Interventions: to accept or reject?
It’s that time of the year. The annual checkup. Unlike the story from the Winnie the Pooh book on your child’s bookshelf, your gut tells you the checkup will not end with a colorful bandaid on your forearm accompanied by a red balloon and lollipop as you leave the doctor’s office. Instead, you are probably holding in your hands a printout of the results of your annual tests and the numbers don’t look good.
Health is wealth they say. Most of the time however, you choose to ignore this thought until you reach the ripe old age when you actually realize you wish you had started the maintenance work much sooner. You wish you hadn’t allowed the numbers to sway off course. You wish you had made that lifestyle change when the doctor had warned you to.
Health is a lifestyle. This should have been drilled into your brain back in nursery school. Imagine if you couldn’t pass school until you fixed your BMI or until your school nurse offered you a clean bill of health? It sounds harsh and awful but maybe the world would be better for it. Maybe you would have developed better skills in managing your health and maybe you would have valued having the ability to take care of yourself.
Life isn’t so simple though and most people argue the fun of life is to live it fully. Not always be obsessed with moderation and abstinence from unhealthy lifestyle habits. Most of the time you give in to your guilty pleasures in the moment, thinking you will make up for it later. Later never comes though and before you know it, you find yourself staring at numbers that make your heart skip a beat. When that moment comes, it isn’t uncommon to feel fear. There is a sinking realization that there is no quick fix. No amount of meds will change the person who is staring back at you in the mirror. You know you have done wrong by you. That fear can play heavily on you.
A common coping mechanism to fear is denial. Since you are an adaptable being, you adjust to small changes ignoring the fact that sometimes you shouldn’t adapt. In fact you should fix what can be fixed and only adapt when something cannot be fixed. That’s easier said than done which is why most of the time you go the other route. You adapt and cope and life goes on. Every time you adapt, the root cause or problem grows in size or severity. Only it does so silently. Until the day the annual tests give you a rude awakening.
If you are lucky you have a support system of friends and family. They don’t abandon when the going gets tough. They also don’t give in to your coping mechanisms and denial. They stand by you and try to shake you gently and encouragingly at first. Until they have to shake a little harder. If you are lucky you have people who are willing to take on intervention. Who are willing to say what you don’t want to hear. Intervention is never easy. It may come from a good place but the person receiving it may not accept. There are boundaries and there are rules. Hopefully if you are on the receiving end you will not choose to walk away. Ultimately, intervention works when you value yourself and accept that change has to happen and taking help is okay. The battle is hard either way. Whether you choose to fight alone or with your supporting crew is your choice to make.