Blog

You’ve trained yourself to push through the pain and fatigue that can come with your condition. But sometimes, it’s OK to let rheumatoid arthritis (RA) be the boss. In this column for HealthCentral, I share four times when your RA should comes first:

““YOU CAN’T POUR from an empty cup.”

No matter how often I enjoy seeing a beautiful social media graphic pop up with these words, I have trouble actually living the sentiment. Like every other person out there, my life is full of things that need doing, people who need my company or help, and frequent interruptions. Living with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) means those interruptions often come in the form of pain and fatigue flare-ups, which force me to make choices about what I do and inevitably, that results in my own needs being judged optional. This then leads to what I call a ‘crash’—a flare from overdoing. Which brings me back to social media and saving to my collections yet another graphic reminding me to fill my cup before I pour from it.

Knowing the theory of how to lead a balanced life that protects your body and accommodates your RA is one thing, applying it in practice is quite another. But I am getting better at it, gradually lengthening the time between each crash, learning to listen to my body’s signals that I should slow down (or stop). My journey began when I recognized the pattern of overdo-crash-overdo-crash and realized how much time and energy I was wasting in that loop. Moreover, I was ultimately getting less done, not more. I dug into that a bit in this column on failure-proofing your goals.

An essential component of changing this exhausting vicious cycle is to take a step back and look at your life from a big-picture perspective rather than a daily slog through the tasks and obligations sitting right in front of you. For me, this exercise of considering when RA comes first had a kind of ripple effect, starting with the most urgent, which led to the next, which led to the one after that. In this way, I learned there are four times your RA truly does come first and how to handle those situations. I hope these will help you rate your own cycle of overdoing and crashing.”

Read more about when RA should come first on HealthCentral.