Positivity is something that I think everyone struggles with from time to time. It's often easier to focus on all the things that are going wrong in our lives than it is to appreciate the things going right. Sometimes negative energy builds up inside us and eats away at all our best qualities. However, having a positive attitude is probably one of the only things that you can 100% control yourself. No one can force you to have a bad attitude and no one can take your positivity away unless you let them.
As someone suffering from a chronic illness, I often find myself spiraling of control and letting negative energy overwhelm me. I don't typically talk about it because I try to be a positive person and I don't want people to think I'm complaining just to get attention. That's not my intent here. I want others to understand how detrimental negative attitudes can be, especially if you're struggling with your health.
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) when I was in high school, which basically means that my body is literally falling apart. I don't have enough collagen, so all my joints are hypermobile and all my tendons and ligaments are too flexible. As a dancer, I this disease has actually benefited me a lot... until it started to hurt more than it helped. That's when all the negative energy started to flow. However, negativity doesn't do anything at all to alleviate my symptoms. In fact, all it usually does is make them worse.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm pretty much always injured at any given time. I've broken fifteen bones and had more dislocations than I could possibly count. Almost 2 years ago, I hit a major bump in the road when I got a stress fracture and a pretty nasty case of tendinitis in my foot. I was out of dance for about two months, and as a dance major, that is a huge deal. To this day, I'll probably tell you that those were the two worst months of my life. I was so depressed because I only focused on the problem. I wasn't dancing and I didn't know when I would ever be cleared, and that was absolutely terrible. My negative attitude didn't help at all. The more I fed my bad attitude, the bigger it got.
Negativity spreads like wildfire.
This past semester my EDS got substantially worse and I started getting dizzy all the time and struggled with severe chronic fatigue. That's when I decided to do some more research on EDS since I'd never really looked into it too much because my symptoms were all somewhat under control. However, when I started dislocating my collar bone in my sleep regularly, I started to look online for advice.
Unfortunately, this did way more harm than I thought it would. When I looked on online forums, every single person with EDS was so negative. I read about how awful their lives were, living in wheelchairs in their thirties, and their slew of EDS related health issues. It just stressed me out more than anything. I started to wonder what the point of physical therapy and trips to the chiropractor were because I was convinced I'd end up like everyone else regardless.
Just think happy thoughts.
However, as soon as I snapped out of this funk and started pushing through and managing my symptoms, things got a whole lot better. The more I focused on the pain, the more pain I felt. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is distract yourself with things that make you happy. It's best not to give into negative thoughts because they don't fix anything. On the contrary, there's a lot of power in positive thinking, so sometimes all you need to do is think happy thoughts.
