Creating Well-being whilst Being Unwell

A transformative online course

This caring course has been created in response to some of the most desperate questions voiced by many people who live with a chronic health condition, pain and/or disability:

Is it possible to live a life of quality and meaning in the context of living with a chronic illness?

How can I still have joy within the context of living with a chronic condition?

How can I accept my permanent losses?

Is there any meaning to my suffering?

If full participation in life is no longer possible, what is still possible?

What lies on the other side of my changed life?

When, after many years of doctor’s visits, experiments with medications, therapies, lifestyle changes, domestic adjustments, functional and financial losses and emotional roller-coasters, it must finally be admitted that one's condition(s) will be permanent, a threshold is crossed:

The quest for doing differently becomes
a quest for being differently.

Structure

Each one of the 10 Modules consists of:

1. Text as a pdf document
2. Audio recording
3. Comprehensive Worksheet

Creating Well-being offers an essential part of your journey of re-designing your life within the reality of living with one or more chronic health conditions. Carefully-designed tasks, leaning heavily on the innate creative abilities of the human soul, allow you to engage in a very caring manner and work through your challenges and questions. 

This coaching focuses less on the medical aspects of living with a chronic condition and a disability. Rather, the deeper emotional and psychological ordeals are recognised and explored with compassion.

Total duration:  10 Weeks

Modules:

Module 1  Health or Illness  Health and Illness ?

You are not your illness, you have it. Whatever your impairment, you are always a whole human being.

Module 2  Chronic Disease vs Chronic Illness

Your disease is the medically-agreed condition, whereas your illness is defined by how you experience living with your disease, which is determined by many factors, explored here.

Module 3  The Importance of Emotional Expression

Neglected and unattended in current clinical settings, emotional expression is, however, a necessity in maintaining overall well-being.

Module 4  Quality of Life.

Quality of life appears to be a matter of self-regulation and, therefore, largely within your control.

Module 5  Life of the Soul

Your soul exists apart from your physical state and can be experienced and expressed in many different manners.

Module 6  Life Purpose

Once found in previous active roles and functions, your life purpose may now have to be found in how you live within your circumstances.

Module 7  Vocation

Your previous working life has probably ended or severely diminished. Here, we explore the world of remote, from-home work.

Module 8  The Art of Setting Goals

Setting goals remains the best way to bring focus and direction to your intentions. This time, however, you need to work quite differently, with the symptoms and limitations of your condition shaping your ambitions and pace.

Module 9  The Powerful Peace of Acceptance

What is acceptance and, maybe more importantly, what is it not? Here you are presented with a large range of perspectives.

Module 10  Journey of Renewal

A life has ended. A new life begins. The success of creating well-being whilst being unwell lies in your courage and willingness to engage in an inner shift in the areas of values, expectations, life appraisal, self-validation and the rules you live by. This is a delicate journey, subject to certain phases that are outlined here.

Some passages from the journey:

Rather than seeking out yet more medications, therapies, operations and promises, your search now becomes how to live with your fate. And not only how to merely cope with your situation, but even, or especially, to bring renewed inspiration, creativity, expression and life purpose into your changed life.

Within the person who is convinced that her life has collapsed, resides a healthy human being.

The chronic illness experience can vary enormously between many individuals who have the same chronic disease.

Too often, we hide our anger, disappointments, grief and despair from others out of shame or because we don’t want to be a ‘burden’. And we might become so skilled at that practice, that we hide our emotions from ourselves.

Ultimately, you are responsible for your interpretations, perceptions, optimism, and choices. And with that, you are responsible for your Quality of Life.

And this is also what enlivens the soul – to create and to be nourished and enriched by other people’s creations.

Your self-worth, which previously found its strength in what you did, now has to be found in more hidden realities. The ‘human doing' becomes a ‘human being'.

Hence, it is very important that you know and acknowledge your needs, since a working commitment that does not accommodate your needs will make you feel threatened and will give you additional stress.

In acceptance I stop fighting my reality and, instead, make my reality liveable. This is truly one of the most self-empowering steps I can take.

In the world you now inhabit, what you want and what you can are two entirely different realities, separated by a vast space.
Paradoxically, it is in that space where you can develop your highest values and your greatest strength.