Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Understanding the Role of Everyday Life in Coping With Health Challenges

ABSTRACT

Theories of everyday life provide valuable insights into the experience of health and illness. Everyday life, as an essential part of social reality, is characterized by routines, familiarity, and practices that offer meaning, orientation, and security. However, its ordinariness also enables transformation, as disruptions caused by illness or social change necessitate adaptation and innovation. Nursing extends beyond medical treatment by considering how illness affects daily routines, relationships, and emotions. A theoretical framework of everyday life is particularly relevant in nursing, helping practitioners understand how people experience health, illness, and care. Acknowledging the role of daily living supports people in integrating health challenges into their routines and fosters person‐centered care. Given the absence of a unified theory of everyday life, this study synthesizes concepts from various thinkers against empirical insights on health and illness. Philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Schütz highlight the importance of everyday preconceptions in interpreting life. They argue that individuals navigate challenges by relying on familiar patterns and adapting their experiences within daily life. In contrast, critical phenomenologists like Ahmed, Yancy, Salamon, and Al‐Saji challenge this perspective, arguing that experience is shaped by social, political, and historical structures, including ethnicity, gender, class, and colonialism. In turn, theorists such as Lefebvre, Heller, and de Certeau emphasize everyday life as a dynamic space where repetition, creativity, and social relations intersect. Together, these approaches form a foundation for understanding the significance of everyday life. The synthesis of these theories with empirical findings underscores that everyday life plays a crucial role in coping with health and illness. It provides stability and orientation while enabling change, making it both a source of security and a space for transformation. This dual role of everyday life can be leveraged in nursing care to support people in managing illness and adapting to health challenges.

1. Introduction

Everyday life consists of ordinary, repetitive routines that feel self‐evident. Activities such as eating, cooking, working, and socializing form a stable network of these routines, even though a great deal must occur to make them so. Routines are characterized by repetition, which is essential for their formation and recognition. Routines usually involve patterns of interaction rather than isolated behaviors. While they exhibit stability through recurrence, routines are not static and also not unproblematic; they can evolve gradually through practice, variation, and adaptation, and clash with other routines or routines of others (Becker 2005; Smith 2015). Once routines are established, we expect consistency, so everyday life offers familiarity, security, and predictability. This kind of normality makes the world manageable and brings our daily experiences into a comforting sense of order. Everyday life is embedded in a person's culture and relationships, activities, and experiences. Berger and Luckmann (1992) emphasize that it is only in this context that a person fully reveals who he or she is. “Among the many realities, one presents itself as reality par excellence. This is the reality of everyday life.” (ibid., p. 24) Everyday life serves as a point of reference for the perception of the world, whatever this may look like for the individual. It provides the basis for understanding and engaging with reality from the very moment of existence (Handerek 2009).

The daily routine often goes unnoticed and only becomes the subject of conscious reflection on certain occasions. Awareness of everyday life arises when monotony awakens the desire for change or when disruption awakens the longing for normality. Exceptional situations, such as staying in a foreign environment, make the value of the familiar clear: the bed, home‐cooked meals, the mother tongue, or the loved ones. Returning to the familiar makes it conspicuous, exposing its contingency and allowing the everyday's unique character to emerge (Alloa 2018). The true value of everyday life is therefore often only revealed in its absence, especially in the case of illness, as it disrupts what is taken for granted and brings what is natural and unexamined into conscious awareness.

This is why everyday life can also create uncertainty and instability. It encompasses all the activities of daily life, with all their differences and conflicts, not only in the case of illness. In this sense, everyday life is also characterized by a certain lack of order, closely linked to the diversity and heterogeneity of daily experiences and encounters. Even though we all eat, sleep, and work, we do not do so in the same way, with the same resources, or under the same conditions. It is this lack of conformity that sometimes makes everyday life problematic (Smith 2015).

1.1. The Importance of Everyday Life in Health and Illness

Nursing goes beyond medical treatment and considers the impact of illness on everyday life, relationships, and emotions. Just as daily life offers stability, it is disrupted and challenged by age‐related limitations and illnesses. Recognizing the role of everyday life in health can help people manage their challenges within familiar routines and enhance person‐centered care (Schrems 2025). Research underscores the profound influence of everyday life on health experiences and vice versa. Studies show, for instance, that frail older adults report better health when maintaining independence and engagement in everyday life despite limitations (Andreasen et al. 2015; Ebrahimi et al. 2013). Chronic pain makes everyday tasks like putting on socks, lifting shopping bags, or holding a baby challenging (Breivik et al. 2013). Housework, important for well‐being, becomes burdensome and is characterized by gender roles. Women with chronic heart disease prioritize it over leisure and focus on the family, with a corresponding mental load, while men focus on work and finances (Husser and Roberto 2009; Najafi Ghezeljeh et al. 2014). People suffering from cancer must adapt to side effects while striving for a sense of normal life through daily tasks (Pedersen et al. 2013). Children with cancer struggle to maintain a daily routine and normality together with their parents (Darcy et al. 2014). Stroke survivors experience a mix of adaptation, fear, and self‐management, emphasizing the importance of regaining everyday function (Kuluski et al. 2014; Satink et al. 2016). Various other diseases, including diabetes (Cleal et al. 2022; Rintala et al. 2013), chronic wounds (Zhu et al. 2020), pulmonary diseases (Carel 2018; Johansson et al. 2019), dementia (Egilstrod et al. 2019; Frewer‐Graumann 2020), or Parkinson (Sjödahl Hammarlund et al. 2018), effect everyday life for the ill people and their families. Despite different challenges, the common goal remains the restoration of normality and everyday life.

Illness interrupts, disrupts, or alters routines and the taken‐for‐granted aspects of life, creating uncertainty. It affects physical aspects like mobility and energy, psychological dimensions including identity and life goals, and social factors such as relationships, roles, and participation in activities, whether temporarily or permanently. The main task of nursing care is to support the individual in coping with everyday life when this is impaired by age or illness. This is also reflected in the widely used concept of “activities of daily living” (ADLs) (Katz 1983), which encompasses the basic abilities and needs that are necessary for independent living. The concept refers to everyday life, although there is not yet “the” concept of everyday life, but rather different perspectives and priorities. In the context of health and illness, a comprehensive framework for everyday life remains absent. The article seeks to bridge this gap by identifying key characteristics of everyday life and classifying them within philosophical and sociological frameworks to enhance understanding of their relevance for nursing. The aim is not to offer an exhaustive panorama of the concepts of everyday life, but to work out the essence of what it is based on and what of it can be made fruitful for understanding the experience of health and illness.

2. Characteristics of Everyday Life

Defining everyday life presents a certain challenge. As Lefebvre (2014) emphasizes, everyday life is at once simple and self‐evident, but also superficial in its banality and repetition. At the same time, it is deeply connected to existence itself and reveals both what needs to be changed and what is most difficult to change. Even in the seemingly simple question of how we live, a closer look reveals a mix of differences and similarities. In the following section, the similarities are highlighted.

