chronic symptoms cycle
went to a friend's wedding in disneyland last weekend while i was in the purple, spent all week in blue and i'm back in the green :(
too tired to add an image description so someone should do that please
a chart labeled "the chronic symptoms cycle" above a four rectangle grid. axes are labeled in pairs, not experiencing symptoms/experiencing symptoms on the horizontal and thinking about symptoms/not thinking about symptoms on the vertical. an arrow connects them in a counter-clockwise direction. starting from the top left and continuing counterclockwise they read:
top left: not experiencing symptoms; thinking about symptoms (orange) reads: symptom management is working, physically you feel better but mentally you're still tired and bored of thinking about your symptoms nonstop
bottom left: not experiencing symptoms; not thinking about symptoms (purple) reads: feel happy and normal and hopeful that your chronic symptoms ended forever
bottom right: experiencing symptoms, not thinking about symptoms (blue) reads: think you just had an extra stressful week and that you'll return to no symptoms when the stress ends
top right: experiencing symptoms, thinking about symptoms (green) reads: remind yourself that progress is not linear, recommit to all your symptom management techniques and say this time you'll stick to them forever















