I'm so excited about this week because it's not a blog post from me! My older sister has decided to share a portion of her story with my audience! If you'd like to write a guest post for me, publicly or anonymously, please message me! I'd love to work with anyone and everyone, nothing is off limits! Anyway, here it is!
Everyone has their statistic(s) to which they belong, identify with, and/or for some--wish they weren’t part of. As of February 2020, I now fall into the statistic of people diagnosed with psoriasis. In fact, I learned I am one of 7.5 million Americans in this category which is about 2.2% of our population.
For those that aren’t familiar, according to the CDC, psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune skin disease that speeds up the growth cycle of skin cells. In other words, basically my skin cells are reproduced at a higher rate than people without the disease--which causes red, scaly patches of skin on my body.
Upon being diagnosed, I knew there would be a number of effects on my life, all of which I will not disclose in this post. Instead, I will focus on one--the effect it has had on my self-confidence and what I’ve chosen to do about it.
To give a little more background, before going to the doctor, I had numerous small red, scaly areas mainly on my legs, but also my arms and hands. They were itchy and painful, constantly. It only took the doctor one look for him to know exactly what it was and start a plan for me including medication and whatnot.
For me and my self-confidence, I needed a new plan. I have struggled with self-confidence for quite a while now and this diagnosis did not help in the slightest. But it did help me figure out my new plan. I realized my self-confidence had been affected by some things that I could control whereas my psoriasis now was not something I could completely control--at least until I found a medicine that worked and didn’t have any unpleasant side effects (not an easy journey either).
Long story short, I decided that I was going to take control of the things I can control--like working out to build my body into one I wasn’t as self-conscious about. I realized that even with my busy schedule as a teacher, I could find ways to have a steady workout routine that would be physically beneficial, but also mentally and emotionally.
Thankfully, I had already found Orangetheory Fitness before being diagnosed, but then as everyone knows, everything closed in March due to the COVID pandemic, including the gyms. I tried different types of home workouts, but couldn’t get a routine that I liked. It wasn’t until mid-June that I decided to start going to my apartment gym, which for a girl who suffered from major gym anxiety was not an easy choice, nor an easy road for the next month or so (more on that later...hopefully).
As the gyms started to reopen, I resumed my membership at Orangetheory for just a couple of times a week and continued to go to my apartment gym. When school started back up, I changed my routine by mainly going to Orangetheory 4-5 times a week.
Do I still struggle with psoriasis? You bet. Do I still struggle with self-confidence? Hell yeah. I don’t think that will just go away. But am I just sitting around dwelling on those things? No, I’m not. Instead, I found my new source of motivation and a plan that I could maintain to work on my goals. I encourage you to do the same for whatever it is that’s either holding you back or affecting your self-confidence--because we all have our own insecurities even if we don’t like to admit it. Thanks for reading my story. Until next time.
“Control what you can, confront what you can’t.”
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