You can live well with a chronic health issue or a disability. That’s the powerful message Dr. Jennifer Caspari—psychologist and chronic illness advocate—offers in her new book You Are More Than Your Body.

Dr. Caspari’s lived experience as someone who was born with a physical disability gives her unique insight that, along with her specialty in health psychology, helps her understand the impact of physical challenges. In our recent conversation, we explored a topic that’s a struggle for many of us: Can you still manifest the life you want even while experiencing pain or health issues? The answer? Yes—but it requires a shift in how you view well-being and goals.

Well-Being Without Toxic Positivity

In the wellness space, well-being is often seen as trying to attain an optimal state of health and vitality. Manifesting, meanwhile, is depicted as something that requires ceaseless positivity—whether it’s in our thoughts, emotions, or energy.

These messages are examples of toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is the idea that we should have a positive mindset rather than validate or experience emotional pain. Healthy positivity, on the other hand, accepts a range of emotions and supports well-being.

Toxic positivity is inherently ableist. After all, what if your health condition never improves, or what if your energy level is severely limited no matter what you try? And what if you can’t always be positive? Where does that leave you?

People who struggle with health need more support and understanding, not less. According to Dr. Caspari, “Chronic pain and health conditions are often stressful and mentally and physically draining.” This is one of the many reasons we need to expand our view of well-being to include living well with chronic health conditions. We need to acknowledge that well-being isn’t achieved once mental and physical health is perfected and all symptoms are gone.

So, what does it look like to live well with chronic health conditions? According to Dr. Caspari, “Well-being and living a life well-lived involve knowing what is important and meaningful to you, and taking action that aligns with your values.”

The idea that well-being requires identifying whether you’re living by your values is a great starting point for manifesting your best life. In my book, Heal Your Past to Manifest Your Future, I distinguish between wound-based goals and value-based goals. Wound-based goals are goals that come from toxic cultural messages and unmet childhood needs. Value-based goals, on the other hand, come from the things that are meaningful to you and help you thrive. Once you begin to live according to your values, it’s easier to experience well-being and thrive.

When it comes to your body and health, one value in particular can help you thrive: rest.

Thriving Requires Rest

In a culture that over-values productivity, it can be challenging to allow ourselves to rest. But, to live well, it’s necessary. According to Dr. Caspari, well-being includes pausing to check in with yourself and allowing yourself to rest. She states, “This relates to giving ourselves permission to do things differently, because often we do certain things on autopilot or out of habit that are not actually helpful. If I am used to running myself into the ground, doing so may be familiar to me, but it increases my pain and fatigue. So, I have to permit myself to slow down, rest, and understand, through experience, that I am not doing anything wrong by resting just because it may be new or unfamiliar.”

In addition to giving ourselves permission to rest, we also need to attend to our physical needs if we want to feel well enough to focus on manifesting.

Thriving Requires Attending to Basic Physical Needs

We can’t focus on manifesting the life we want while also neglecting our physical needs. Eventually it catches up with us. The first step is to start noticing your internal experience—when you get hungry, irritable, tense, tired.

Dr. Caspari states, “Once you notice how you are feeling, you can then take action to meet your needs. For example, drinking water, having a snack, or doing some brief stretches if your muscles are feeling stiff. If you know it is difficult for you to drink water or eat regularly, two things that help our bodies and moods, it can be helpful to set alarms on your phone that go off every few hours and remind you to drink water and/or eat a snack.”

Building decompression time into your daily routine can also be helpful. For example, Dr. Caspari suggests taking a few minutes to put lotion on your body before getting into bed at night or starting the day to mindfully enjoy a cup of tea or coffee without screens.

Thriving Requires Regulating Emotions

Manifesting your best life can be challenging when you have chronic pain or a health condition because it can be so emotionally draining. This is why emotion regulation skills can be especially helpful.

Dr. Caspari states, “Emotion regulation skills, which help us to manage the intensity of our emotions, such as slow breathing, mindfulness exercises, and reframing our thoughts to be more balanced and neutral, lowers emotional intensity and stress, and can lower the intensity of uncomfortable physical sensations like pain. This effect can be related to having less muscle tension when we practice emotion regulation skills, and these skills can make it easier to cope with the challenges of navigating chronic health symptoms.”

She continues, “It is natural to resist and fight against uncomfortable physical sensations, such as pain. Yet, fighting against sensations often leads to us getting caught in an ongoing, and unwinnable, tug-of-war with sensations/symptoms and makes them worse. Emotion regulation skills can help us tune into the present moment as it is, and not fight against it, which can decrease sensations and reduce the unhelpful impact of pain. In other words, fighting against pain is like adding fuel to a fire. When we stop fighting, the fire may still be there, but we are not fueling it, so it is not as big and is easier to cope with.”

Regulating emotions can help us feel more centered and grounded. Rather than wishing that things were different, we’re in a more empowered place to live our best lives rather than waiting for perfect conditions.

Stop Blaming Yourself and Start Living

In my work I often address toxic positivity and try to create a more inclusive, trauma-informed, and healthy approach to manifesting. I love Dr. Caspari’s focus on self-acceptance and self-compassion and was wondering if she had any words of comfort or reassurance for people who worry that they “manifested” a health condition.

Here is what Dr. Caspari had to say: “I hope it goes without saying that no one is to blame for a health challenge, diagnosis, or chronic illness that they are living with. While we can’t control our health status or whether we live with chronic illness or a disability, I do think evidence-based tools like mindfulness, body neutrality, self-compassion, and other contemplative and therapeutic practices can allow us to create (or manifest) a great life right now. That’s one way to think about our own agency: we control how we care for ourselves in the present moment.”

According to Dr. Caspari, it’s also important to believe in yourself when it comes to manifesting your best life with health conditions. She states, “Too often, I think it is easy to assume we can’t achieve something and stop ourselves from going after our values and what is important to us. Our thoughts can impact our feelings and behaviors. If I believe I can’t achieve something, I likely won’t take action. Believing I can achieve a goal sets the stage for taking action.”

Whether you’re experiencing migraines, perimenopause symptoms, chronic pain, a life-long disability, or some other health issue, it’s important to see if blaming yourself or waiting for your symptoms to improve is holding you back. Your life doesn’t have to be perfect for you to start working on your value-based goals. And you definitely don’t need to put your life on hold until all your health symptoms disappear. Instead, you can learn to live well and even thrive while experiencing health challenges.