Sunday Inspiration: Turn Into the Skid

When you feel your car go into a skid, should you:
a) try to hold the wheel as steady as possibleb) steer into the skid
c) step on the brake
d) take your foot off the gas
e) floor it
f) steer in the direction you want the car to go.

I can hear you now asking “Julie, WTH does this have to do with living with chronic illness? Since when did you start writing a drivers ed blog?” But, hear me out. I promise I have a point that has nothing to do with drivers ed, but it never hurts to get a good drivers ed reminder along the way.

The correct answer to the above question is actually D & F. Despite that we often hear the advice that we should “steer into the skid” a drivers ed site points out that it’s often difficult to figure out which way the skid is actually taking you.

So, which direction should you turn the steering wheel? We’ve all heard the advice that you should “steer into” the skid. Forget that because it’s patently stupid advice. When you’re actually skidding, it’s silly to believe that you’re going to think to yourself, “OK, which way is the car skidding? It feels like I’m sliding to the left, but I’m sort of spinning to the right. So, am I skidding to the left or to the right?” Confusing, right? – Drivers Ed Guru

Living with chronic illness is often a lot like driving a car and hitting a skid. We feel like are losing control of a situation (our lives), and we have no idea how to react. Our first instinct is to fight it, which often leads to a situation where we over-correct, and end up in a ditch wondering WTH just happened.

But, when we can learn to stop fighting it and instead “ride the wave” or the skid as it were instead of fighting it, we can often recover much faster. No, I’m not saying we recover from chronic illness, but anyone who lives with chronic illness knows that with most chronic illness comes many small flares (times when we feel worse than others). Those flares are the times when we are most inclined to fight. We’ve been doing ok and then suddenly there’s this skid and things are flying out of control. It’s at that time that we’ve got to learn to take our foot off the pedals and stop fighting it. Trying to speed up isn’t going to get us anywhere fast, and slamming on the brakes doesn’t do us much good either. We can try to figure out which direction we are skidding and steer into it, but we are just as likely to make the wrong choice as the right one.

But, if we can just sit back, relax, and ride it out, we’ll get through it. Chances are by not fighting it we can conserve some much needed energy that will allow us to not only recover faster, but actually get caught up once we do.

I’ve had a lot of reminders of the need to stop fighting things lately. I know how important it is but it doesn’t mean I always practice it and with so much going on it’s often hard to remember to pace, or to let myself just take a break when I need it. I feel like as long as there’s any ability to do SOMETHING, I should be doing something (however small that task may be). But, that’s not true. Sometimes the best thing I can do, the best thing any of us can do, is nothing. It’s to take our feet off the pedals and just let things happen. I’ve been reminded of this important advice twice recently by a couple of my favorite bloggers.

Jessica did it here. It was a topic she and I had been talking about from a personal level and that discussion (and her personal advice to me) inspired her to write this piece. The idea wasn’t new to me then, but a reminder is always helpful, and it’s a topic I really do need to keep reading on, and keep being reminded of. Then Sue did it here, completely unintentionally. Her post wasn’t even on this topic really, so much as she just used the skid reference, and it sparked the thought that became this blog post.