Episode 9: When Relief Feels Scary — Learning to Trust Feeling Better

In this episode of Both Sides of the Couch, Kari explores the surprising fear and guilt that can surface when chronic illness symptoms finally ease. After years of struggle, she’s experiencing real relief thanks to a new medication, and discovering that feeling better isn’t as simple as it sounds.

She dives into the emotional complexity of healing, explaining how our brains crave predictability, even when that predictability is pain. Feeling better can trigger an identity crisis (“Who am I without my symptoms?”), anxiety about relapse, or guilt toward others who are still struggling. Kari connects this reaction to trauma responses, showing how the body remembers flare cycles and can mistake safety for danger.

Ultimately, Kari reminds listeners that relief doesn’t mean you imagined your illness, it means your body finally has space to rest and recover. Healing, she says, is learning to let yourself enjoy life again without fear of what might come next. 

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to both sides of the couch. I'm Carrie, a therapist who also happens to be a human navigating chronic illness, which means I see life from both sides. This is where I share honest stories, lessons, and little reminders that you don't have to have it all figured out to keep showing up. Let's get into today's episode. Today we're on episode nine, when relief feels scary, learning to trust feeling better, what happens when the thing you hoped for so long finally arrives relief, and your first reaction. Is panic personal check-in for me for the first time in a really long time, a new medication regimen is actually providing relief for me and it's been a really weird experience to feel better. The total emotional whiplash of suddenly feeling better after my chronic symptoms eased and I've been working so hard for so long. Just to find acceptance for the fact that I wasn't feeling good has been really crazy. I have been processing it with my therapist and kind of working on that in a day to day small moment thing. So I wanted to share some insights in this episode, but I also wanna invite people to share their experiences too. So the weird psychological side of feeling better for many people with chronic illness or even like mental health struggles happens because chronic symptoms become a familiar roommate, maybe not welcome, but known. I know what to expect when I'm feeling bad. I'm not surprised. I'm not taken off guard. Right? Our brains love predictability. Even if that predictable thing is pain or unhappiness, it's comforting. Like you know what to expect, you're in a routine. Our brains thrive off routine, but feeling better starts to equal a new identity problem. Like, who am I without managing symptoms 24 7? What does life look like now? When I created this routine for myself based off feeling bad. And not being able to do as much as I wanna do. So I think two main feelings come up for me, and I've noticed this with my clients as well, fear and guilt. So we're gonna talk about fear first. So fear, of course, like that this isn't gonna last. I'm feeling better, but it's temporary. I don't wanna get my hopes up, right? And I think there's like always a danger of false hope in chronic illness culture. I see this a lot. It really makes me angry, but there are people out there that will claim they have the cure or they have cured themself to an illness that we all know is not curable. I hate when I see videos or social media posts pop up like this because I'm like, there's no cure. Quit doing this to people. And you go through the comments and people are like, tell me everything you're doing. A lot of them are selling a product. Surprise, surprise. But then a lot of times people will be like, no, I've done all those things and I'm not cured. Stop saying stuff like this. I don't like when people are given false hope. I mean, we already have such a mistrust with the medical system and our doctors and healthcare providers and they'll use that angle of your doctor won't tell you, but this is how you cure this. I see for a lot of stuff, a lot, there's so many things Your doctor won't tell you that toothpaste actually gives you cavities. And if you use this product instead you can heal cavities. Just stuff that isn't true and feeding off of a problem in healthcare already that we don't trust our healthcare providers. It leads you down a slippery slope of falling for These hacks that are not real, that are not gonna cure you and might actually harm you and also just like spends your money, it makes you feel really bad when you don't get the results that said that you were gonna get it. It makes you think it's you and not the product. It's, I don't like that false hope. I definitely think even though many chronic illnesses don't have a cure. There is a hope that you could feel better than you're feeling right now. Right? There are definitely ways to manage chronic illness, but always keeping in mind that no matter how perfectly you follow the management skills, that doesn't always equate to feeling better. Like a lot of times it does, and that's why we put effort towards it, but there's no sure fire, like if you do a B will happen. Bodies don't typically work like that. I see that a lot with diabetes. If you eat this, you won't have a blood sugar spike. Well, that's not true for everybody With diabetes, many people react differently to different foods. Our bodies are not a algebra equation. It's not that simple. So fear also too, the fear for yourself. These internalized messages kind of, that I experienced right off the bat don't celebrate