Disclaimer: These posts are speaking from my personal experience and I am merely relaying what has been beneficial for me. I know everyone’s situation is different, and I truly respect that and want to say up front that I know my methods may not work for others. By no means am I looking to push my experience as the only way that works, nor am I trying to say that anyone is wrong or weak for not exploring the methods I propose, or for having a varying opinion or experience. I have tremendous respect for everyone fighting through POTS, and I am only looking to extend empathy, offer support, encourage resilience, all while attempting to be as positive as possible! I’m also just looking to share my story and connect with others.
What?!?!? Perks of having POTS? Doesn’t a perk mean a benefit or a positive thing?
Yes, I am going to talk today about the perks of having POTS. To preface this post, I wouldn’t say living with POTS is the best thing in the world. It can take a dramatic negative toll on people’s health and well-being and limit their ability to do the activities they love, possibly for the rest of their lives. For me, POTS meant I never achieved my dream of playing varsity basketball and I went unranked in my high school class after working so hard to be in the top 5%. I was still able to achieve some of my other goals, but POTS made me fall short of goals I had envisioned for my entire life.
However, that was in 2015 and 2016. Much has changed since then. Today, I am thriving athletically, academically, and personally, and I realize most of my recent success and happiness in my life has stemmed in one way or another from my negative high school experience with POTS. I hit rock bottom in 2015, and so I quite literally had to build myself back up as a new person. I was fortunately able to progress health-wise, becoming less symptomatic and able to do more and more than I could before. Along with that, I built up new personality traits and personal skills that helped me better connect with myself and others. Even though I seemed to have it all before I was diagnosed with POTS, I view myself today as vastly more well-rounded and on a much better path for the future. I still have to be mindful of my limitations, but I think the current impact POTS has on my life is more of a positive one than a negative one.
If I never experienced POTS, I don’t think I could be the person I am today. I believe living with POTS provides people with a unique skillset that can set us apart from almost anyone else in society. Here are five positive personality developments that have come through living with POTS, and how they impact my life today.
Resilience
I know that if I can live through POTS, I can live through anything. While it sucked for me to lose out on most of the high school experience, I can now say I am grateful, in a way, for all of the struggles I’ve had. Without my challenges, I know I wouldn’t have built up all of the resilience I have today.
Resilience is described by some psychologists ((https://qz.com/1289236/resilience-is-the-new-happiness/)) as a new-age superpower and the most important skill to cultivate in modern society. The trait of resilience helps me to bounce back from problems quickly, learn and grow from challenges instead of getting discouraged, and quickly adapt to new environments in today’s ever-changing world.
Resilience is said to be a developed skill and is currently being taught at schools around the country. I am fortunate because I got a real-world crash course in resilience, and I can say I passed with flying colors —I’m extremely happy with how I’ve bounced back from living with POTS and how I’ve adjusted to living with it today. Better yet, resilience isn’t something I’ve just learned and used in the past. It’s a skill that is needed on a daily basis, and I’ll never stop cultivating it. To me, “problems” are not problems at all! Challenges in my life lead to my development of new skills that I need to get past those challenges. I’ve also found it easier and easier to get through roadblocks over time as I keep failing, learning and growing. I’m still very human, and it’s not like I get all happy every time there’s a problem in my life. But, I always know I can get through any problem, and I realize that I’ll be building up myself and my resilience by doing so.
This book (https://www.amazon.com/Resilience-Science-Mastering-Greatest-Challenges/dp/0521195632) was something I read when I was at my most symptomatic, and it was an extremely useful tool. It has practical strategies, backed by science, for building resilience. Check it out!
