Any Indiehacker living with a painful chronic illness?
Would love to know how you tolerated the pain while building your project, how you kept your mind focussed
Would love to know how you tolerated the pain while building your project, how you kept your mind focussed
Chronic tendonitis in both my hands since 2010. What's helped? Practicing daily meditation and focused gratitude. Practicing forgiveness to the injury, rather than resentment, frustration, or anger. Awareness and acceptance when I need to take a break.
It's incredible how much pain can be affected by mindset.
Of course, those aren't the only things I do to mitigate problems. Maintaining a clean diet can do a lot to reduce inflammation. Cryotherapy can help, but that can be expensive and hard to find. I also make sure to exercise and stretch daily.
Woah didn't know meditation could have such a strong effect on pain tolerance, thanks triangle.
It's probably the greatest "coping" mechanism I've found. When you fight chronic pain you're only giving it power. You simply need to accept it.
Acceptance does not mean taking on your illness or your pain as any part of your identity. It's more about looking through your pain. Realizing that it is what it is, but it isn't you.
There was a time when I couldn't hold open a book because of the pain in my hands, but now I code for a living. This could never have happened if I held on to the pain as a part of my identity, or held on to resentment or inner conflict over the condition.
Of course, tendonitis isn't an autoimmune disorder, but I hope that you'll find keeping your mind in check helps you, too.
The psychology technique of "radical acceptance" has helped me with focus. For mitigating the other aspects: Physical Therapy and heavily customizing my workspace.
Thanks Corey, could you elaborate more on how do you customize your workplace?
Sure. I have two workspaces: One is an adjustable bed ( https://mysleepscience.com ) with a projector aiming at the ceiling. The other is a fairly standard standing desk setup.
For the adjustable bed + projector I use a thin keyboard on my lap. Touch type while looking up at the ceiling. For the standing desk I use a kenisis advantage 2.
I have a trackball mouse for both but I typically use keyboard only. The desktop is configured to maximize all windows and I try to keep to a terminal.
The goal is to switch between the two throughout the day. High movement at the standing desk. Recover in the bed. That's te theory anyways....
Depression, rheumathoid arthritis, umbilical hernia, also a brain tumour survivor. The list doesn't stop there.
It indeed is challenging and very difficult.
What really helped me is having multiple not so long sessions of super focused work spread throughout the day.
Firstly you're my hero man, very brave. Thank you for sharing.
RA is the one disorder that scares me the most, just got diagnosed with hashimotos and have read on the web that once you get an autoimmune disease chances of getting others increases. It scares me most because of the fear of not being able to work coz of it, so I want to ask you what do you do during flare ups?
What if you have a certain target to finish, how do you manage?