2.1. Repetition and Routine as Central Characteristics of Everyday Life

Everyday life recurs daily and involves routine encounters, reinforcing stability through repetition (Felski 2000; Merriam‐Webster 2024a). The repetition of actions and a certain consistency with other people and collective systems contribute to maintaining the stability of everyday life, even to the point of rigid rituals. This consistency fosters not only security but also behavioral expectations, such as household chores completed, transportation running, and office elevators functioning. Disruptions, like an empty fridge or transit delays, unsettle us, forcing adjustments.

The aspect of repetition is closely tied to that of routine. Routines, defined as “a regular course of procedure” (Merriam‐Webster 2024b), minimize uncertainty, ensuring efficiency and predictability. They are structured behavioral patterns shaped by time, context, and order (Becker 2005; Zisberg et al. 2007). While often seen as rigid, they also support stability and adaptation, embedded within organizational cultures, structures, and technologies. Feldman and Pentland (2003) challenge the notion of routines as rigid, emphasizing their dynamic nature. Their research identifies the following key traits of organizational routines: repetition as a continuum rather than mindless replication; action patterns that incorporate interruptions, exceptions, errors, and improvisation; interdependent actions linked through sequential material or information flow; and multiple actors who may not be simultaneously present or aware of each other's roles (Feldman and Pentland 2003; Pentland and Hærem 2015).

Even if the boundaries are not clear and blurred, or are also used as synonyms in the literature, routines are distinguished from habits and norms. Social norms refer to actions over which people have control and are supported by shared expectations about what should or should not be done in different types of social situations (Bicchieri et al. 2023), e.g., greeting each other. Habits, on the other hand, describe personal behaviors as socially shaped dispositions to particular forms of activity or modes of response to the environment. They operate beneath the actor's consciousness; once learned, it no longer needs to tend to what one is doing (Anderson 2023), e.g., shaking hands when greeting someone. Routines are patterns of planned and regularly repeated actions that provide structure (Becker 2005), e.g., not shaking hands in pandemic times. The habit of shaking hands must be adapted to the daily routine. And as we all know from experience, this was not always easy.

Understanding individual, community, and family routines as action patterns of interdependent actions carried out by several actors can enhance the effectiveness of various healthcare measures, such as medication adherence, support for informal caregivers, or health promotion. They help manage stress, regulate activity, and maintain functional status, especially during life transitions. Maintaining routines can thus serve as a conceptual and therapeutic foundation for preserving functional status, especially during significant situational or life changes (Zisberg et al. 2007). Routines, integrated into people's broader lifestyles with or without social or familial support and aligned with individual and environmental factors, help achieve health goals and enhance well‐being. The prerequisites and outcomes of routines are influenced by factors rooted in people's daily lives and the systems involved, such as family, community, and cultural environment (Ruggeri et al. 2023). Routines reduce the psychological burden of decision‐making and simplify the complexity of social reality by structuring it into a familiar and predictable system of meanings. This creates ambivalence toward routines: on one hand, they provide predictability and security; on the other, they are often perceived as monotonous, boring, and stifling to creativity (Rytterström et al. 2010).

2.2. Automation, Self‐Evidence, and Familiarity as Consequences

Routine and repetition foster a degree of automation that is highly relevant to daily life. Automatic actions eliminate the need for constant conscious reflection in activities such as personal care, work, shopping, or commuting. These actions feel self‐evident. Within a social context, they function by relying on this taken‐for‐granted nature. Since everyday life is rooted in social participation, certain knowledge is accepted as universally plausible within a cultural group (Soeffner 2004). This is reflected in common behaviors like greetings, farewells, or general manners, whether in a morning care home routine or at a family Sunday breakfast. A shared reality among participants simplifies decision‐making and fosters a sense of security in action. This self‐evidence arises from collective intentions and communication, gradually evolving into automatic practices and thought patterns. These familiar practices manifest as both explicit and implicit knowledge, requiring little or no conscious effort (Emiliani and Passini 2017).

Thus, everyday life is not typically the subject of reflective considerations or scrutiny. It is constituted by experience, just as experience constitutes everyday life. It is only questioned when someone deviates from it or behaves differently. Even though, or perhaps because, everyday life is so self‐evident, we are capable of accounting for our actions within it. We are competent in this regard because it is the world we know and continually recreate, sometimes the same, sometimes new, or even changed through our actions. We are familiar with our primary interaction space and navigate it with greater confidence than other spaces. This confidence is based on the mutual presumption of competence among participants in everyday life (Soeffner 2004). Everyday life, therefore, has a familiarity rooted in competencies. This may explain why, for example, people in hospitals tend to remember the meals more than the professional care they received. Familiarity arises from self‐evident routines, which operate on both cognitive and affective levels. Familiar faces, behaviors, objects, tastes, or smells serve as reference points for interpreting, explaining, and understanding what is perceived as new and outside established routines (Emiliani and Passini 2017). In this sense, the everyday also provides the interpretive framework for the new. Only through the ordinary can we recognize the extraordinary.

2.3. The New, the Unfamiliar, and Exclusion as Boundaries of Everyday Life

The boundaries of everyday life become apparent in deviations from what is considered normal, through personal experience, or in changing environments or worlds. These boundaries manifest in surprising or unexpected situations, such as crises or, more broadly, the collapse of familiar orders that can no longer be managed using everyday patterns of action, thereby necessitating adjustments. We all come up against spatial and temporal boundaries from time to time, but we overcome them by drawing on memories in the sense of previous experiences. To do this, we make use of various aids, first and foremost signs and markings (Schütz and Luckmann 2017). However, everyday patterns of interpretation display a certain independence and resistance to alternative interpretive offerings (Alloa 2018). This resistance can hinder necessary adaptations to new situations. The unchallenged assumptions of the everyday world, while functional, are therefore limited in their ability to address novel circumstances and problems.

Another boundary of everyday life is exclusion. Examples of this are people who live in marginalizing conditions that do not fit into a “normalized” everyday life, or live a different, separate everyday life. Smith (2015) argues concerning the authors C. L. R. James and W. E. B. du Bois that the essence of everydayness and ethnicity lies in an understanding of the everyday not as a neutral context, but as a problematic in its own right, intimately connected to the formation and lived experience of racial and ethnic identity. He emphasizes that for racialized communities, the possibility of everyday life is inherently unstable. This instability stems from the fact that black communities in particular have historically been excluded from the normative assumptions that define what counts as ordinary life. Therefore, everyday life is not only the place where ethnicity is expressed or observed, but also the place where ethnicity is produced and reproduced (Smith 2015).

