Every flicker of a symptom. Every MRI. Every “what if it gets worse?” If you live with MS, you know that question all too well. And it makes sense. When you live with uncertainty, your brain naturally becomes future-oriented.
Every symptom becomes a calculation:
- Is this new?
- Is this permanent?
- Is this the beginning of my decline?
We tell ourselves we’re just being realistic. Prepared. Responsible.
But recently, I realized there’s a difference between preparing for possibilities and emotionally rehearsing tragedies.
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That realization came after reading What Comes Next by Jess Connolly, a devotional for people walking through heartbreak, burnout, and brokenness – which, if we’re being honest, includes living with chronic illness too.
In one section, she shares three questions that felt so relevant to life with MS:
- How do you want this to go?
- How do you want to have shown up and handled it when it’s over?
- What story do you want to tell when this is finished?
And the more I sat with them, the more I realized how rarely we ask ourselves the flip side of our fear.
Because most of us spend so much time mentally preparing for disaster that we forget to prepare ourselves to actually live.
MS Trains You to Live Inside Imaginary Futures
I talked about this recently during one of my Healing Habits coaching calls, and every woman could relate to it.
The details were different for each person:
- grieving old energy
- worrying about work
- disappointing family
- planning around fatigue
- trying not to become “the woman with MS”
But underneath all of it was the same exhausting pattern: mentally managing imaginary futures all day long.
No wonder we’re tired. We’re not just living our actual lives.
We’re emotionally carrying:
- future fears
- anticipated losses
- imagined conversations
- worst-case scenarios
All while trying to function normally.
One of the biggest reasons this hits so hard for women with MS is because many of us were the overfunctioning women.
The women who:
- handled everything
- carried everyone
- filled every possible gap
- took pride in being capable
Then MS introduced limits. And that creates a painful internal conflict because:
your ambition survived the diagnosis, but your energy didn’t.
That line came directly from our coaching call, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
The Loss Is Real. So Is the Choice.
I want to be clear: This is not about pretending MS is easy. The grief is real.
You lost something when you got this diagnosis:
- certainty
- ease
- trust in your body
- assumptions about your future
That deserves to be acknowledged and processed.
But after we acknowledge the grief, we still get to ask: “How do I want this to go?”
Not: “How do I guarantee nothing bad ever happens?”
Because none of us can do that.
But we can decide:
- how we want to show up
- what kind of relationship we want with ourselves
- how much of our current life we’re willing to sacrifice to imagined futures
One woman in our coaching group shared how she had to rethink almost everything… riding her bike, gardening, even making dinner.
But instead of asking: “Why can’t I do this anymore?”
She started asking: “How can I do it now?”
That’s resilience. Not toxic positivity. Not denial. Just refusing to let fear write the entire story.
Stop Planning Your Life Around Fantasy Energy
One of the places this shows up most is in the way we plan our weeks.
So many women with MS are still planning based on “fantasy energy.”
Fantasy you:
- has unlimited stamina
- never crashes
- handles everything effortlessly
Real you? She’s exhausted by Tuesday morning looking at the schedule fantasy you created.
And instead of adjusting the plan, we judge ourselves.
But living well with MS often means learning how to plan for real you instead of constantly trying to prove you’re still the old version of yourself.
So before planning your week, try asking:
- How do I want this week to go?
- What actually matters most?
- What deserves my best energy?
- What would make this week feel supportive instead of overwhelming?
Because rest is not something you earn after productivity. Rest is part of how you sustain yourself. That’s a hard lesson for overfunctioning women. But it’s necessary… nonnegotiable.
Prime Your Nervous System Before the Spiral Starts
Years ago, I attended a Tony Robbins event where he taught the concept of “priming” your brain each morning. And I was reminded of it as I was going through this exercise here and how much it also applies to life with MS.
Because most of us wake up and immediately start scanning:
- How do my legs feel?
- Am I fatigued?
- Is today going to be a bad day?
Before coffee. Before we even sit up. And that immediately primes the nervous system for threat.
The nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a real danger and an anticipated one. So if your first act every morning is mentally inventorying everything that might go wrong, your body starts responding as if the threat is already here.
That matters because chronic stress is one of the most well-documented triggers for MS symptoms and inflammation.
So instead of beginning the day with fear, try beginning with intention. Even for two minutes.
Ask yourself:
- How do I want today to go?
- How do I want to show up today?
