Every choice we make, we make because it meets a need. We created our illness because it gives us something that we believe that we want. What is the payoff we get for being ill? What are we getting out of this situation?
No matter how painful or debilitating the illness, there is always a benefit. Objectively, we may have made a rather unskillful bargain, of course. We may feel that we’re paying much too high a price for the benefits we receive. But until we identify the benefit—until we become aware of what it is that we get out of being ill, we can never truly heal.
Healing requires that we identify what it is that we get out of being ill, and then become aware of our beliefs surrounding this need. We must be willing to give up these benefits, or recognize that we can meet these needs in less debilitating ways.
When it comes to minor illnesses such as the cold or flu, often we get sick because we haven’t been listening to our bodies. We’ve been working too hard, and under too much stress. We haven’t been taking care of our physical, emotional, or spiritual needs. The only way that we will take any time for ourselves is if we’re too weak to get out of bed, so that’s what we create.
I have a friend who has a rather intense family history, with enough drama and intrigue to fill a prime-time soap opera. A number of years ago, she experienced a rather significant identity crisis. An inheritance set her up financially so that she could do whatever she wanted to do with her life. The fact that she could do whatever she wanted with her life meant that she had to actually choose what she wanted to do with her life, and this created a great deal of stress. She began to have anxiety attacks, and soon developed acute agoraphobia, finding it very difficult to leave her house. She’s struggled with this condition for many years. The payoff of this condition is that she has an iron-clad excuse not to face her fears and do something with her life. All of her time and attention is focused on her condition and her anxiety.
We may find it difficult to accept responsibility for having created our illnesses because we created our illnesses to avoid having to take responsibility in the first place. Illnesses and injuries are often cries for attention and validation. When we’re ill, injured or otherwise in pain, we’re entitled--and even expected to think only of ourselves. We are excused from our responsibilities to others. We don’t have to go anywhere we don’t want to go, we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do. And we can expect other people to do things for us and we’re under no obligation to return the favor. We can cancel plans at the last minute, or even simply not show up, because we were in too much pain to fulfill our social obligations--and we don’t even have to call to apologize.
Within reason, we’re able to complain to others about how we feel, or put on a brave face, enduring the pain (but also making certain that everyone knows that we’re a martyr to our pain and we don’t want to ruin everyone else’s good time). Either way, our illness is making us the center of attention, and this makes deposits in our Validation Accounts. Granted, the deposits are very small, and the cost is extremely high, but for many of us, this is the only way we believe that we can receive validation and attention from others.
Healing means that we will have to give up our “special” status. We will no longer be entitled to be the center of attention at all times. We will no longer be able to demand that other people notice us and pay us special attention. We will be expected to do things that we may not particularly enjoy, in order to meet our personal and social obligations to others.
If our illness is a chronic disability, healing means that we will once again have to work to earn a living. If we believe that the only way that we can earn a living is doing work that we find repugnant and draining, where is the incentive to heal? And, could this belief be one of the primary reasons we created our disability in the first place?
Sometimes it’s more important to keep our handicapped parking privileges than it is to heal and have to (or even be able to) walk an extra block to the supermarket.
Please know that there is nothing at all wrong with that choice. We are free to choose to keep our illnesses and our dis-eases. These conditions meet very important needs for us, albeit at a considerable cost. We may not really want to heal, and that’s a perfectly acceptable choice.
Of course, once we accept responsibility for having created our illness, and become completely aware of the costs and benefits, we may realize that we can, in fact, meet those needs more effectively in other ways. When we realize this, we are truly ready to heal.
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