To manage problematic situations and establish new routines, we rely on everyday knowledge and reasoning. Everyday knowledge is fundamental for the interactive area of everyday life. In this sense, every actor is competent in their self‐assessment and responsible for their actions (Soeffner 2004). It refers to implicit, taken‐for‐granted knowledge that does not require validation and helps individuals navigate daily life. Berger and Luckmann (1992) describe it as behavior‐regulating, noting that people generally know what to conceal, whom to approach for information, and which social types possess certain knowledge. This knowledge varies in degrees of familiarity, relevance, and personal interest. Bardmann (2015) emphasizes that recipe‐like knowledge and pragmatic disinterest help individuals handle knowledge gaps. Everyday knowledge is structured according to both social and personal relevance and arises from life experience and subjective perception. It includes biographical and historically transmitted knowledge (Dreßke and Ohlbrecht 2019) and is practical, situational, embodied in action, and validated through real‐life applicability rather than scientific rigor and relies on intuition, hearsay, tradition, and chance, characterized by selective observation, prior experiences, and informal language. Its reach and openness are limited, with a tendency toward stability and the assumption of certainty. Trusted sources may include prophets, gurus, or rulers (Bardmann 2015). This stability persists as long as it effectively addresses everyday problems.

Referring to everyday knowledge is not always unproblematic, as this can be interpreted differently depending on the situation and perspective, because it is co‐determined by historically and culturally different ways of acting and living, languages, norms, values, lifestyles, world views, or institutional orders (Bongaerts, 2018). Everyday reasoning, shaped by experience, is as limited as the world it reflects. Therefore, drawing on one's own experiences involves, first, unquestioned experiences that add nothing new to one's knowledge but reinforce preexisting typologies and ideas. Second, it includes experiences requiring interpretation when familiar reasoning proves insufficient. This limitation is evident not only in illness or crises but also in socio‐political, economic, and ecological challenges, where conventional thought patterns fail. In such cases, external knowledge becomes essential, as everyday reasoning often struggles with the unfamiliar.

2.4. The Essence of Everyday Life: Key Features in a Nutshell

Everyday life consists of routine activities essential for functioning within one's environment, shaping a familiar, shared world. It is marked by recurring actions that simplify decision‐making, ensure stability, and embed individuals in cultural patterns. While influenced by social, political, and personal factors, such as status, ethnicity, and gender, everyday life is not static and not always or for everyone unproblematic. It evolves through individual choices, external circumstances, and socio‐cultural developments. The boundary between routine and change is fluid, as even repetitive practices contain creative elements (Ghisleni 2017). Targeted shifts can gradually reshape behaviors (Alloa 2018), as seen during COVID‐19, where protective measures quickly became routine for some but remained exceptions for others (Bauer and Egger 2023).

3. Building the Framework: Theoretical Roots of Everyday Life

Everyday life and related terms have given rise to many ideas in philosophy and sociology, so it would be difficult to name and comprehensively describe them all. The following selection is based on the general discussion of the last century and its dominant representatives, in which the socio‐critical dimension of the concept of everyday life is given the necessary space. Over the last century, scholarly attention to everyday life has evolved in three phases. In the early to mid‐20th century, lifeworld‐oriented perspectives emerged in response to positivism, influenced by Husserl, Heidegger, and Schütz. From the 1950s to the 1970s, societal shifts in production, labor, and consumption sparked renewed interest, with contributions from Heller, Lefebvre, and de Certeau. In the 21st century, everyday life remains central, reflecting changes in work‐life balance, mobility, inequality, digitization, and deceleration. Cultural studies and feminism have embraced it, and critics like Ahmed, Salamon, and Al‐Saji challenge phenomenology's traditional focus, emphasizing structural influences on experience.

3.1. The Lifeworld‐Oriented Perspectives of Traditional Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Alfred Schütz each offer distinct perspectives on how individuals experience and navigate their world. Yet, they share a common view, the lifeworld, as the foundation of human experience, with routine, familiarity, and social interaction shaping everyday life.

3.1.1. The Everyday as a Meaning‐Making Component of the Lifeworld

The works of Edmund Husserl are foundational to understanding the everyday as a source of meaning. Although Husserl did not explicitly deal with everyday life and did not develop a phenomenology of everyday life (Alloa 2018), he provides a foundation for understanding the experiential world and subjective perspective essential for grasping the everyday. A key concept in his phenomenology is the “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt), which refers to the immediate, pre‐theoretical, and self‐evident world of everyday experience, the world as directly lived by individuals before any theoretical or scientific interpretation. He describes the lifeworld as the starting point for all intellectual endeavors, including consciousness itself. For Husserl, consciousness is always intentional, meaning it is directed at something. In this directedness, meaning is assigned to objects or phenomena. For example, perceiving sunshine involves ascribing meaning to it, such as planning an excursion, considering sun protection, or deciding how to commute. Intentional consciousness encompasses all aspects of daily life, including work, leisure, family, and social interactions. Husserl (2002) suggests that the lifeworld is inherently well‐known, self‐evident, and shaped by experience, highlighting self‐evidence and familiarity as key characteristics of everyday life. These qualities create a “realm of primordial evidence” (ibid., p. 284), which allows individuals to orient themselves in the world. He defines evidence as the conscious experience of alignment between a phenomenon and the experience of that phenomenon (Heffernan 1998). For example, sunshine aligns with the anticipation of an excursion. While lifeworlds can differ greatly among individuals, they share a general structure. This shared experience is of interest to science (Husserl 2002). In this sense, Husserl distinguishes two ways of conceptualizing the lifeworld, both rooted in the everyday: (1) as the domain of intersubjective experiences, foundational for all knowledge, and (2) as “a universe of pre‐given self‐evidence” (Vetter 2004, p. 328) that are unquestioningly accepted and become the subject of scientific inquiry.

In summary, Husserl identifies the lifeworld as the familiar, self‐evident foundation of meaning that supports human actions. Although diverse and subjective, it exhibits a universal structure. In the context of health and illness, Husserl's ideas form the basis for lifeworld‐oriented approaches, particularly in understanding how individuals cope with challenges and interpret novel situations by drawing on the familiar.

3.1.2. Everydayness as a Mode of Being for Dasein

Martin Heidegger, a student of Husserl, explores the concept of “being” in his seminal work “Sein und Zeit” (1926/2001) (Being and Time), focusing on how human existence is shaped by our engagement with the world. He introduces “Dasein,” meaning human existence as “being‐in‐the‐world,” where “Being” denotes existence in general and “Dasein” refers specifically to the human mode of being. Heidegger emphasizes that Dasein is always situated within a specific historical, cultural, and social context, the lifeworld, and is deeply connected to everydayness. He explains that “everydayness” is not about simplicity or primitiveness, but a fundamental mode of Dasein's being, even in highly developed cultures (Heidegger 2001) Everydayness is the shared world we live in with others, shaped by public and habitual characteristics such as monotony, routine, and familiarity. It is the immediate, unreflected sphere of life that no one can fully escape, and it smooths over differences, establishing general structures that guide our actions. Heidegger notes that Dasein tends to conform to the usual way of doing things, which creates a common frame of reference but also subordinates individuality: “how humans are conditioned and how this conditioning influences human consciousness.” (Handerek 2009, p 192) He introduces the concept of “equipment” (Zeug), the tools of daily life, such as those used for cooking or writing. These are familiar objects that we handle without thinking, which Heidegger calls “readiness‐to‐hand” (Zuhandensein). When these tools are absent or malfunctioning, they lose their everydayness and become prominent in consciousness. Heidegger states that understanding comes through the “interpretation of something as something” (Heidegger 2001, p. 150), a process guided by historical ways of thinking, which is continuously revised in the hermeneutic circle.