- What story do I want to tell about today tonight?
Not your fantasy day. Your real day.
You’re not “manifesting” a symptom-free life. You’re not pretending MS isn’t there.
You’re simply deciding — before the spiral starts — how you want to experience the day you’ve been given. It makes a difference.
Your Brain Is Going to Rehearse Something Every Day
So let’s come back to the original question: “What if it gets worse?”
I’m not going to tell you it won’t. None of us know that.
But I am going to tell you this: If your brain is going to rehearse something every single day anyway… you might as well choose what it rehearses.
You can keep rehearsing:
- fear
- decline
- disaster
- imaginary futures
Or you can begin rehearsing:
- intention
- presence
- resilience
- possibility
- the life that’s actually happening right now
Not a fantasy. Not denial. Just a different script.
So maybe this week, instead of asking: “What if it gets worse?”
Try asking:
- How do I want this to go?
- How do I want to show up?
- What story do I want to tell?
And let those questions start reshaping the road your mind walks every day.
Want a Simple First Step?
If this conversation resonates with you, I’d love to invite you to my free class where we talk about how to build a life that actually works WITH your energy instead of constantly fighting against it.
👉 Join my free webinar
How to Help Slow MS Progression Starting with Just One Habit
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Full Podcast Transcript
Read the full transcript here:
[00:00:00] What if it gets worse? If you live with MS, you've probably asked yourself that question more times than you can count. But what if the real problem isn't the question itself, it's how much time we're spending mentally living in the future that hasn't even happened yet and may never happen? Let's talk about the question, let's talk about the problem, and let's talk about a solution.
And before we get started, I wanna invite you to something special. Living with MS can feel overwhelming, but one habit can shift everything. That's what I'll show you inside my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, Starting With Just One Habit. Think of it as your first step towards more energy, confidence, and hope.
Save your seat at aleenebrennan.com/webinar. Welcome to my MS podcast, where women with MS learn how to slow [00:01:00] progression and live a life they love. I'm Aleene Brennan, your MS sister and a practitioner who knows the science and the reality of living this too. Each week, I share simple science-backed habits to boost your energy, stay consistent, and feel like yourself again.
Because MS may be a part of your story, but it doesn't get to write the ending. Hello, my friends, and welcome back. Today, I wanna talk about a question that I think every woman with MS has asked herself at some point. For you, maybe it was this week, maybe it's this morning, maybe while you were waiting for MRI results or a new symptom flared up, or maybe it was 2:00 in the morning when you were lying awake and couldn't sleep.
The question is, what if MS gets worse? And here's the thing, I don't think that's a bad question. [00:02:00] It's a very natural question. When you live with uncertainty, your brain naturally tries to protect you by looking ahead. So with every new sensation you feel in your body, you go through the checklist. Is this a new symptom?
Is it going to be permanent? Is this the beginning of my decline? And I get it. I'm the kind of person who likes to think through worst-case scenarios, partly because it makes me feel more prepared. Because I think if I can figure out how to handle that, maybe I won't be so afraid of it. But recently, I've come to realize there is a difference between preparing for possibilities and emotionally rehearsing tragedies.
And I think a lot of us living with MS cross that line without even realizing it. A few weeks ago, I was reading a devotional that a friend had given me called [00:03:00] What Comes Next by Jess Connolly. It's a 40-day devotional for anyone walking through a, quote, unquote, "hard season." Like, she labels it as heartbreak, burnout, brokenness.
I'd say MS kind of falls into any or many of those categories there, right? And one of the questions that she asked in the book really made me stop and think because I found it to actually be so relevant and applicable to MS. It made me realize I spend so much time rehearsing futures that haven't happened yet, and maybe never will.
And maybe you do, too. Again, like, a symptom shows up and suddenly your brain jumps six months ahead, 10 years ahead, 20 years ahead. You're no longer dealing with today's symptom. You're imagining future disability, like doomsday, worst-case scenario. Meanwhile, it's still Tuesday. Nothing has actually changed.
But emotionally, your body is experiencing the [00:04:00] stress of that worst-case scenario. Because here's the thing. Your body's response isn't necessarily good at distinguishing between what is real, like what's actually happening in your life in that moment, versus what's happening in your head. So a lot of times your body can respond to an anticipated worst-case scenario as if you are actually living it in that moment.
