Spoonie Pyjama Party

If you’re a regular listener of The Rest Room podcast, you may have sensed a little bit of a theme. I’m very interested in exploring tools and techniques to help us learn how to live well with chronic illness. We’ve explored topics like pacing and how to safely and sustainably introduce movement into your life - things that are often lumped into the bucket of “self-management”. To me, self-management has always been thinking about the stuff I have to do myself (often outside of a medical setting) to manage my conditions on a day-to-day basis. But I never really took the time to ask: what are we actually talking about when we say “self-management”? For so many people living with long-term conditions, being told to “self-manage” leaves them feeling neglected and abandoned without appropriate care. It can feel like a cost-saving exercise for an overstretched healthcare system, and patients are often left alone to “manage” as best as they can. It t