Perspective
I was always a star student, multi-sport athlete, and leader around my school. It’s funny how most people with autonomic dysfunction seem to be high-achievers, and I think that’s part of the reason why we have such a resilient and amazing community despite our challenges. When I was diagnosed with POTS, though, I nearly lost my identity. I was no longer an athlete, wasn’t doing anything outside of school, and suddenly my reputation was one of a “sick kid” who was chronically absent. I hated when people didn’t understand my situation, and I felt depressed about my new label. Many people either turned a blind eye towards my situation or, even worse, joked about it or made fun of me. The people who stuck by and supported me were there too, though, and I really appreciated them.
Being out of school and losing my identity led to a radical shift in my perspective. Before my diagnosis, I was always chasing what I thought were important goals, such as getting top grades, playing for varsity in sports, and winning awards in extracurricular activities. When I was no longer able to chase those goals, I didn’t really know what my mission and purpose were. For a while, I had none, and those moments were some of the darkest of my life. However, as I built myself and my body back up, I started to chase things that nowadays seem far more meaningful to me.
My main goal now is to work as hard as I can to constantly improve my life and the lives of those around me, as well as the lives of anyone I can reach through business or media. I feel as if I am now chasing the more important intrinsic goals of growth and contribution rather than extrinsic goals of grades, jobs, sports, and peer approval. Don’t get me wrong, I am probably setting more goals about my grades, athletics, and social life now than I was before POTS. Today though, I have a better perspective and realize that there are more important things in life outside of winning competitions and pleasing people. Coupled with my resilience, my perspective helps me to look at small problems and setbacks and smile and laugh; I used to consider them the end of the world, and now I see them as bumps in the road that could help me on my road of impact and improvement.
Empathy
In gaining a new perspective personally, I was able to better appreciate the perspectives of others. I was always able to relate to the popular crowd, the jocks, and the smart kids, because I was a part of all three of those social circles. However, even though I thought I did a great job of making friends with everyone, there were always some kids who seemed to be invisible. I assumed, with misunderstanding and unawareness, that they were invisible because they were not inherently talented or because they weren’t working hard to achieve their goals.
Suddenly, though, I could relate to them. I was diagnosed with an invisible illness and I felt a bit invisible. I started noticing more of the kids on the outskirts and relating to them. I no longer took for granted everything I had, and I realized that some kids didn’t have as much as I did or they were going through challenges that no one knew about.
I believe everyone has some sort of struggle; some are external, some are internal. Some are plainly obvious, and some are invisible. It’s easy for everyone to see that the school bully might have an insecurity problem or the kid in the walking boot sprained his ankle. It’s not easy to see, though, that a different kid walks into a broken home on a daily basis or that that girl in math class has to take an insulin shot in the nurse’s office every day before lunch. Some people noticed me taking salt pills at lunch or leaving class to go on a walk, but no one could notice my brain fog, dizziness, or anxiety over walking into class for the first time after being out sick.
As a result, I started to pick up on cues people gave off that signaled they might be going through something, and I exercised much more caution and understanding in social settings. I had a newfound insight into the lives of everyone, and whether it was the star athlete or the loner in the back of the class, I got better and better at listening to others and relating to them. I focused more and more on providing others with a listening ear and a positive spirit. I know I was able to make a positive impact on people and form deeper relationships based on emotional connection in my senior year of high school — all because of the perspective and empathy I have developed. This past year, in my freshman year of college, I was able to thrive socially in a brand new, extremely diverse, environment, and I know the reason I connected with people of all ages, interests, colors, and creeds all stemmed from my ability to put myself in others’ shoes. I would’ve never had that level of empathy if POTS didn’t make me put on some brand new shoes myself.
Creativity
I never saw myself as a creative person. To this day, if you ask me to draw a self-portrait, the best I can do is a glorified stick figure. I always associated creativity with being good at art or design. However, I have realized that my personal quest to live better with POTS has sparked a creative fire in me — I am constantly looking to use creativity to innovate and improve my health and well-being.
Everyone with chronic illness or pain has to be creative in some way just to function on a daily basis. Whether it’s carrying around a POTS pack, trying a unique diet or exercise plan, or finding a new way to incorporate salt into a meal, a quick look at POTS forums shows that POTSies are constantly innovating to improve their health.
