I entered
therapy partly to deal with a chronic illness, rheumatoid arthritis. My therapist
believes that this illness is caused by repressed emotion. I think he believes
that our work together can significantly improve my illness. This is difficult
idea for me to swallow because:
1) I feel awkward discussing the fact that my illness is progressing rather than
improving—am I not working hard enough? not measuring up? Plus I believe that he’s
being a bit unscientific and a bit arrogant (as I told him).
2) This is not how I want to think of myself—so repressed that I brought myself a
great deal of pain and aggravation. I’m not even saying his idea is not possible.
Just that it doesn’t work for me as the story of my life. I think I have a
disease. I think there are many reasons why. Bad stuff happens to everyone.
Now I need to deal with it.
Because
I think that dealing with any repressed emotion can only help my illness
and help me make a good life, I think my therapist and I still have the same
goal basically, so I think we can work together. I believe that our work
together can really help me improve my life and maybe my illness. Here’s my
question: Is it reasonable for me to tell my therapist that I’m going with my
version of what causes my illness rather than his? Perhaps we can agree to
disagree. What do you think?
The real issue here is not about who is “right” but about
the definition of causality.
The fact is,
there can be several
causes of one thing.
Rheumatoid arthritis can have a genetic cause, a chemical cause, and a
psychological cause. Given that you cannot do anything about your genetics,
and that medications may provide temporary relief but not a cure, it might be
very helpful to do everything you can to alter the psychological aspects of
your illness. In general, because
repressed emotions
are usually a key component of the psychological cause of anything, using
psychotherapy to improve your physical condition requires that you learn
to expand your emotional
awareness.
In general,
psychological healing for any illness requires finding the symbolic “place” of
the healing. When emotional distress afflicts a person—especially in
childhood—that person can feel alone and helpless and stuck, and, if the
parents are not emotionally aware themselves, or are even abusive, there will
be no one to whom the child can speak who can understand. Therefore, without
a place of safety to speak about the trauma, the pain will find its place
somewhere in the body. Psychotherapeutic healing can provide a safe place where
the emotional pain—the repressed pain—can be given a voice so that it can be
understood. Then, feeling understood, the pain can leave its “place” in the
body and take up its rightful symbolic place in the story of your life
As for thinking of
yourself as “so repressed that I brought myself a great deal of pain and aggravation,”
well, welcome to the human race. We all have an
unconscious, and, without doing the
psychotherapy to go deep into understanding the unconscious, we all are so repressed
that we bring ourselves a great deal of pain and aggravation. We can be so filled with
disagreement that we disagree with life itself. When we encounter problems, we try to
get rid of them, rather than understand them. Unconscious psychological conflicts rule
the world—literally. That’s why the world is filled with hatred, violence,
terrorism, and war.
Bad stuff happens, yes;
but unless you “swallow” it (and “digest” it) psychologically, it will find its place
somewhere outside your understanding. Right now, without the help of psychotherapy,
you cannot understand your unconscious by yourself, and it is arrogant of you to believe
that your version of illness is correct. So, instead of disagreeing with your
psychotherapist, keep an open mind and seek out that place where the healing wisdom of
understanding is located.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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