Like Husserl, Heidegger does not develop a theory of everyday life itself; his analysis of everydayness lays the foundation for understanding the lifeworld. He highlights characteristics such as routine, monotony, and familiarity, including with objects, along with the public nature of everydayness. These insights are particularly relevant to health and illness, where Heidegger's hermeneutic method can facilitate adaptation and understanding through the interpretation of prior experiences.

3.1.3. Everyday Life as an Intersubjective World

Building on Husserl's concept of the lifeworld, Alfred Schütz focuses on the way individuals navigate and understand the world around them. For Schütz, the lifeworld is the primary reality of human beings, not a private world, but a shared sociocultural reality that exists before birth and continues after death. The everyday world, encountered as immediately given, is the framework in which individuals solve problems and conduct their actions. We can choose neither the world we live in nor our everyday lives, but we can shape the latter by attributing relevance. It is the world directly experienced and interpreted, where social interactions create a shared world of meaning. Individuals are aware that others experience the world similarly but not identically, enabling social interaction. Schütz calls this shared reality the “epoché” of the natural attitude, where everyday life is taken for granted (Schütz and Luckmann 2017). He expands the lifeworld to include social reality, the totality of objects and events within the lifeworld as experienced collectively through everyday thought and interaction (Schütz 1993). Schütz argues that people inhabit multiple realities, such as those of dreams, work, art, science, religion, and illness. Each reality is historically and culturally grounded, shaping mutual understanding. For him, the world of work (Schütz 1945) is central to our experience of reality: “It naturally includes productive activities in the economic sense, but also all forms of social action that result in changes to the social world: declarations of love, marriages, baptisms, court proceedings, sales or stamp collecting, revolutions, and counter‐revolutions” (Schütz 1993, p. 463). Work, therefore, goes beyond the professional sphere, as it includes any action that affects change in the environment and carries social responsibility. A key concept in Schütz's theory is “typification” (Schütz and Luckmann 2017), the process of categorizing objects, actions, and individuals within the lifeworld. Typifications, rooted in prior experiences, provide a framework for understanding and communication. They make interaction possible by offering generalizations that others can understand, creating familiarity. Typifications also play a vital role in shaping language and enabling social coherence. As part of everyday language, they offer familiarity. Berger and Luckmann (1992), expanding on Schütz's work, point out, that the everyday world is temporally and spatially organized, with time playing a critical role: “The temporal structure of the everyday world, with its prearranged sequences, governs not only the 'schedule' of my days but also my entire life. The clock and calendar assure me that I am indeed 'a person of my time.' Only within this temporal structure does the everyday world acquire its sense of reality for me.” (Berger and Luckmann 1992, p. 31).

In conclusion, Schütz defines the lifeworld as a given, socially shared reality. Everyday actions are purposeful and can alter reality, making them a form of work. Schütz, Berger, and Luckmann explore relevance, typification, and the structured, temporal nature of the everyday world, providing insights into its significance in health and illness contexts. While we cannot choose our lifeworld or everyday reality, we can shape the latter through the assignment of relevance.

In addition to the similarities between these approaches, the differences can be found in the fact that Husserl views the lifeworld as a pre‐theoretical basis for the creation of meaning, Heidegger conceptualizes everydayness as a way of being that shapes existence, and Schütz sees it as a socially structured and interactive reality. However, all perspectives are limited by focusing on how experiences and interpretations constitute everyday life without addressing their impact on individual experience. Subsequent theoretical approaches shift their critical lens to examine the significance and interactions of everyday life and practices for human existence and experience.

3.2. Where Classical Phenomenology Falls Short: A Critical Analysis of the Foundations of Everyday Life

While classical phenomenology focused on describing structures of experience from the first‐person perspective, highly valuing subjectivity and ignoring social power relations (Bedorf 2023), critical phenomenology shows that these experiences are always already shaped by social, political, and historical forces such as ethnicity, gender, class, and other power structures. Why classical theory falls short is the tendency to disregard issues of ethnicity or racism, and sexism.

Sara Ahmed shows through phenomenology, feminist theory, and critical race studies how power, emotions, and social norms shape experiences, especially for people who live in marginalizing conditions. She critiques Husserl's idea of a neutral world by indicating that it is racially structured, where some bodies are more comfortable in particular spaces than others. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation”, Ahmed explores what it means for bodies to be located in space and time. Bodies take shape when they move in the world, moving towards or away from objects and others. Being “oriented” means feeling at home, knowing where you are, or having certain objects within reach (Ahmed 2006). She explores how emotions circulate in everyday life, reinforcing social hierarchies, and questions the opposition between emotion and reason by examining, among other things, how emotional reactions to others also function as forms of judgment (Ahmed 2013). Further on, she presents whiteness as a phenomenological theme and discusses how whiteness as a background shapes experience (Ahmed 2007). George Yancy also examines how black bodies are perceived in a society dominated by white perspectives, drawing on phenomenological, existentialist, and critical ethnic theories. He examines how the “white gaze” shapes black identities through stereotypes, objectification, and racist assumptions, revealing how black individuals experience racialization and marginalization in everyday life (Yancy 2016). Alia Al‐Saji, also drawing on phenomenology, critical race theory, and feminist philosophy, examines how racialized perception shapes how we see and interpret the world (Al‐Saji 2010). She argues that racializing habits make certain bodies hypervisible while rendering others invisible and suggests that hesitation can interrupt these ingrained ways of seeing, offering space for new, ethical engagements (Al‐Saji 2014). Gayle Salamon similarly explores how bodies, identities, and perceptions shape experiences, particularly concerning gender and embodiment (Salamon 2010). She argues that gender involves social recognition, language, and interactions. Everyday experiences like being misgendered profoundly affect how individuals experience their bodies and identities.

Everyday life, everyday knowledge, and marginalization are closely linked. Everyday knowledge emerges from daily experiences and shapes the way people understand and navigate their social world. For people living in marginalizing conditions, this knowledge is often formed in response to exclusion, inequality, and limited access to formal or institutional knowledge. Their everyday experiences produce unique perspectives and coping strategies that can be overlooked or devalued by prevailing social structures. Thus, the everyday knowledge of people living in marginalizing conditions can be invisible or dismissed, reinforcing their social marginalization. At the same time, this knowledge can serve as an important resource for resilience and solidarity in the community. In the context of health and illness, everyday knowledge influences the interpretation of symptoms, the decision about when to seek medical care, and the choice of treatment options based on cultural beliefs, personal experiences, or the advice of trusted peers. For people who live in marginalizing conditions, limited access to healthcare and mistrust of medical institutions can lead to a stronger reliance on everyday knowledge, which may both support coping and contribute to disparities in health outcomes (Braveman and Gottlieb 2014; Schillinger 2021).

