Fixing or healing – which do you choose?
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Fixing or healing – which do you choose?
Have you ever stopped to consider your own attitude to illness and disease?
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When you get sick, do you think it is just bad luck, just part of life but with no specific meaning or message for you?
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Do you see it as just something to be gotten over as quickly as possible so that you can go back to your life as it was before you got sick?
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Or do you feel that there is more to it? That perhaps how you have been living has had something to do with the illness or condition you have developed?
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When you go to the doctor, do you go to get fixed by the doctor or do you feel the doctor is there to help you heal yourself?
Lots of questions, and the answers are personal to you – but how we understand illness and disease and how we answer such questions also impacts our health, wellbeing and vitality, and the degree to which we are willing to take responsibility for them.
Let’s have a look at the difference between wanting to be fixed and seeking to heal:
If we go to the doctor and expect them to ‘fix’ us, either with a prescription, operation or physiotherapy or other modality so we can go back to living the same life we had before we got sick, then we most likely do not see any link between how we are living and the conditions we have developed. We may feel it is the doctor’s duty to fix us – that is what they have been trained for.
In other words, we take little or no responsibility either for the condition we have or the way we have been living, which could have resulted in the condition in the first place. The end result is that if the doctor does not fix us, we have nowhere else to go as we do not see any link between our own choices and the conditions we have: we become a victim of life and the condition ... and sometimes upset at the doctor who has not been able to fix us!
Healing is different to fixing – it means addressing not just the symptoms, but also the root cause of the condition so that it is healed and does not return.
This involves looking at our lifestyle and how we are living that could have resulted in the condition we have.
If we seek to heal, we can have a sense that there is a bigger picture; that how we have lived to date has in some way resulted in the conditions we have developed.
The illness or disease has a deeper meaning for us, in the realisation that it is our body’s way of giving us a message about the choices we have been making.
We are more willing to take responsibility for both the condition we have and the choices we have been making. We know healing is much more than physical and often requires a re-evaluation of our daily choices and priorities and a deeper consideration of our relationship with ourselves, our beliefs and our behaviours.
The end result of this is we do not feel a victim but are empowered to make changes in order to heal the root cause of the condition, at the same time as accepting any surgery or treatment instigated by the doctor. In this way we see the doctor as an integral part of the healing process, but crucially not the only part, and that we too have a significant role to play if we are to truly heal ourselves.
We are all free to choose our attitude to illness and disease, irrespective of the nature of the condition we have.
Our attitude is personal to us and is something that we have total control over – we can change it any time, even though we may stubbornly believe that is not so!
Wanting to be fixed may seem attractive in the short term – to just get over the condition and return to life as we know it – but it does not heal the underlying cause and means that the errant way we are living will probably just result in more conditions further down the line.
In contrast, developing an attitude of seeking to heal means we are willing to take responsibility and to change the way we are living so that not only do we heal the cause of the condition, but also so that we live in a way that is more healthy and less likely to result in another lifestyle-related condition.
So which do you choose?
Do you want the short-term quick fix or do you want to heal for life?
Something is not right
The body cannot lie and it is clearly telling us that something is very wrong - so why are we not listening or asking the right questions?
Filed under
Healing, Sickness, Ill health, Health, Disease
