Coping With Shame & Stress When Living With a Chronic Illness
- The woman featured here, Sarah Ciuffetelli, has been dealing with psoriasis outbreaks since she was a child.
- Sarah’s mother has severe psoriasis, so it wasn’t a shock to her parents when she was diagnosed at three years old.
- Psoriasis, a hereditary chronic skin condition, can be treated with many different approaches like topical ointments or injectable therapies but there is no cure.
- Sarah explained that, like many others, it was difficult for her to deal with the shame and embarrassment that can come with the disease.
- Sharing her story and struggles with others helped her to cope & learn to feel comfortable in her own skin.
Unfortunately, there is no cure and while there are many treatments available to help people living with psoriasis when they have flare-ups, coping with the social and emotional side effects of the disease can be really difficult as well.
Read More Sarah’s mother has severe psoriasis, so it wasn’t a shock to her parents when she was diagnosed at three years old. Of course at that age, Sarah herself was unaware and as a result she didn’t know what it was like to have normal skin. In Sarah’s case, learning to cope involved learning to deal with the shame associated with psoriasis. “One thing I remember in high school is being very, very socially aware of it,” she explains. “Dating would come into mind. Because of my particular psoriasis, most of the time [the patches appeared] on my torso. It was a lot of stress.” She explains that it took her years to feel comfortable in her own skin and it involved quite a bit of changing her mode of thinking. For Sarah, this included sharing her story with others who could relate, and even be inspired by her struggle. “I really started my healing, my mental healing journey, with psoriasis when I opened my Instagram account. I know that sounds really funny, but it was a secret account. No one knew it was me, my face didn’t appear … It was a way of me showing the world what I looked like without actually revealing who I was,” Sarah explains. “Through that, I was getting lots of positive comments, lots of people thanking me for sharing it and being so open about it.”
Through sharing her story, Sarah says she eventually learned to feel comfortable in her own skin. There’s a special strength in learning to be vulnerable.
Check out SurvivorNet’s resources for people living with psoriasis here.
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