Together, the works of Ahmed, Yancy, Al‐Saji, and Salamon, as examples of several others, offer critical insights into how power, social norms, and perception can shape experiences of the body and health in everyday life, revealing how structural inequalities influence experiences of illness, healthcare, and coping.

3.3. Everyday Life: Home and Space of Creativity and Resistance

The Theories of everyday life by Agnes Heller, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel de Certeau offer insights into how daily practices shape human existence, each contributing unique perspectives on the dynamic relationship between structure, agency, and change. They view everyday life as a space where social structures evolve and manifest, shaping identities, behaviors, and social realities.

3.3.1. Everyday Life as a Home

Agnes Heller argues that everyday life cannot be understood without considering broader social relationships and institutions. She stresses the importance of analyzing everyday life from a socio‐historical perspective. In her eyes, studying everyday life is crucial to understanding the social and cultural dynamics shaping individuals and communities. In her work, Everyday Life (Heller 2016), she notes that only in the 20th century did everyday life become a subject of scientific inquiry, partly due to the rise of social theories like phenomenology and interpretative sociology, influenced by thinkers such as Alfred Schütz. Heller combines these traditions with critical theory, creating a social theory that highlights individual subjects while acknowledging societal structures and power relations (Bargetz 2016). She views everyday life as a universal phenomenon present in all societies, though its form and content vary. A shared feature is the participation of the whole person, with daily activities shaping the entirety of the individual. Reproduction, as a universal characteristic with individual expressions, is a key element. “The reproduction of a person is always the reproduction of a specific person who occupies a specific place in a specific society. We all have to sleep (even if not in the same circumstances or in the same way), and we all have to eat (even if not the same things and not in the same way […])” (Heller 2016, p. 3). Everyday life occurs within a person's immediate environment and is not merely a series of routine tasks but also a space for conscious action, thought, and evaluation. Heller argues that people internalize and adapt to the conditions of their environment to survive, leading to a certain uniformity in everyday life. However, this does not mean that everyday life lacks variation. While the fundamental aspects of everyday life stem from the necessity of constant reproduction, they also exhibit heterogeneity. This heterogeneity arises partly because everyday life involves activities that vary across time and societies, including eating, personal hygiene, work, and cultural practices. The knowledge required for performing and coordinating these tasks also varies significantly. Coordination demands create the general structure of everyday actions and thought, while the variations of everyday life provide their concrete content. The structure of everyday actions and thought changes slowly, often exhibiting stagnation, whereas the content can change relatively quickly. Heller emphasizes repetition as essential to survival and efficiency. Repetition helps conserve energy and save time, allowing individuals to perform tasks more efficiently. It can also lead to multitasking or creative combinations. In everyday life, therefore, individuals rely on simple repetitions, even in using everyday objects. For example, once a person learns to use a knife and fork, it no longer requires conscious thought, regardless of the food. Repetition provides familiarity and security. Heller identifies the “home” as a symbol of this sense of stability. Home represents a place where one feels secure, and where intense relationships occur (Heller 2016).

Heller explores everyday life from a socio‐historical perspective, emphasizing its connection to institutional forces. This perspective reveals how everyday life shapes both individual experiences and broader social dynamics. She views repetition as crucial for stability and continuity, while also allowing for variation. Her work is especially relevant to health and illness, highlighting everyday life as a form of “being at home” and the role of repetition in fostering security and enabling action.

3.3.2. Everyday Life as a Source of Creative Creations

Henri Lefebvre explores the importance of everyday life, like Heller, in understanding the broader structures of society. In his three‐volume work Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre 2014), he critiques the growing consumer society and its consequences, such as social fragmentation and alienation. However, his focus is on everyday life as a dynamic space shaped by social, economic, and cultural forces. This section focuses less on Lefebvre's critique of societal changes and more on his theoretical approach to everyday life.

Lefebvre intentionally avoids rigid definitions (Meyer et al. 2007), seeking to understand its essence: “How can everyday life be defined? It surrounds us, besieges us from all sides and in all directions. We are both inside and outside it. No so‐called ‘higher’ activity can be reduced to it, nor can it be separated from it. […] Should we define everyday life as the insignificant side of life […].” (Lefebvre 2014, pp. 335‐336). He views everyday life as the foundational basis of human existence, the sphere where human desires, capacities, and potentials are formed. It is where they engage directly with the world and encounter others, developing identity and self‐understanding. Far from being passive or neutral, everyday life is a space of constant negotiation and renegotiation. He argues that everyday life is the natural foundation of all human endeavors, including routine tasks and higher forms of knowledge, and that creativity emerges from the cycles of daily life, blending creation with repetition. Regarding the repetitions of everyday life, Lefebvre identifies a linear and acyclical type. The linear repetition occurs in processes that are described as rational. The cyclical repetition, rooted in nature, includes day and night, seasons, and activities like hunger and fulfillment. This cyclical nature gives everyday life a monotony that, paradoxically, incorporates change. Days follow one another, seemingly the same, yet here lies the paradox of everyday life: everything changes. Change is programmed into constant reproduction (Lefebvre and Levich 1987). For Lefebvre, everyday life is multilayered, containing both oppressive and emancipatory qualities (Gardiner 2000). Everyday life is not a static entity but a meeting point for various social dimensions. It provides a shared foundation for relationships that constitute human reality. The experiences of a homemaker, mathematician, farmer, or factory worker differ, yet they all intersect through common elements of everyday life. It is dynamic, shaped by movement rather than rigidity, and is the space where emotions, ideas, and lifestyles are affirmed. He writes: “Even and especially when extraordinary activities have created them, they must return to everyday life to validate and confirm their creation.” (Lefebvre 2014, p. 339) For Lefebvre, efforts to improve everyday life also manifest in the struggle for space, time, and conditions that enable people to experience themselves as subjects of their lives. He conceptualized space as a dynamic interaction between three forces: the conceived space (plans of capital, state, and architecture), lived space (the desires, memories, and experiences of dwellers), and perceived space (how space is used) (Lefebvre 1992). The latter is the space in which everyday life is created, stabilized, and changed. However, this trialectic process reflects a constant negotiation between the three forces, influencing the everyday lives of all. Similar to Heller, space as a home is also important for Lefebvre's examination of everyday life, although he has a more ambivalent attitude towards it by referring to a suburban settlement on the outskirts of Paris. For him, the bourgeois individual is somewhat at home in the world. However, being at home in the world stands in contrast to the existential homelessness experienced by many.

In the context of health and illness, Lefebvre's work highlights everyday life as the space where social relationships, power structures, and ideologies are manifested. He emphasizes that while repetition and routine often appear monotonous, they can generate new possibilities. Everyday struggles against power imbalances can lead to innovation and change, illustrating the creative and dynamic aspects of everyday life.

