)

* The importance of compromise

* How to communicate with family and friends

* How to pacing, planning, and prioritising so you can make the most of your time and energy

* Accepting that sometimes we just want to do something without making compromises

* Buffering in recovery time…

…And much, much more!

As always it’s a fascinating episode, stuffed fuller than your Christmas turkey.

Transcript: http://natashalipman.com/christmas-chronic-illness-transcript

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