TEAM POSITIVE: How to Build Support for Someone Coping with Chronic Illness

Introduction

Welcome to Team Positive

This section is a brief overview of what the concept of Team Positive is, where it came from, and why it is important to you right now.

If you're reading this book, my guess is that it's because something catastrophic has just happened to you or somebody that you love, somebody in your family, your spouse, your brother or sister, your child. It might even be a close acquaintance or friend. Life as you knew it is no longer the same.

Perhaps there has been a serious diagnosis such as a chronic illness like Crohn's, Alzheimer's, or Parkinson's; a chronic condition like fibromyalgia or dementia; or a life-threatening situation like cancer. All of these situations and the after-effects that will occur are both difficult to experience and address.

This book has been designed with these factors in mind. It has also been written because of a lack of resources designed to address how both the individual with a dire diagnosis and the caregivers should proceed in the face of such a challenge.

Team Positive is an educational and support program designed to give you and those involved the framework and tools to expand everyone's capacities and perspectives. When used, these approaches have been found to ensure greater resilience during an incredibly challenging time. The main concepts you will learn about are the following:

● The Pyramid of Support: A basic understanding of the structure of support not only for the person with the illness but for the main caregivers as well.

● The Four Main Life Engagement Areas: A simple way to ensure a balanced approach to living while managing one's physical, mental, and emotional energy.

● The Life Map: Designed to help identify personal barriers, your typical responses, and what truly matters in such a challenging situation to provide you with both direction and motivation.

● Coping Skills: I have included dozens of concepts, some brief and others more robust, that can help address various forms of distress and uncertainty.

● Communication Guidelines: Different considerations and explanations for how to engage with team members to increase compassionate support.

I'm a licensed mental health counselor with over twenty years of experience in the mental, educational, and behavioral health fields working to help individuals, couples, and families address chronic health, anxiety, and adjustment issues. This includes those dealing with anxiety and depression brought on by the unrelenting stress of such challenging situations.

I am adept in using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), and Integral Psychotherapy (IP) approaches to increase client awareness and emotional flexibility. You can expect many of the tools and concepts commonly utilized within my practice to be found within the following pages.

More importantly, though, is that I've had to deal with this experience personally three times in my life. First was my own experience, as a sixth-grader, in and out of the hospital for several years. Doctors were never quite sure what was causing my illness, but the diagnosis ranged from Crohn's disease to simply being lactose intolerant. The second event was when my father was diagnosed with cancer, and the third was when my wife started to become extremely sick and lost a lot of weight, and we didn't know why. It took the medical community three months to figure out it was Crohn's.

In all of these cases, especially the latest two, we found ourselves wondering how to engage with such challenges. How do we bounce back? It was difficult to see a framework to help us through it all. The kicker for me was that these last two events happened back to back. Just as one situation stabilized with my father and came under control with promising results, the next case arose with my wife.