3.4. Everyday Practices for Creating Spaces in Daily Actions

Michel de Certeau explores everyday actions in “Kunst des Handelns” (1988). He describes everyday practices, such as speaking, reading, and cooking, not as passive acts but as active forms of resistance and negotiation within broader social and cultural contexts. According to de Certeau, everyday life is shaped by relationships between the dominant and the dominated, with dominators controlling culture, production, and regulation. He introduces the concepts of “strategies” and “tactics” to analyze the dynamics between dominant institutions or structures and the ways individuals creatively engage with them. De Certeau generally associates strategies with institutions, which are organized around an assumed authority. Strategies are used to systematize and impose order, reflecting dominance. In contrast, tacticians operate within spaces controlled by others and cannot secure independence. Instead, they exploit opportunities within these spaces, using the resources and structures established by the dominators to fulfill their needs. Tactics, therefore, rely on time, constantly seizing spontaneous opportunities. De Certeau explains: “The “real thing” is the triumph of place over time. Without a place, tactics are dependent on time; they are always on the lookout for opportunities and “seize” them spontaneously. What they win, they cannot keep. They must constantly manipulate events to turn them into “opportunities”. The weak must constantly draw strength from the powers of the strong.” (De Certeau 1988, p. 23). Tacticians do not directly oppose strategies but subtly subvert them to meet their needs while maintaining an appearance of conformity. In his work, de Certeau illustrates examples of such everyday tactics, such as small ruses, slight deviations from established paths and gestures, and creatively recalling the spaces of possibility that everyday life holds (Alloa 2018). Many everyday practices are tactical, requiring skills like clever maneuvers or deceptions to succeed against powerful forces such as societal structures, disease, or violence. For de Certeau, despite society's repressive elements, ordinary people possess creative means of resistance. He asserts that everyday life is a space for creativity, individual agency, and resistance, where people assert control over their environment and identity. De Certeau also takes up the concept of space by distinguishing between place and space, where “space is a practiced place” (De Certeau 1988, p. 117). According to him, place is the stable, static, ideologically informed given, while space is about the potentially resistive appropriation of space, e.g., public space is de‐purposed or alternative paths are created.

This perspective also enriches discussions about health and illness. On one hand, illness is often viewed as the domain of the powerful (De Certeau 1988); on the other, hierarchical structures continue to dominate in many cases. Tactics provide a means of coping with illness within these hierarchical systems, applicable to both caregivers and those receiving care. By examining everyday practices and tactics, de Certeau broadens our understanding of daily life as a space where resistance and creativity coexist, allowing individuals to navigate social structures and assert their agency despite power and adversity.

For Heller, Lefebvre, and de Certeau, everyday life is neither trivial nor passive; they emphasize its dynamic nature, marked by both continuity and change. Everyday practices are shaped by broader societal forces, yet they also offer opportunities for personal expression and change. While Lefebvre and Heller examine how institutions and economic conditions structure individual experiences and create space, de Certeau places particular emphasis on resistance, exploring how people navigate and subvert dominant systems through seemingly mundane practices. He highlights the subtle, often unnoticed acts of resistance that shape daily life, such as small deviations from norms, improvised uses of public spaces, and creative reinterpretations of cultural narratives. These acts of defiance may be small, yet they challenge institutional control and create possibilities for alternative ways of living.

Unlike definitions of everyday life, which continuously emphasize recurring characteristics, the commonalities in theories are not immediately apparent. In summary, Husserl, Heidegger, and Schütz all emphasize the lifeworld as the foundation of human experience, structured by routine, familiarity, and social interaction. These elements provide stability and orientation, allowing individuals to navigate and interpret their everyday lives. Ahmed, Yancy, Al‐Saji, and Salamon criticize and complement this aspect, emphasizing the role of power structures, social norms, and perception in shaping everyday experiences and identities, particularly for people who live in marginalizing conditions. They highlight the impact of social, political, and historical forces on how individuals navigate and interpret their daily lives, and what role perspective and orientation play in this. Heller, Lefebvre, and de Certeau provide a basis for this view by recognizing everyday life as a dynamic space influenced by social relationships, institutions, and power structures. They emphasize the importance of routine and repetition in providing stability and security, while also highlighting the potential for creativity and resistance within everyday practices. The close connection between agency and responsibility becomes apparent here. Institutional structures, such as the healthcare system, enable and restrict individual agency. It shows that the health‐related experiences and actions of individuals are not just a matter of personal choice or responsibility, but are shaped by broader social and institutional contexts that influence what options are available and how decisions are made.

4. Theories of Everyday Life: Insights for Coping With Health and Illness Challenges

The following section examines the practical application of these theoretical findings in everyday care practice. Particular attention will be paid to their relevance for coping with everyday life and achieving normality in the face of health and age‐related limitations.

4.1. Everyday Life, as a Significant Social Reality, Is Characterized by Routine, Disruption, and Adaptation

At the core of the theories is the idea that everyday life forms a layer of social reality shaped by individual and collective expressions. It takes various forms and can be disrupted, altered, or desired, linking it to coping with everyday challenges. A shared world of life provides meaning, orientation, and pragmatic responses to challenges, and facilitates mutual understanding through standardized symbols and language. Repetitive actions create stability, familiarity, and continuity, while also allowing for variation and adaptation in response to challenges. However, it is also shaped by social norms, institutional forces, and power dynamics, influencing individual experiences, particularly in health and illness contexts.

Illness as an expression of reality disrupts everyday life and requires adaptability, which often goes hand in hand with social dependency (Bury 1982). Illness always has an impact on the social environment, regardless of whether it is about the actual care or the worries. Being able to live a daily routine with loved ones is the primary wish of elderly and ill people (Schrems 2025). Adaption through restoring routines and familiarity can help individuals regain a sense of normalcy (Charmaz 1995). Standardized aspects of everyday life, language, symbols, and routines shape how illness is understood. Medical diagnoses, treatments, and societal health perceptions rely on typifications that influence identity and belonging. While these structures provide guidance, they may also marginalize those whose experiences do not fit dominant narratives (Baah et al. 2019). Nursing theories and values must be aligned with the principles of equality, respect, and social justice to effectively address social inequalities in health. To understand inequality embedded in everyday life, critical reflexivity in examining personal experiences, broadening a structural perspective, reframing nursing action, and commitment, as the need to engage in social movements advocating for accessible and quality healthcare rights (Graells‐Sans et al. 2025). Against the background of the diversity of everyday life and experiences, it is important to critically reflect on the aspect of equality. The goal must rather be equity. The ethically relevant consequence lies in how justice is understood and applied. Equality emphasizes treating everyone the same; however, this approach can overlook existing structural disadvantages and lead to unequal outcomes. In contrast, equity focuses on justice by addressing individual needs and social inequalities. It recognizes that achieving just outcomes sometimes requires unequal treatment to compensate for unequal starting points. Ethically, while equality promotes neutrality, equity involves a commitment to justice by actively correcting imbalances in access, opportunity, and support. And as Smith (2015) has already stated, everyday life is not a neutral context.