too soon. Don't jinx it. Don't get too attached to this. It might go away. I remember the first time I told my therapist, I'm feeling better. I was like, knock on wood. I'm, I'm afraid to say this out loud.'cause every time I would tell her in the past, oh, the week went well. I had a horrible week after that. Which, that's just how things happen. Right? I didn't create it by saying that I felt better, but I'm afraid to say out loud that, oh, I am, I'm actually. Getting relief from this medication and then it all falling away.'cause that has happened before. Sometimes medications work really well the first month you take them and then they don't work anymore. Fear ties into how the body remembers flare cycles, right? I'm fearful to say I feel good. It's a caution for me, well, don't do too much because last time you did, you ended up in a flare. What's really happening is it's a trauma response. My body is remembering a traumatic event that happened to me, and it's disguising it as a caution, but in reality, what's happening is I'm having a trauma trigger. I'm not actually cautioning myself because in reality, just because something happened in the past doesn't mean it's gonna happen now, especially if I've been feeling very different than I have in the past. I, I can't let that fear keep me from trying new things and seeing what my body's capable of with a reduction in symptoms. And then we talk about guilt. This is a hard one too. So guilt first starts I think, with when you feel better and others in the chronic illness community are still struggling. So when I look at my friends and they're not getting any relief and they're still really upset about what's happening with their chronic illness, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have so much energy. I'm feeling so much better. It's hard not to feel guilty and you know, you don't wanna say it out loud. I know some of my clients too. I'm going to work some days with more energy than I've had in a really long time. And then I'm hearing my clients talk about like really difficult aspects of their chronic illness, and I feel really guilty for that. Like, ugh, I feel so great for myself, and then I go into session. And the empathy of the struggle and not seeing results hits me pretty hard. I think for a lot of people too, the guilt, the worry that you'll lose credibility. Or your identity is like a sick person. So people that are advocates in the chronic illness community when they start to feel better, it's like you lose your meaning in the work. You don't get to say, oh, I'm struggling just like everyone, and here's what's happening. You know, you kind of, you're, I think too, the guilt, but also the fear that you'll end up one of those people that are claiming a cure because you're feeling better. I know a lot of healthcare providers went into their profession because they struggled with that issue themselves. I used diabetes as an example before, but someone having diabetes and childhood going into the healthcare field to work with patients with diabetes and then your diabetes is perfectly managed and you're doing really great. You feel guilty working with your patients who are struggling and not getting the results that you're getting. And then the guilt of the pressure to suddenly do all the things now that the energy exists again. Oh, I have to do all these things now because what if I don't feel good or I miss out on all this stuff when I didn't feel good? And putting that pressure on yourself to do way more than you're capable of, that's gonna end badly for you two. So I wanna change. The perspective here, this is the therapist's perspective. So the thought immediately of what if this is temporary? What if it is, if it's temporary, I wanna enjoy every moment that I have right now. If I'm only gonna get a month of good relief and symptoms, well, I wanna have an enjoyable month. I don't wanna let fear stop me from enjoying things because I'm afraid it'll make me feel bad. And if it's not temporary, I still wanna enjoy every moment. That doesn't really change anything for me. Yeah, I'll be disappointed, but I'll be back at my baseline. It's not like things are gonna be tremendously worse. I will have had a relief in symptoms. Don't gaslight yourself too. People fall down the trap of we're gaslit a lot. By her medical providers, right? Oh, you're just stressed. That's normal. Everybody feels that, right? Telling you that whatever you're saying is as bad, isn't as bad as it really is. Well, you can kind of, once you start to feel better fall back into that. Oh, did I imagine all this? Was I really in that much pain? Were things that bad or was I just being dramatic? Don't gaslight yourself into that. Healing doesn't mean your symptoms were imagined. Feeling better does not mean your symptoms were imagined. It means you're getting a break, and I wanna remind myself and others too, that safety and pleasure take practice just as adjusting to your chronic illness. Took practice, knowing, oh, I can't. Go as hard as I used to when I work out because my body will flare from that. Or I need X number of hours of sleep, otherwise I'll, I'll feel bad from that, like that took practice for you to learn what your body needed when your symptoms were flaring. When they're not flaring, that's gonna take practice too. You have to relearn yourself all over again, and it's such an important thing to learn because our abilities. And our limitations are always changing. With chronic illness, most chronic illnesses have cycles and flares, we're not feeling constantly bad all the time, right? There's ups and downs, hills and valleys. Peaks and valleys. So