Tug of war with psoriasis

Living with psoriasis can feel like a battle that takes over your life. 

It’s a bit like having a tug of war contest with a monster. You’re on one end of the rope and on the other end is a big, horrible monster and it’s pulling you towards a pit. And so you pull and pull on the rope and use all your energy to stop yourself being dragged towards the pit. You’re consumed with pulling on the rope and battling the monster.  It become everything and you dig your heels in and you try and stop yourself from being dragged into the pit. 

What that means is you stop focusing on the other things in your life; you don’t have the time or the energy or the concentration to do the things that make you feel good about yourself, the things that make you feel useful and helpful and happy. You’re putting all your energy into stopping the monster from pulling you into the pit.

But what if the solution is not to keep battling the monster but just to drop the rope. To simply let go of the rope. 

Once you’ve done that, you can see all the other things in your life that you hadn’t been focused on. You can ask yourself what’s important to me, how do I want to be living my life? And then in spite of the psoriasis you can live a fulfilling life. 

I know how easy it is to get caught up in a tug of war with your psoriasis. It will happen but what we need to do is notice that we’ve become caught up in a battle, ask ourselves is this helping me and then drop the rope.