How to Own Your Chronic Illness
Invisible Not Broken - Chronic Illness Podcast Network
English - February 27, 2020 07:24 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 113 ratingsMental Health Health & Fitness Alternative Health chronic illness invisible illness spoonie fibromyalgia ehlers danlos chronic fatigue healthcare lupus pain care Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
“Take care of yourself, trust yourself, be willing to be misunderstood.”-Raquel Hellenga
Raquel Hellenga is a Life and Business Coach for entrepreneurs and creatives with chronic illness. Diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as a child, she has had chronic illness for over twenty years. She has an undergraduate degree and Master’s Degree in Organizational Communication and is a proud member of the LGBTQI+ community. Her practice involves working with people one-on-one to help them build sustainable businesses that work with their chronic illnesses, not against them. In this episode, she tells her story learning to accept her chronic illness and how it helped her find her path in life. She discusses the importance of mindset and how you can learn to own your illness and work with it to build the life you want. Her message to fellow spoonies is one of compassion and hope.
Visit: www.raquelhellenga.com
Time Stamps:
4:20 – Her diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis
5:35 – How accepting our limitations is the gateway to the business and lives we want
6:58 – The year she was diagnosed
7:16 – How her diagnosis affected her family
8:18 – On her pediatric rheumatologist
9:10 – On bullying by other girls
10:07 – The importance of exercise and chronic illness
10:35 – Her temporary remission in her teens
15:06 – Admitting the long-term nature of her illness in adulthood
15:32 – Her decade of doubling down and fighting the truth of her illness
16:21 – Her work as an adjunct communications professor that led to burnouts and flares
16:55 – The effect of auto-immune disease
17:33 – Her realization that she physically could not continue her current path and how it led to her business
19:45 – Baby Yoda
20:33 – Her career as a Life Coach for chronically ill creatives and entrepreneurs
21:14 – What Hellenga does vs what she doesn’t do in her practice
23:28 – How she helps her clients
25:23 – The importance of being honest with ourselves about how to be successful without being in constant flare
26:51 – Stories of people she’s worked with
28:21 – Denial and chronic illness
28:50 – Admitting chronic illness to take ownership of it
31:03 – Unlearning people-pleasing
32:05 – Advantages of being chronically ill
32:49 – The value of a willingness to be misunderstood
42:25 – Coaches vs consultants
52:50 – The value of taking breaks from personal development
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