Personally, I was willing to try anything and everything to improve my situation, which led to me researching and trying different habits, strategies, exercise plans, ways of eating, and anything else you can think of. I took what worked, discarded what didn’t, and tried to add anything new that I could. I loved making changes and seeing positive results. Self-improvement continues to be one of the main tenets of my life to this day for that reason.
My daily routine now includes cold showers, which help me with brain fog, body temperature regulation, and anxious thoughts. Meditation helps me control my thoughts and feelings and stay focused. An appreciation journal, allows me to reflect and keeps me focused on the positives in my life. Recently, I’ve also adopted a morning mobility/stretching routine (helps my muscles feel better for the day), a low-carb diet with minimal grain intake and no dairy (limits inflammation and solves lactose and gluten-caused stomach issues), and a planned strength-training workout routine (always makes my body feel better, clears my mind, and give me an endorphin rush, and I like the aesthetic part too!). All of these changes to my lifestyle are a result of my intellectual curiosity and my desire to set my body up for success. My motivation to optimize my health comes from my past handicaps from my health, and I will never again take my health for granted; I’ll always be looking for new ways to better my body.
This creativity has carried over to my daily habits and has led me to become a student of life. I am now a voracious consumer of podcasts and audiobooks, and I listen to people such as Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and Aubrey Marcus for inspiration and strategies on how I can improve my habits and happiness. Honestly, I just try and read about people I admire or want to emulate, and then I see which of their habits and mindsets I want to adopt.
One podcast I listen to, in particular, The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson, is an invaluable source of health information for me, and I’ve probably applied to my own life something from every episode (I definitely think some episodes there have helped me with POTS. Especially the ones on sleep, diet, and mental models).
I now view myself as a creative person. I also know I am an innovator and a learner, and I think that’s all because of the initial initiative and creativity I used to help me live a better life with POTS.
Positivity
The last perk of POTS is that I now live with an overwhelming sense of positivity in my life. I think I kind of paid for this positivity by suffering through some of my “prime” and “easiest/happiest” years, but I truly can say that I’ve come out of my unusual high school experience with a much more optimistic attitude. Since I hit such a low point in my life, I have seen myself continually rise above, bettering my health, relationships, habits, and happiness. I am not discouraged or intimidated by much (except for asking a girl on a date :)) because I know that I have the tools to get through challenges and the perspective to learn from failures. I feel that I can relate to almost anyone I meet or know, and I am constantly looking for ways to educate myself and improve myself, especially my health and fitness. I can truly say I believe I’ve been taking steps in a positive direction every day recently, and my drive to get better comes from knowing how it feels to be at my lowest — I want to do everything in my power to never be there again. I also force myself to be optimistic, especially when I don’t want to be. I’ve been through my fair share of tough situations and I’ve reacted to each one in a different way. I know that reacting negatively will often only make it worse, so I feel as if I owe it to myself to be optimistic.
What I love the most about my positivity is when it affects others. Some of my closest friends at Michigan fed off of my optimistic energy, and it was a great feeling to pump them up, help them through tough times, or put a smile on their faces when I saw them. Having a joyful moment with someone truly keeps me going. I want to lead by example, and I know, most of the time, I and the people around me will be better off if I keep up my unbridled positivity. It’s helped me all the way from Mayo to Michigan.
Let me know in the comments: Are there any perks or positives of your unique situation with POTS or chronic illness? I would love to hear your view, as would everyone else reading this post!
Thank you as always for reading and, if you want to be a superhero, please be sure to spread this post and the word of POTS positivity with your family, friends, and social media. I appreciate the feedback and support immensely, and responses can go a long way in improving the content on this blog. You can also reach out to me through the “Contact” section at the top — I am always looking to answer questions or provide support in any way I can. Thank you again for reading.
Let’s keep making POTS a positive!