Human problems are often rooted in unjust social structures. Nursing plays a vital role in recognizing and challenging these structures to promote equity in health. Emancipatory knowledge is essential for exposing social injustices and, when necessary, resisting institutions that sustain them (Kagan et al. 2010). Postulating emancipatory knowledge as a central pattern of knowledge alongside other interlinked forms of knowledge makes a central contribution to epistemology in nursing. This holistic view of knowledge supports ethical, person‐centered care and demands everyday competence, as the nurses’ ability to navigate their professional lives with responsibility, as well as practical skills, and critical awareness. In this way, nurses can support people by helping them establish an everyday routine. This includes, on the one hand, considering individually daily routines related to eating, clothing, personal hygiene, mobility, rest, and participation in social life, and on the other hand, using appropriate language to promote health literacy (Wilandika et al. 2023) and empowerment.

4.2. The Potential for Change in the Extraordinary and in Reproduction

Everydayness is defined in contrast to the extraordinary, which enables change. Small shifts in daily practices create new routines that, once integrated, become ordinary. While everyday actions are repetitively reproduced, creative innovations allow for agency within externally controlled structures. Yet, despite commonalities such as eating, sleeping, working, and managing health, each person experiences everyday life uniquely. Everyday life holds potential for innovation and transformation, whether through reinterpretation, adaptation, or subtle acts of resistance. This also applies to the meaning of health.

Illness, pain, or frailty are extraordinary situations in healthcare facilities for the people concerned. Adaption means that physical limitations or treatments like medications, once extraordinary, integrate into everyday practices. However, it takes time to develop a new routine, which is often not available in the hectic daily life of a hospital. Implicit rationing as a method or tactic to deal with time and other constraints endangers patient safety (Uchmanowicz et al. 2024). Also, people navigate the system through tactics such as personalizing care routines or searching for alternative treatments, illustrated by treatment adherence (Arrieta Valero 2019). Unintentional medication non‐adherence to therapy is associated with, among other things, a lack of established routines. The intentional aspects of medication intake, such as personal beliefs, attitudes, values, and people's fear of side effects, provide nurses with insights into the determinants of health behavior and ways of coping with everyday life (Lehane and McCarthy 2007). Nurses also have to be aware that interventions, e.g. in wound care such as footwear, bandaging, and hosiery, are technical interventions, but they are also intrusions into people's everyday life, which may require time and support in adopting and adapting (Madden 2015). Addressing these factors is crucial for maintaining long‐term adherence. Long‐term adherence means “a positive, proactive behavior that leads to a change in the patient's lifestyle, who must follow a daily regimen, such as taking medication daily or exercising daily” (Mir 2023, p. 219). While compliance, a term that is often used synonymously, has a different meaning, as it describes a behavior “exhibited by a patient who simply” does what they are told“ or follows the instructions of the treating physician.” (ibid, p. 220) Adherence means that the person is an active agent. As extraordinary as an illness may be for some, it is not always the top priority for others. Many other aspects of life may take precedence over optimal disease self‐management. To integrate interventions into everyday life and improve adherence, nurses have to focus on person's perspectives and concerns and listen to their experiences with the disease (Kvarnström et al. 2021).

4.3. Interpretation Through Pre‐Understanding

Individuals draw on their pre‐understanding to interpret challenges and rely on familiar knowledge to navigate new situations. While hermeneutic approaches support adaptation and transformation, ingrained patterns of interpretation can also resist alternative perspectives, potentially hindering necessary adjustments (Alloa 2018). However, as new experiences reshape pre‐understanding, every situation is viewed through an evolving lens, making a true return to a previous state impossible, echoing Heraclitus' insight that no one steps into the same river twice.

People cope with illness by initially drawing on familiar experiences to restore normality in work, hobbies, and relationships. Each encounter with illness reshapes prior understanding, making a complete return to a former state impossible. Chamaz's adaptation model (1995) highlights that this process unfolds in phases over time, eventually leading to the development of an illness identity, the extent to which a health condition becomes part of one's self‐concept (Van Bulck et al. 2019). Unlike illness perceptions, which focus on understanding disease and treatment, illness identity reflects how deeply the condition integrates into a person's self‐image (ibid). Sense‐making, crucial in times of crisis, emerges through action, interaction, and above all, retrospective understanding. The COVID‐19 pandemic illustrated how disruptions challenge this process on multiple levels. Nurses play a vital role in facilitating sense‐making, often serving as the first point of contact for both the ill person and their families (Flynch and Frederickson 2024). Supporting individuals effectively requires meeting them where they are, which first necessitates understanding their perspective on the situation.

4.4. Everyday Life as a Place of Home and Confidence

Everyday life in the context of health and illness provides a space of confidence and a sense of being “at home”. However, everyday life is both private and public, unfolding in different spaces, as Lefebvre's and de Certeau's concepts of space illustrate. In public contexts, shared interpretations facilitate social actions without explicit articulation, but they also set limits for those who are excluded from these commonly shared interpretations because of social status, illness, ethnicity, or gender.

“A home is a privilege people seem to take for granted.” (Hauge and Kristin 2008, p. 461) There are many ways to design a home and live everyday life, yet certain characteristics can be identified. It is a private space that residents can determine for themselves. It is a space for personal relationships and loved ones, and has strong symbolic power. Home represents independence and is particularly important for young people to create a home and for older people to maintain it (ibid). For older, frail people, feeling at home means that the environment allows them to maintain their independence, manage their care through control and self‐determination, and, in the context of home care, to be able to trust the staff. The latter refers to the appreciation, knowledge, and skills of the staff, as well as the staff's ability to build positive relationships (Silverglow et al. 2020). This requires the mobilization of resources. Not everyone can do this alone. It requires trust in oneself and the healthcare system. Public rituals in public spaces provide implicit guidance. However, illness is often associated with weakness or lifestyle choices, even if these are inaccurate (Haslam 2017). People with physical limitations can internalize external judgments. Whether while shopping, attending events, or working, they risk stigmatization and exclusion from social activities. Dealing with stigma requires strategies adapted to the social context (Pierret 2003). By acknowledging the dynamic and creative aspects of everyday life, nurses can facilitate the integration of positive coping strategies and increase confidence, particularly for people with chronic conditions (Kahn et al. 1994) and/or those who are socially disadvantaged or have low health literacy.

4.5. Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Everyday Life as Structural Elements

Everyday life is viewed as the fundamental space where human experiences, social structures, and interactions take shape. While individuals operate within given structures, they also actively shape and navigate their realities through interpretation, coping strategies, and resistance. In institutional contexts, the spatial and temporal dimensions of everyday life are crucial, as those who control time and space shape its organization. Institutionalized routines and schedules often conflict with diverse needs, life circumstances, and responsibilities, particularly for the elderly and ill.

