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This post is written for the Facebook Live conversation between myself and Kirsten Schultz on how to stop being so damn strong. You can see Kirsten’s post here.

I am very good at lying to myself. So good, in fact, that most of the time, I have no idea that I’m pulling the wool over my own eyes.

Is there a medal for this?

I have lived with autoimmune arthritis for over 50 years and have developed really effective coping skills. One of the best is learning to always shift my focus to joy and the positive. It has allowed me to find great deal of happiness in what many people would have considered a very limited life, filled with barriers and obstacles to flying free the way I want. Looking at only the limitations, though, is the way to a deep depression, so I shift my focus. And I’ve been doing it for long enough now that it has become reflexive, an ingrained habit.

Others call it being strong. I sometimes call it being resilient. And most of the time, it works really well.

I think is something we all do, once we start adapting to life with rheumatoid arthritis or other types of chronic illness. As long everything is below a certain boundary, you can keep it going, managing meds and symptoms, juggling what you need to, shifting away from the part of you that is vulnerable and raw. Because doing so makes it easier to participate in your life is much as possible.

But this talent also serves to hide feelings that should perhaps not be hidden. In my case, this reflexive shift away from darkness has left me currently battling a deep depression and a raging PTSD flare.

Yes, I am aware of the irony.

I’ve had a problem for most of this year, something I cannot talk about publicly at the moment. I’m dealing with it, while at the same time trying to be normal. I put this difficult issue in a metaphorical box, take the lid off to deal with several times a week, then put the lid tightly back on again. Then do my best to avoid thinking about it and shift to joy with family, work, and with my community.

Because spending all my time in that place of stress and fear does not create a good life.

I learned in therapy last year that avoidance of something traumatic is like fertilizer for PTSD. Which means I have unwittingly created some excellent growing conditions for the damn thing. Would I feel better now if I had actually acknowledged the stress, depression, and anxiety before it grew high enough to cover me? Maybe. But a lifetime of coping with chronic illness and pain, not paying attention to my symptoms unless they are at a six-alarm fire level, has become the only way I can focus on the life part of life with RA.

Every now and again, whether the pain is physical or emotional, having really excellent coping mechanisms can bite you in the butt. Because you don’t see the smoke and then the tiny flame of your body and your soul telling you that something is not right, that you need to pay attention.

The trick is, I think, to check in with yourself on a frequent basis, to allow yourself to be vulnerable and raw and not-strong. To figure out how to create a physical or emotional smoke alarm, so you don’t end up in a raging flare of something that’s hard to beat back.

I’m going back to therapy to figure out what mine will be.

How do you balance coping while still staying in touch with the softer parts of you?