Managing Our Emotions While Living With CKD

Sadness, guilt, fear, excitement, shame, depressed, dread and frustration. These are just a few emotions that I have experienced during my journey with chronic kidney disease (CKD). I imagine there are many more emotions that I'm not aware of that people have experienced.

For me, CKD has been like a tornado that you can see coming from a distance but the closer it gets, the bigger it feels, and once your in the middle of it, you're bracing yourself, and have no idea what's going on; you're just waiting for it to pass.

Emotions rising

Leading up to my kidney transplant was when I had experienced the most conflicting emotions. Here is what a train of thought in my mind looked like DAILY:

I'm so excited to get transplant, I hope my mum is a good match, can it just hurry up and happen, I'm kind of scared about going for the surgery, what if there are complications, what if my mum isn't a match, I don't want to be to attached that my mum will donate her kidney, but I'll be devastated it she doesn't, I want to start this fitness regime but I can't until I have this tube out of my tummy, I want to do so much with my life but I need to wait to transplant, hopefully my mum can donate, I am so grateful if she can, but if she's not a match that's ok I'll have to wait, but if I wait I can't start my life how I want to live it...

It was non-stop.

This is the standard day in my life while living with CKD. My emotions are always swirling like crazy. I feel like I am on the biggest and what feels like the longest roller coaster of my life. It especially feels long when you don't manage these specific emotions.

Managing my emotions

I honestly tried multiple ways to deal with my emotions, a couple involved scrolling on my phone, staying in bed all weekend and over eating or not eating at all. If you guessed right, these typically didn't give me any results that improved my life or my emotions. If anything it made me worse. It's interesting that in the times you need to give yourself the best care, all you want to do is give it the worst. This called for some new ideas, like journaling, seeing a psychologist, deep breathing, and learning acceptance. My saving grace!

If you know me, I am not one to express emotions easily, and for that reason, journaling is my best tool, because I can express myself with no judgement. It is a similar experience to seeing a psychologist. My psychologist has no connection to my life and doesn't know me. I didn't care if she judged me (not that she did) but she had no idea who I was and I felt like I could say everything I needed to get off my chest.

Deep breathing I was a bit weary about but, it was like a instant relaxed feeling. I was getting very stressed sighing with every breath and clenching my jaw a lot. Lastly and most importantly, accepting your current situation. I taught myself to embrace what I was going through as I knew there was nothing I could do to change it.

Overall, CKD brings along all different kinds of emotions. It is important to manage your emotions before you end up with a physical condition and a mental one too. How I liked to look as it was, that I may as well work with it, rather than against it.