Psychosomatic Illnesses

Illness can have many causes. I believe that, at times, we fall ill under the influence of our own psyche.

So what might set off states like that?

— Inner conflict. We carry a mental or emotional overload, we torment ourselves with doubt, or we refuse to accept ourselves as we are — our views, our feelings, our values. We try to run from ourselves. Maybe we feel a dissonance between the world as we wish it were and the world as it is; maybe we fear being judged for thinking differently, or can’t quite bring ourselves to admit something. The cure — accept yourself here and now, and follow the path your intuition points to, without hesitation or regret.

— The wrong road. We work without rest, sparing neither our strength nor our resources, we don’t sleep, we live on the move, under constant stress. But our subconscious is signalling that we’ve chosen a road that doesn’t match our true values — one where we could never fully unfold our potential. The body simply doesn’t want to spend its energy in that direction. The cure — stop, and ask yourself: “Am I even heading the right way?” Try pointing your effort down a different channel.

— Better safe than sorry. Sometimes we just shouldn’t be in a certain place at this particular moment — and we have no way of knowing it. The cure — get well, then ask yourself the question again: “Do I really still need to be there?” If circumstances or intuition say “yes” — then onward!

— Too much stress. We worry about things we can’t influence, and we wind ourselves up. The cure — stoicism.

For all of the above, there’s no need to read sacred meaning into every illness. At times we simply catch a cold or pick up a virus, and there’s no deep symbolism or hidden trauma in it at all. We just need to get well and go on living happily!

Here’s to health! 😎

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P.S. A couple of curious things:

Ryke Geerd Hamer, the founder of German New Medicine, claimed that every illness is triggered by a sudden emotional shock or conflict that sets off biological processes in the body. He held that disease unfolds in two stages: the active conflict phase and the healing phase. In the first, the body is under stress and symptoms are minimal; in the second, once the conflict has already been resolved, the main symptoms of the illness appear. His theory is neither accepted by the scientific community nor considered safe — but it offers an alternative way of looking at where illness comes from and how to treat it.

Ray Dalio, in Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, describes the hundred-year cycles in which world hegemons replace one another. He argues that one of those handovers is happening right now. We’re in the conflict stage, where the old hegemon (the US) is straining with all its might to hold its place against the new one (China). In times like these the world gets “torn apart” — a great many military conflicts and political crises break out, which is exactly what we’re watching today.

I find it interesting to put the two theories together: the world is sick. But what stage are we in — inner conflict, or recovery? Remember that the heaviest symptoms show up in the phase when the conflict has already been resolved. Maybe we’re only at the very start of this road?