Psoriasis Thoughts: A Beautiful Space in My Mind

Of all the pressures and responsibilities that come with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, I find keeping my mind in check to be one of the most challenging. Often times, I think, we do not give enough credit to the power of our mind.

This, of course, goes both ways. Both positive and negative thoughts can be a pretty powerful force.

Organizing my thoughts

There is a great animation film titled, Inside Out. It is based on a young girl and how she has to navigate her way through puberty and all of the emotions that come with it. This film really struck a chord with me. There is this great control room with a panel that has impressive buttons, levers, switches, and lights.

A pretty busy place, on any given day. The predominant emotions spend their time there, helping this girl navigate life. Some days it is total chaos and other days they help balance each other out and try work together. There is no truer description of the central command of my mind.

I am almost sure that most days it leans towards chaos than order and harmony.

With psoriasis skin comes a flaky mind

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a version of me that had way less on her mind. She was strong and resilient and life was a whole lot more simple. In general, I think this version of me just handled everything differently because she was younger and seemingly more carefree. I am not sure.

What I do know without a doubt is that when psoriasis came knocking at my door, things got a whole lot harder. Why is that when I got sick things got that much harder in my head? Why did it all seem so simple before?

The more I got thinking about this the more I had to dig deeper into my own soul for research and when soul searching took on a whole new meaning.

When thoughts organize themselves

All of a sudden from the quiet, dark corners of my mind, a small light shines and things start clicking into place. Our mind is linked to everything, my mind is not just the boss of me. It is me. It is the very essence of my being. So anything that affects my body, affects my mind.

When my immune system pulled this neat trick on me, I never expected the effect it would have on my mind. So basically, what I think is that when we battle a disease of any description really, we are “under attack” on so many fronts. I believe that my mind bears the brunt of it all.

I just keep loading more onto her, the physical stress, the emotional stress and everything else that comes with it. My mind has to cope with it all. No wonder some days, the central command of my mind's control panel looks like nothing short of a war zone of emotions.

Finding the balance

Balance. Such a dreamy word and possibly the thing I search for most in life. Sometimes I have to wonder if this is the key to the universe. Over the years I have learned to create a safe and very strong fortress in my mind, where the halls are lined with plants, soft music plays and it is safe for me to just be.

No matter what space I find myself in, I try and take myself toward balance. It is a place where I can rest and visualize and pull myself towards myself. This does not always work, one thing is for sure, sometimes the “things” that pile up are just too many for anyone’s mind to cope with. It takes a day or two to get over and I spend a week cleaning up the mess I made inside my beautiful mind.

Take care of your mental health, it is so important. The girl turned to a woman who is more resilient than ever before, she is one of the strongest people I know. I am so proud of her, she is me.