Enjoying Life While Managing Heart Failure
Your Emotions
It is common for patients with heart failure to feel a lot of different emotions. Learn tips and tricks to manage your emotions and stress.
Having an illness like heart failure may be a challenge.
Sometimes people with heart failure feel sad, depressed, nervous, or stressed. It is normal to have times when you feel sad or “down.” Here are some tips on things you can do to feel better and also how to know when you need some extra help from your health care team to work through these feelings.
It is common to have feelings of sadness or even depression.
Here are some things you can do on your own to feel better:
Stress is a part of life and day-to-day stress can’t always be removed. Too much stress, however, may be harmful to the heart. Report stress, anxiety, depression, problems sleeping or any other troubling symptoms to your healthcare team.
Find healthy ways to cope with these feelings. Managing your stress can help you feel better and promote heart health.
Feeling sad but able to continue with typical activity, able to find joy, completing small goals, taking medications regularly.
Unable to find joy, no longer keeping up with activity, loneliness, laugh less, starting to miss medications.
Hopeless, isolated, considered harming oneself or others, unable to get out of bed, not taking medications as prescribed.
Interactive Guide