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ILLNESS AS TEACHER
by
Hal Stone, Ph.D.
INTRODUCTION
There is one thing that is fairly sure in life
and that is that we most likely will become ill in the course
of our lives and that most surely we will all die at some point.
Illness and our feelings about death affect us in varying degrees
and in varying ways. Catching a cold doesn’t tend to destabilize
us too much. Developing cancer however is a major event and affects
our life in major ways.
The Medical model was historically designed to
help us get rid of our illness and it still operates in this way.
It is what has come to be known as the target approach to illness
and to symptoms and it involves finding the correct drug or the
correct treatment procedure that is designed to eliminate the
symptom.
Having been ill a number of times in my life
I have always appreciated this target approach and the help I
have received from medical practitioners in helping to clear up
both major and minor symptoms that have developed through the
years. I have learned however that getting rid of symptoms isn’t
the whole story. Illness also provides us with a most amazing
opportunity to look more deeply into ourselves. If approached
properly, illness of all kinds can become a major teacher to us
as we move through life.
It seemed initially that alternative medicine
or holistic medicine would shift away from this target approach
but the reality is that the opposite is the case. Most practitioners
of alternative medicine remain quite focused on the idea of getting
rid of illness. Since I have had a well emplaced network of alternative
practitioners working on my behalf for well over 35 years, I have
been very grateful to them and to the multitude of healing modalities
that have developed through their efforts and I most certainly
have used both the traditional and alternative systems on many
occasions. Something major however is left out with this approach
and that is what this article is about.
SERIOUS ILLNESS
When we become ill with a serious illness something
very different happens to us and it generally tends to be a very
upsetting experience. We are faced with the possibility of death.
We are faced with the reality of a loss of control of our bodies.
We are faced with the possibility of being crippled or having
to deal with chronic pain.
Most people take an aspirin when they have a
headache. I don’t blame them! When the headaches become
chronic they may still always want aspirin because their focus
remains locked onto the idea of getting rid of the symptom.
Other people however begin to ask questions.
“Why do I get these headaches so often? They always seem
to come after intense bouts of work and focused activity! Am I
pushing too hard? My girlfriend tells me I’m too intense.”
Such people begin to step back from the symptom
and begin to use the illness as something that has possible meaning.
They may still be trying to get rid of the symptom. The two approaches
are not at all mutually exclusive. More and more however their
focus moves towards the meaning of illness. They begin to look
for the teaching and meaning of the symptoms.
Throughout the 1970s I was the founder and director
of the Center for the Healing Arts in Los Angeles. We were an
educational and research center in holistic medicine. Jeanne was
a 50 year old woman who came to the center for help. We insisted
that all clients at the center be under total medical care for
their condition and we were available to work with them in diverse
ways if they wished to explore the meaning of the cancer experience
in their lives. Her cancer took the form of a serious melanoma
in the groin area that was growing quite rapidly before she had
it surgically removed. She began to explore her life in a very
different way after the surgery and though she continued all of
her medical and alternative work to heal the cancer, the idea
of her illness as a teacher to her became increasingly her primary
focus.
After three or four months she had the following
dream:
“I’m climbing a very steep mountain
with other members of my cancer group. We come to a narrow ledge
on which there is a tree growing and the tree has a large unnatural
growth about a third of the way up its trunk. It reminds me of
my cancer before surgery. I grab hold of the unnatural growth
and use it to pull myself up to the ledge so I can begin to climb
again on the next phase of our journey together. “
This is a remarkable dream that illustrates so
well the principle of illness as teacher. She is on a journey
with other people from her group at the Center. She uses the “unnatural
growth” to help herself climb onto the ledge so that she
can continue her journey. It was a few months later that Jeanne
asked to talk with me privately. When we met she thanked me for
my efforts on her behalf. She also told me that she was glad that
she had developed cancer. “Nothing else could have broken
me out of my frozen life pattern but an illness of this magnitude.
I’m not afraid of living any longer and I’m not afraid
of dying.” Jeanne did indeed die six months later, but her
death was a thing of beauty as it became a natural part of her
process.