practicing doing it when you're not feeling good is great because you'll manage those symptoms better. But practicing doing it when you're feeling good is also great because you're gonna be able to. Use the new abilities with the reduction in symptoms. So I'm gonna give some practical ideas for things that you can do when you're in one of these anti flares, we'll call it. I think the most important thing is gentle reintegration. I can't go sprinting back into life like it's Black Friday at Target, right? Or wherever those Black Friday deals are. I've never done that by the way. But I can see myself doing that when my symptoms are reduced. Like, oh, I have energy today. I can do this and that, and this and that, and then I'm exhausted at the end of the day. I don't wanna miss out on doing these fun, safe, and pleasurable things, right? But if I go too hard, even a normal bodied person is gonna feel exhausted at the end of that. So we're gonna do our trial and error gently and trial and error. Is also a skill that is important to learn because it happens when you're in a bad flare and when you're in an anti flare and you start to feel better, right? So when I first noticed my chronic illness, that intro story, oh, that was from last episode. But anyways, the story I told where, I almost fainted walking my dog. Trial and error then of okay, what can I do then? I don't wanna push myself during a flare, so I had to learn the warning signs and what my body is capable of. It's the same thing now that I'm in an anti flare, right? I have to think about, well, what am I capable of now? Before I was limiting myself because my body couldn't handle it, but if I don't let myself try new things and see how it affects me, I won't know what I'm capable of now, same way I did when I was. First experiencing the flares. I was like, oh, I used to walk five miles, so now I'll try walking two. Two was still too many, you know, and then I had to lower it a little more, or I used to be able to walk at this pace, but now I can't. So when I'm feeling good, limiting myself to a mile walk, because that's what I used to be able to do, wouldn't really be taking that in a mindset, right? So I could say well, let me try and walk. A mile and a half. Let's be gentle. Don't just switch to five, right? But taking it one day at a time. So things I wanna remember too, and I want you to remember too, I'm allowed to feel good without earning it. So that means I'm allowed to have these reduction. And symptom flares. When nothing changed, you know, I was doing all the work before and wasn't seeing the results, but now this new medication is kind of like flipped a switch in my body and it's allowing me to get the results I've been working so hard for. So just nothing really changed and what I was doing and symptom management. And my brain wants to tell me oh, you didn't earn it. Like just this magic pill happened. Which isn't true. There's much more to that than just me taking the medication. But if you feel good, you feel good. Don't try to equate it to anything. Right? Take it as when safety takes repetition and it's not perfection. Practicing doing more and feeling safe in your body when you have a reduction in flares takes repetition when we have trauma of feeling bad, our body won't feel safe in doing things that used to make us feel bad until we've done it many times and we can't go for perfection. I don't have to have zero symptoms to enjoy something, right? I just have to have a reduction in symptoms. So I'm able to do something and can enjoy it. And I think also always important with chronic illness, but track the evidence. So instead of tracking everything that sucked, you're gonna track, look what I handled today. So here's what I was able to do today. Here's my wins for the day. So you can see the changes and the shifts because sometimes, I, I felt like this immediate reduction in symptoms, um, that were really clear, way less pain and a lot more energy. But not everyone's gonna feel such a huge shift. They might need to see the evidence of oh, look, I did better at this. I was able to do more of this. I was able to tolerate this in order to see the evidence. So don't forget, we're still tracking, even though we're not tracking symptoms, we're tracking winds. All right, so final lesson healing isn't just the body feeling better, it's learning to feel safe in peace. So again, you are learning to regulate your body. You are learning what this new feeling is like. So in a way it is treating your chronic illness in a sense, right. Regulating myself, learning to feel safe, doing things I enjoy is gonna have positive effects for this chronic illness. Whatever it is, whatever it is, it's gonna help your chronic illness, I promise you. So if you think of it like that, like I'm doing a treatment by enjoying my life and doing things that I wasn't able to do before, it's gonna make it easier to take that journey into healing. Okay? So I want you guys to ask yourself, what would I do today? If I trust in my body just 1% more, I'm not even gonna give you an action on that. I just want you to ask yourself and you decide what to do with that information and celebrate any tiny steps that you took, any progress that you see, and please share your experiences if you've been through this too. What helped you? What was it like for you to adjust to improvement? Thanks for joining me on both sides of the couch. If something you heard today resonated, share this episode with someone who might need it. And if you'd like to support the show or find more of my work, check the links in the show notes. Until next time, take care of yourself on both sides of the couch.