You mentioned a "toolbox".. How does one assemble one of those?
If you're up to reading more of my intricacies, you might like to go thru my thread on that ➔
here.
In "short", my way was
- to look up every single symptom (splitting them up into contributing symptoms) again and again, searching for possible triggers and treatments,
- to compile systematically a list of all the many 100s of treatments,
- to prioritise and work thru them, 'proving them all and keeping the best', meaning anything that works even a little bit without harming (which can change: treatments are deliberate triggers),
- ending up to find that webinars generally and youtube specifically are my most potent resources, as well as the forums.
An important part of the toolbox however is not to get the tools to somehow force the Tesla back up to speed and range, no matter what, but to learn to pace well. I'm always much more productive if I go slow than if I go fast for a short time, even if I don't seem to be overdoing it. Many days I can do something the whole day in moderate to slow speed, need much less breaks. Also regular task-switching as a form of eternal taking breaks. I don't actually need breaks, what I call a break is when I go online, for work, health or play, plus it's my Mars bar for the activity before.
She did say that she just didn't want to accept it and was basically trying to pretend it wasn't real - in a sense.
Great advice above.
Possible root causes for attitudes and behaviour are good to know.... Fear/denial, like all other stages of grief (see link above) and inconvenience / Zweckoptimismus ("calculated optimism").
But not necessarily to confront someone else with - better to slip in gently (like: do you think I'm praps in a state of denial?...)
More superficially: ignoring it of course fits to her attitude: sickness doesn't happen. And if it seriously did, her world might break apart - then she'd be in a major state of distress and despair. That seems even more reason to live that way. As far as that gets us.
It seems a type of perfectionism, so working against that with the Pareto principle attitude: 80% / 20% might help.
What she probably feels like is that she
has to take over that 1/3 of the battery life that you are now missing 1/3. Instead it might be good for both to not get everything done, but to prioritize better, by asking each other: what needs to be done most today.
Not letting ourselves become dragged down by this kind of stuff is of course a positive part of this attitude, rather than being "caught in the headlights like a rabbit", or doubling suffering by suffering about it. But the headlights are there and we need to know exactly where they are, so we can decrease their danger.
So more fitting is to look for the headlights to be active about them, rather than to deny them.
I'm trying to help my wife see the fragility in herself in the defensive posture she takes toward nearly everything in life and to see that a change toward the positive would really help her enjoy her life and let her soul breath a whole lot more than it does with the way she has her coping mechanisms currently arranged.
Sounds excellent! Maybe she can partly learn to see what she thinks is "strength" as a weakness, and find her other strengths, learn to let go, learn to love (everything) more and do less.
(For some people therapy may be necessary for such a paradigm shift, and as way there couple therapy.)
But we can't force it and need to stay independent of that, as I think you already are trying.
massive amount of credit that she is due for the way she runs our household.
Yeah, I can imagine - good to give credit to a certain extent. But a life that is mainly geared to a perfect "household" (etc.) may not be fulfilling, and the life ahead can be more so, cos this condition like other "strokes of fate" questions what life is about - love and not dust-freedom. So less may be more. Quality time rather than quantity.
surprised at the degree to which others are suffering; I am still pretty functional in comparison. I feel like a lightweight
The good thing about this is you have realized in time. I didn't. I pushed thru. My wife tried to stop me. But I crashed big time and "for good" (in several senses of the phrase). Might be good for your wife to hear real life stories like that, to re-focus your lives.