When we turn towards the meaning of illness the
dream process is often of great help to us as we begin our psycho-spiritual
exploration.
AN EXAMPLE OF WORKING WITH SELVES
Voice Dialogue is often a remarkable way of approaching
illness. In the early seventies I was approached by Sara, a woman
in her forties, who had suffered from stomach pains for over three
years. She was quite wealthy and she been completely evaluated
by many medical groups, hospitals and individuals but nothing
had helped her. She led a very busy life and I suspected that
she had a strong Pusher energy operating in her. So in the first
session I worked with her Pusher and made an initial separation
so that an Aware Ego process had started and she had some beginning
sense of how driven she was. In this voice her stomach pains were
still present and intense.
After we talked for a few minutes in the Aware
Ego I asked Sara to move to the other side to “being”
energy. She moved over and sat silently for a few minutes. It
was the first time in her life that she ever remembered just sitting
and being with someone without words or planning or work. She
began to talk about how she was feeling, which was different than
anything she had ever known. At a certain point I asked her how
her stomach was feeling and she reported no pain at all. She really
couldn’t quite believe it. I moved her back to the Pusher
and the pain returned. I then moved her again to “being”
energy and the pain disappeared. I’m not sure who was more
shocked, the client or myself!
Within a few short minutes she had moved from
a victim mentality in which “her body was constantly betraying
her” to a totally new kind of exploration of a number of
major disowned self systems that included her introversion and
her “being” energy, ways of being that had been totally
negated growing up in her family system.
YOU CAUSED YOUR ILLNESS
One of the more damaging ideas that came out
of the holistic movement of the seventies and that continues today
to some extent goes something like this: “You caused your
illness! Since you caused it and are responsible for it you have
the power to make yourself well!”
The statement is generally well intentioned.
We know that many illnesses are caused by the negation of disowned
selves. If you suffer from headaches and someone convinces you
that you are causing those headaches and that if you can discover
the root cause then you have the power to cure the headaches.
The damage of this way of thinking and this kind
of advice occurs in two ways. First of all, it is the Inner Critic
that generally takes in the statement. Inner Critics are giants
in the psyche of most people. When the Inner Critic gets hold
of this kind of idea it can be only bad news in the psyche.
The other consideration has to do with the fact
that such thinking is also applied to catastrophic illnesses such
as cancer. Imagine some friend saying to you: “You caused
your cancer. Since you are responsible for having developed cancer,
you have the power to cure it.” Truly, with friends like
this who needs enemies? Yet I have watched a multitude of patients
die the most distressing deaths because they had been given this
advice and their Inner Critics had taken it in and then their
Pusher has gone crazy trying to rectify the damage they have done
by driving themselves harder and harder to heal their wrong doing.
LIFE AND ILLNESS AS A PATH
We don’t know what causes cancer. We know
psycho-spiritual factors may be involved in certain patients,
but there are also genetic and environmental issues and a host
of unknown factors that are also involved. How much more healing,
how much more elegant to say to someone. “Continue your
efforts to heal your cancer. While you are doing this however,
let’s consider the meaning of this illness in your life.
Let’s think about your cancer as a teacher. What has it
opened up for you? What are your dreams saying? Let’s talk
about your vulnerability and what you do with this in your life
and with your family. We can’t promise to cure you. We don’t
know how to do that but we can join with you in the search for
meaning that this illness can open up for you.” How much
more elegant a way of being a friend than feeding the Inner Critic
streak and eggs and potatoes and toast with peanut butter and
jelly every morning.
For Sidra and myself the paradigm of Illness
as Teacher can be applied to all life experiences. Life has so
many ways of destabilizing us. We can so easily fall victim to
these ongoing events or we can recognize that every destabilization
is an opportunity for new discovery or, as Sidra so aptly expresses
it, to move out of the pot bound mentality of our primary self
system. Illness gives us a chance to allow the pot to crack gracefully
rather than trying throughout our lives to constantly attempt
to repair the cracks that inevitably get bigger over time.
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