Simon Says...Let Go

If you’re new to the Parkinson’s club and haven’t already figured it out, once PD has you in its kung fu grip, after your “honeymoon” period of being less symptomatic, it never lets go. So it might seem a tad counterintuitive, to say the least, that the best way to lighten your PD story is to ‘let go’ of your PD and simply ‘accept’ it. Releasing yourself from the grief that you feel about your diagnosis can take years. I speak from personal experience. Try and make sure that it doesn’t take forever. Instead, surrender yourself to the new you, because for good or ill, the old you has well and truly left the building.

Letting go and surrendering and accepting may seem like nebulous, easily said, self-help guidance, but seen from another perspective, they’re simple, powerful mantras that are part of a mental construct you can use to control your thoughts when they drift to your dark places. Recognize that PD doesn’t define the ability of the new you to lead a worthwhile life, but only a fool would say that it’s not a huge presence. Winning the battle anew every day is a matter of self-control. In other words, take precious care of that mind of yours and you might just be okay. Oh, and watch out for the mental traps your own noodle sets for you, because they can come at any time and be pretty sneaky.

The ‘au courant’ language of strong mental health is full of phrases that make it sound like a simple process, like “wellness” and my personal favorite “self-care”, which sounds like all you have to do is flip a switch and Voila! You’re protected!! If only it was so easy.

Yeah, working on yourself is hard. But here are a few negative tendencies which are really worth watching out for. The first is not to think you can find contentment in one meditation session, the second is that we have a habit of regarding failure to launch the process with a finality it doesn’t deserve. Don’t declare defeat. Failing to make progress is not a problem. Giving up on the quest because of that failure? Now THAT’S a problem. The third big trap we set for ourselves is to think that once you’ve achieved some consistent measure of contentment within the new you, the job is over. In other words, don’t declare victory. Hubris has a habit of catching up to you.

Mental self-control requires letting go, or to use another metaphor, finding a lasting way of compartmentalizing your PD. Think of your PD as being in a box in the closet. You know it’s in there, a part of you, but it doesn’t have to be up in your face making mischief every minute of the day. You can keep it separate, but as you can imagine that not as easy as it sounds, or as permanent. Once you’ve got it tidied away in that box, and found some inner peace, don’t think that the darker shadows of your mind will just give up the ghost, and accept defeat. Not going to happen. If the negative mind wasn’t so wily, finding spiritual peace would be a cinch. It’s not. The other side of you is always trying to pry open that darned box.

The truth is that your PD is always looking for ways to intrude on the new you. All you can to combat that is to discover, through trial and error, your system for minimizing the damage it can do.