Sick of your own accord?

“Neurodermatitis started at the age of three,” recalls 33-year-old Vasilisa. – The skin became inflamed every now and then, I didn’t sleep well, because everything itched. What kind of doctors they didn’t take me to, what they didn’t treat me with. They said that it would pass when puberty began, but nothing passed. And when I got married and had a baby, things got even worse. It all ended only when I left my mother seven years ago and began to live separately. Vasilisa is still not sure if this was just a coincidence, although she suspects that the skin rashes were somehow connected with her mother’s domineering nature and her inability to object to anything.

Hidden causes of diseases

To date, there is a short list of diseases that have a psychosomatic nature. It is known as the “Chicago Seven”, which includes: bronchial asthma, hypertension, duodenal ulcer, ulcerative colitis, thyrotoxicosis, rheumatoid arthritis, neurodermatitis. In the occurrence of these bodily ailments, the leading role belongs to the psyche, and even official medicine agrees with this.

But psychotherapists say that any ailment has psychological causes. For example, insomnia is associated with distrust of life, women’s diseases with fear of them, and childhood dermatitis with emotionally tense relationships in the family.

“Behind our illnesses there are secret desires, fears and conflicts forced into the unconscious,” says psychoanalyst Dmitry Olshansky. “The body can speak, but it says things we don’t understand. Therefore, to begin with, you need to solve the riddle of the unconscious. And then take the second step – to change psychologically. If the patient can do this, the disease will disappear.”

The psychoanalyst recalls how one day a 27-year-old plump woman came to see him. She followed diets, tormented herself with training, but the kilograms only arrived.

“I asked her to tell about herself, and literally the first thing she said was that she was from an incomplete family,” says Dmitry Olshansky. – Their father left them for no apparent reason, and since then they have not communicated. The client still cannot understand and explain his act. It became obvious to me that the patient’s symptom was built around completeness/incompleteness: in one case bodily completeness, in the other family incompleteness. But it is impossible to compensate for one another! We began to work with this, and within a few months the patient’s weight returned to normal. He just didn’t need her.”

Why is it good for us to get sick?

We all happen to collapse from a cold and spend several days in bed just when we are tired or have unpleasant business ahead of us. We scold ourselves for dressing lightly the day before, exclaiming: “How it’s all at the wrong time!”, but on an unconscious level we get what we lack: the opportunity not to go to an unloved job, the attention of a partner who cannot be torn off in the evenings from TV, and parents we rarely see. Illness can provide us with all this, albeit not for long.

“Illness is a way to get what you can’t do without it,” says Gestalt therapist Irina Dybova. And he lists five benefits that we gain in illness.

1. We allow ourselves to rest. From endless cases, meetings, deadlines – everything that cannot be abandoned. Many of us can rest with a clear conscience only on vacation. But you still have to live up to it, and often a sick leave for two or three days is the only opportunity to take a breather. Children too (with the exception of those who study at home) cannot not go to school. And they often get sick simply because they are tired.

2. We can not decide what we don’t want. If the child is seriously ill, you will have to postpone the divorce. Own illness allows you to postpone the change of activities and new projects for the future. And long-term care of loved ones is a good reason not to ask questions about personal life and career.

3. We get the right to care. And if relatives ignore this SOS, it is very likely that the disease will progress, and at some point they will have to hear us. It is customary to listen to the wishes of a sick person, and, having collapsed with rheumatism or a temperature, you can finally force your husband to fix the taps and attach a handle to the door.

4. We are beginning to be respected. If what we are currently doing, for some reason, does not cause approval and respect (for ourselves, first of all), then a serious illness will correct the situation. Surrounding with trepidation will think: “God forbid this is me!”

5. We can see the world from the other side. When you spend hours looking at the folds on the curtains or looking for the figures of outlandish animals in the cracks on the ceiling, the world becomes different. The disease makes you think about what you didn’t have time for before. There is a reboot of the system and even a reassessment of life.

Learn to listen to your own needs

Perhaps the moment will come when psychologists and doctors will join forces to take into account the characteristics of the patient’s personality and the situation in his environment in the diagnosis and treatment. In the meantime, we are treated by some and go to psychotherapy with others. A chronic asthmatic continues to take the drug prescribed by the therapist. And in the office, for example, at a psychodramatherapist, he tries to connect bodily experiences with words that give them meaning, and find in his memory the event that marked the beginning of the disease.

“It is important to determine the critical point from which the disease originates,” says psychotherapist Francois Moreau. “Then we will understand why the disease appeared now, and not a year or five years ago.”

47-year-old Olga once conducted her own research on this topic: “I took the medical records of the neighbor’s son and my children – a total of four, who at that time were 3-7 years old. She wrote out the dates of childhood illnesses from the cards in a column. And next added events in families. And it turned out that during periods of quarrels, relocations, my divorce, the arrival of uninvited guests, even during periods of dad’s straining with work, children began to get sick much more often … “

Is it possible to somehow prevent the disease? “Yes, if you learn to hear your own needs and needs: what do I need, what do I really want,” Dmitry Olshansky is sure. – And try to declare it, enter into a dialogue with those on whom the satisfaction of these needs depends. Otherwise, the need will still be satisfied, only at the expense of the disease.

What is it about? First of all, about the need for security – both financial and emotional and physical, in closeness – tenderness, care, affection, attention. Sometimes behind our illnesses there is a desire for power and manipulation of others. And our task is to understand ourselves in order to be healthy and loved at the same time!