Romy Rosen’s Lyme Hack:

“Hello, everybody, and happy Lyme Disease Awareness Month. This is Romy Rosen and today I wanted to talk about one of my favorite tips that I learned over the past 10 years that I’ve had chronic Lyme disease and a ton of other co-infections. I think for me, this is something that I learned once I had relapsed, where if you’ve listened to my podcast episode, I talked about how I was in remission, and then I ended up relapsing. But I wanted to talk about how important it is to really feel your feelings when you have Lyme and to really engage in the grieving process that comes along with having Lyme. I think that the emotional components and the mental components in the struggle that we go through, and we have an invisible illness, any chronic illness, or any autoimmune disorder, I think is not talked about enough. And to me, it was something that was really important, especially being in high school when I had relapsed. And so I think one of the main lessons that I’ve really learned is that it’s really important just to feel your feelings. So for example, if I wake up, and I’m just really upset that I have Lyme, honestly, I have a lot of days like this, I’m really upset about having Lyme, I’m upset about having to take my supplements, having to go to treatment to get my IVs, having to meet with my doctor, even though I know that it’s all helping me logically, I really try to let myself feel that instead of immediately trying to you know, steer it the other way or feel better. And I find that the more that I let myself feel those feelings and embrace them and be like, you know what, it’s okay for it to suck sometimes, there’s a lot of grief that comes with Lyme, there’s a lot of loss that comes you know, from friends, family that may not support you and may not understand. A lot of times you feel like you’ve lost a sense of self, you can lose activities that you’re doing, and passions that you once had because you’re too tired or you have symptoms. And so I’ve noticed that the times where I really feel those feelings more instead of immediately trying to you know, steer them in a different direction, I actually heal from them a lot faster, and I feel a lot better. And so I’ve noticed that when you take that time to really feel those feelings as painful and difficult as they must be, you’re able to heal from them faster. And then you notice that they come up less as you go on. So that was just the little hack that I wanted to share for this year’s hackathon. I hope everyone is doing well and please reach out if you have any questions.”