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Some Potential Attitudes of Illness
This is a great shift for personal responsibility from feeling like illness choose me rather than me choosing it
Date: 9/29/2006 1:06:44 AM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 1943 times
Six Steps to Discovering the Meaning of Your Illness
First Step. Express your intention to explore and transform the attitudes and behaviors that are contributing to your illness. This means engaging your illness directly and exploring its psychological meaning. Examine the feelings, thoughts, and actions that were part of your life before you became ill and that may have prompted your health problems.
Second Step. Call up an image in your imagination that represents your illness or pain. What does this image say to you? It might say, for instance, "I'm the part of you that feels responsible for everyone and everything." Continue to dialogue with this image. Ask: "In what specific ways am I feeling overly responsible? How have I acted out this feeling or pattern in my life? Where does this feeling come from in my past? Is there a specific person or situation that triggers this feeling or pattern?"
Third Step. Express in detail how your pain or illness makes you feel. For example, "My stiff neck makes me feel choked and strangled, unable to express what I truly feel." Ask yourself, "How am I strangling myself or squelching myself, preventing the expression of the truth of my being?" Answers might include: "My feelings are stupid; my ideas will never be taken seriously; I'll be hated if I express my truth." Also ask, "How am I allowing myself to be strangled by others? How am I setting myself up to act out being strangled in my life?"
Fourth Step. Answer the following questions: What effect does this illness have on your life and on your relationships with others? How do you perceive that others are affected by your illness? For example, you may feel they don't care about it, and you may thereby be acting out some old emotional attachment to the feeling of being neglected. Do you have a hidden agenda for your illness? You may feel your illness provides you with the only way you can get a reaction from others. Also ask yourself, "What do I have to face (or not have to face) by being sick? Check to see if your illness represents a retaliation or a way of getting attention from those you love.
Fifth Step. Pursue the meaning behind your illness with more penetrating reflections. Are you holding any old or present-day grievances with others? What feelings do these grievances bring up in you? How did you feel you were treated by these individuals? Observe the attachment to the feeling of being a victim. Explore your role in how you may have allowed or unconsciously assisted in what happened.
Then take these feelings back to your relationship with yourself and ask: "How do I treat myself in the same manner? Am I regarding myself in the same way I see them?" List all the grievances and guilt you are holding against yourself. Does your guilt pertain to childhood rules or attitudes that may no longer be serving you? Are you holding yourself responsible for actions or circumstances that were beyond your awareness or control? Feel your unwillingness to express compassion and understanding for yourself. Feel your resistance to forgiving yourself.
Sixth Step. Answer honestly the following question: "If I become healthy, happy, or successful, what will happen? For example, "Others will ignore me," or "Nothing that good could ever possibly happen to me."
by Sandra
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