For people, illness is exceptional, whereas for healthcare workers, it is routine. Institutional protocols can offer protection but also limit agency, creating tensions between the person's experiences and structured care. Structured routines tied to specific times significantly impact well‐being (Hauge and Kristin 2008). Everyday nursing involves strategies to create room for action and escape rigid systems designed more for institutional efficiency than personal needs (Repo 2019). As a result, care practices often deviate from standardized protocols, challenging hierarchical pressures and redefining institutional norms (Chaboyer et al. 2021; Lund et al. 2023). Ill people, like professionals, employ tactics to achieve specific therapeutic outcomes, demonstrating how care is shaped by invisible, uncontrollable acts that continuously transform the system. Removing dressings, e.g., for chronic wounds, or refusing to wear support stockings is often seen as noncompliance, but from the person's perspective, it can feel like a strategy of self‐care or self‐preservation (Madden 2015). Reflecting on nursing practice through Certeau's concept of everyday life remains a theoretical endeavor with no empirical evidence (Rates et al. 2019), yet its insights are valuable in the current healthcare landscape. The way space is structured and used in healthcare affects people who live in marginalizing conditions, requiring ill persons and caregivers to carve out differentiated spaces where those who do not fit dominant narratives can access equitable care (Strus et al. 2024). Illness, particularly when accompanied by limitations or pain, shifts the focus to everyday life. Distances grow, routines take more time, and activities must be adapted or abandoned. For a wheelchair user, for instance, an apartment on the second floor without an elevator is not just inaccessible but symbolizes an unwelcoming or even hostile environment. Illness thus exposes not only human vulnerability but also societal ignorance and prejudice (Carel 2014). Time perception also changes with illness, slowing down or accelerating in different contexts. In life‐threatening situations, time underscores human finitude, offering new perspectives on healing and pain relief. These experiences contrast with routine daily time, particularly in acute cases. Nurses know when particular temporal structures are required and how to implement them in their ongoing and adaptive responses to care needs. Such temporal reflexivity involves the ability of organizational actors to identify, analyze and change temporal structures that guide and reproduce practices. This implies the articulation and discussion of a shared understanding of what time is in specific contexts (Ihlebæk 2021).

4.6. The Dual Significance of Everyday Life for Coping With Challenges in the Context of Health and Illness

The role of everyday life in managing health and illness rests on a fundamental duality: (1) providing security and orientation, and (2) balancing the shared and the individual. On one hand, everyday life offers stability, familiarity, and a framework for meaning‐making. On the other, it is challenged by disruptions, requiring individuals to reinterpret their reality. Illness, as an extraordinary event, unsettles daily routines, prompting reliance on past experiences for understanding. When these prove insufficient, new knowledge must be integrated, leading to a redefined everyday life. While everyone navigates daily existence, its structure is shaped by individual circumstances, social realities, and perspectives. Likewise, health and illness are both universal and deeply personal, while they follow common patterns, their meaning and impact vary for each individual. This subjective experience, often framed as lay or personal health theories, plays a crucial role in coping strategies. Understanding these perspectives is essential for effective support, though exploring them in depth extends beyond the current discussion.

This is also true for nurses. Michel de Certeau's approach (1988) can be used to demonstrate how nurses navigate the tension between standardized routines and individual needs (Rates et al. 2019). For example, encouraging strict adherence to daily routines or lifestyle changes without having recourse to considering a person's cultural or socioeconomic context, which may inadvertently marginalize other valid ways of managing health. Rates et al. (2019) conclude that the everyday lives of nurses are characterized by tactics to escape the prescribed system, which caters more to the needs of institutions than individuals. Everyday practice thus circumvents the standards, protocols, and rules established by hierarchies that put pressure on those involved in care and redefines the cultural system as defined on paper. Specific practices emerge that are tailored to those involved and that care (re)invent or codify against the backdrop of abstract intentions and objective constraints. The authors explain that people, as service recipients, also create their path through the system, using tactics to achieve certain results in the therapeutic process, just like professionals. In everyday care, therefore, there are invisible dimensions of uncontrollable tactics employed by individuals that constantly redefine the social system. Care and everyday life converge through these tactics, which are deployed more or less consciously (Rates et al. 2019). This highlights the profession's responsibility to not only recognize but also actively challenge structural inequities embedded in daily care.

Davina Allen (2015) provides an example of everyday nursing by drawing on extensive ethnographic observations in UK hospitals to highlight the often‐overlooked organizational and coordination tasks that nurses perform daily. While nursing is usually seen as caring, much of the job is to maintain the elaborate networks and systems that make patient care possible. Through what she calls “translational mobilization,” nurses translate policies, coordinate multidisciplinary teams, and manage logistical processes ‐ connecting fragmented parts of the healthcare system and counteracting its scattered, chaotic tendencies.

Another possible approach to describing everyday nursing care is Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory (Lake et al. 2022). With the theory of practice as a philosophy of action, social practices can be researched at the micro level. It can be used to show what is done or thought about apart from doing, and also what is achieved by doing, both in terms of maintaining and/or gaining social capital. In the specific example, what is achieved is that the caregivers' practice is to make things work by doing this in the micro‐actions, thus ensuring the existence and functioning of the whole system. For care practice, which is the linchpin in such situations, this is where practical power lies (ibid., 2022).

5. Conclusion: Implications for Nursing Practice

The recognition of everyday life as a stabilizing yet dynamic force in health and illness has significant implications for nursing practice. Nurses must acknowledge that people do not experience illness in isolation but within the context of their everyday lives, shaped by routines, social roles, personal histories, and cultural systems. This perspective highlights the need for person‐centered care that respects individual coping strategies and the integration of illness into daily life. One key consequence is the necessity for flexible care approaches that accommodate people's unique ways of managing their conditions. Standardized healthcare routines often conflict with personal needs, making it essential for nurses to recognize and support ill people's adaptive strategies. This may involve developing personalized treatment plans, adjusting routines, and developing practical solutions to maintain their sense of normalcy. Furthermore, understanding the interplay between familiarity, security, and disruption enables nurses to provide emotional support during transitions and when adjusting to chronic illness. By acknowledging the person's pre‐understanding and lived experiences, nurses can facilitate a smoother adaptation process, invest in people to actively participate in their care, rather than feeling subjected to institutional demands. The concept of everyday tactics also underscores the importance of advocacy in nursing. People often navigate rigid healthcare structures through informal, personal strategies. Nurses, as intermediaries between institutional systems and persons' needs, can advocate for greater flexibility, ensuring that care practices are responsive to individual experiences rather than solely driven by standardized protocols. Additionally, the temporal and spatial dimensions of healthcare highlight the impact of institutional scheduling and environments on a person's well‐being. Nurses can play a crucial role in mitigating the stress caused by rigid time structures, advocating for more person‐centered approaches to time management in hospitals, long‐term care facilities, and home care settings.

In sum, integrating an everyday‐life perspective into nursing practice calls for a shift from a purely biomedical approach to one that values persons' lived realities. By recognizing illness as embedded in everyday life, nurses can foster persons' agency, support meaningful adaptation, and advocate for healthcare structures that respect individual needs and experiences.

Ethics Statement

The author has nothing to report.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Schrems, B. M. 2025. “Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Understanding the Role of Everyday Life in Coping With Health Challenges.” Nursing Philosophy 0: 1–14. 10.1111/nup.70039.

Data Availability Statement

The author has nothing to report.