It can trigger just as much stress in your body. And we know what stress does to MS. Well, this actually came up in one of our Healing Habits coaching calls recently, and it just stood out to me so much of how many of us are living this. Like, different versions of it, but how many of us are doing this habit over and over and over again.
Some of us are worried about work and our careers, and you have, like, these worst-case scenarios of, about how everything's just gonna fall apart. Or maybe it's you're worried about your relationships, whether it [00:05:00] is family or friends or neighbors. Each of us has a different fear or worry on our minds. The stories are different, but the pattern is the same.
Everyone is carrying these futures that haven't happened yet. No wonder we're exhausted We're not just living our current lives, we're also mentally managing 10 different versions of tomorrow. And I feel like this tied in so well with last week's episode, which was about fantasy me. You know fantasy me.
Fantasy me plans like the 12 hour productive days. Fantasy me thinks she can accomplish 14 things before lunch. Fantasy me has unlimited energy. And then real me has to show up and live out fantasy me's planning when real me just wants a nap. But this week I realized fantasy me isn't just planning my schedule, she's planning my future too.[00:06:00]
She's imagining every possible scenario, trying to solve problems that don't even exist yet, and preparing for disasters that may never happen. Meanwhile, real me is standing in the kitchen trying to decide what's for dinner. And maybe that's one of the reasons we feel so overwhelmed, because we're constantly asking ourselves questions we can't answer.
Like, what if MS gets worse? Yes, maybe. What if this symptom is the start of something bigger? Maybe. What if things change in the future and they're not in my favor? Maybe. We actually don't know. So I've been trying to replace that question, what if it gets worse, with something different. I'm not trying to stick my head in the sand.
I'm not trying to, like, force positivity into something. But I want to flip that question so that I and we can start living in this moment. So I start asking myself, [00:07:00] what do I actually know is true today? Like today, not five years from now, not tomorrow, today. And that's a very different conversation because today I know I have MS.
I also know I have choices. I can talk with my doctor about a lot of different options. There's so much that I can do through diet and lifestyle. There's so many resources available for body work. There's physical therapy. Like, there's so many choices that we have now that people living with MS did not have years ago and definitely not decades ago.
We have support on a level that was never before available. So we have things that we can do to care for ourselves today. You also have a life that you are living right now, and it's easy for us to lose our focus on what we do have today when we're constantly rehearsing those worst-case scenarios for our future.
And rehearsing all [00:08:00] of those things, like playing those worst-case scenarios and what if scenarios on repeat in our minds over and over and over again, that's not just exhausting us mentally. It's also exhausting us emotionally and physically, too. And that can hold us back from living the lives that we have right now.
And I know many of the women listening to this podcast are women who have big dreams and strong ambition, and you do not want to drain any ounce of energy unnecessarily because MS has already introduced enough limits. And yes, that's frustrating because your ambition survived the diagnosis, but your energy didn't.
So we need to learn how to protect the energy that we have, and part of doing that is not draining it with all of these worst case scenarios in our future. So here's what I want you to try this week. The next time you catch yourself spiraling into what if it [00:09:00] gets worse, pause and ask yourself, "What do I actually know to be true right now?"
Bring yourself back to today, this moment, the facts, not the fears, because that is where life is happening, and that's where the control is. That is where the options are. So I don't know what MS will look like for you five years from now. I don't know what it'll look like for me either. But I do know this.
Your brain is going to rehearse something every day. The question is if it's rehearsing fear or whether it's rehearsing hope and possibility. Like, why not rehearse your best case scenario? Why not tell yourself that reassurance of all of the resources that you have available to you right now so that we can live the life that is right in front of us right now?
So my friends, this week, notice what you're rehearsing, and if you catch yourself living in that imaginary future, [00:10:00] come back. Come back to today because today deserves your attention. And that's it. Short and sweet, but important and powerful nonetheless. Don't let fantasy you plan your calendar, and don't let her plan your future too.
Your brain is incredibly powerful. The more you rehearse something in your mind, the deeper the groove becomes in your brain. Don't deepen fear. Deepen hope and possibility. And that's it for today's episode of my MS podcast. I hope you're walking away with one small step you can put into practice today because that is how real change happens.
And remember, MS has its own biological clock, which means the sooner you start, the more power you have to influence your future. The best time to begin is [00:11:00] now. That's why I created my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, Starting With Just One Habit Today. Grab your spot at alinebrennan.com/webinar.
See you there.
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