Feeling the Need To Close My Inner Circle

Over the last year and a half, I lost someone that was a vital part of my support group. It still affects me to this day. Living with psoriasis we all know how much of a mental strain it can be. I thought I was doing pretty good at keeping down the stressors in my life. I found out after the passing of my mom, I had not been doing as good as I thought.

That situation brought people back into my circle that I had limited interaction with until then. It comes back to me now why I choose to limit interactions with these people. One loves drama and the other is always fighting with her mate. She wants you being on the phone for hours listening to her recount their latest fight. Until recently that was me, she would call.

Stress makes me flare

Who are these people? They are my brother and sister. Sometimes family can do us more harm than good when living with psoriasis. Stress is a huge trigger for me. They both know I have psoriasis, although neither of them has it. It is lost on them what I go through living with psoriasis. It’s that same thing we all face. Since they don’t live with it, they cannot possibly understand. I am the one who must face the consequences of their stress and what it will do to my psoriasis. That much stress will make my psoriasis flare horribly. The flare will make my psoriasis spread. Its not them that will feel the pain or even the emotional toll of that happening. When I pointed out to them how much their situations were causing me to stress, I got told that I was heartless.

Sometimes there comes a need to limit things that you know are going to cause you harm. Even trying to explain why I was saying that made no difference to them. It finally hit me why I had chosen to limit my relationship with them. The sad part was that I thought after losing our mother it would somehow bring us together and time apart would have brought them a level of maturity that had not been there. Sadly, that is not the case. All they see is what they have going on and that is it.

Eliminating as much stress as possible

This might sound bad to some but a long time ago when I realized that stress was causing my psoriasis to flare, I drew a hard line in the sand to eliminate as much stress as possible. Don’t get me wrong there is no way to eliminate every stress from your life. If you are living, then stress will come for you one way or another. It could be in the form of work, other family members or even friends. I wish I could wave a magic wand and none of us would have stress again ever.

If you feel the need to close your inner circle, then I would suggest giving it a try. It might not be family in your case. Maybe its social media or other areas of your life. No one can answer that question but you. I choose to limit how much my psoriasis will flare by cutting out stress that I can control. It’s my life and I must be my own advocate.