A Threat to Present and Future Healing - Identifying with One's Illness

During the worst and earliest years of dealing with and healing myself of Ulcerative Colitis, I became caught up in a tragic and despairing form of thinking. Around 2003, shortly after discharging myself from the hospital I began to see myself solely as ill.

Living through those days, from the depressions to the upheavals of healing it was difficult to distract myself from this way of thinking. I held hope but despite this struggle, a darker part of myself continued to posit the thought that I would be ill the rest of my life and I had to accept it. The specialist, a man I didn’t admire nor trust had labeled my illness indefinite and for the rest of my life. By this rationale, shouldn’t I go along and treat his words as sacrosanct?

I fought and fought this thinking. Having read about ‘spontaneous healing’ and the mysteries of remission, I figured there had to be some distinct key or assortment of keys to health and wellness.

But in contradiction to such an optimistic and hopeful attitude, I had to admit, an uncomfortable reality was continually undermining me. While those who I perceived as healthy could come and go as they pleased, I had to accept for myself there was no freedom from internal worry — the digestive illness, even when being treated with mass amounts of drugs still dictated what to eat and how to structure my day, that is, where and when I could go, where would there be a restroom and other limitations.

Still, by half-accepting the mournful situation, I wondered if these dire limitations added a dimension to myself or took something from it. In addition to the longing for ‘spontaneous healing’ and remission, I also had encountered in the very same books on health and wellness those individuals who gave into their fates. The illness, such people believed, had become part of them and instead of fighting and struggling, they managed their lives and symptoms via diet and herbal supplements. They made the illness a part of their lives the way a host at a party makes room for another unexpected presence at the dinner table. By living with the illness, treating it with physicals aids, embracing it, they could at least improve their emotional and mental lot. They weren’t in denial, it was argued; instead, they were resigned to live the best they could. In regard to these examples, I read of those who took this appreciative and courageous stance.

Either way, as I felt confused about my path, the moments of misery could be like a mist, clouding my judgement. At times of mental escape, instead of considering the resigned future, I found myself relishing in memories of the past. There and back then, before the colitis, back before being diagnosed, I hadn’t been ill. No. It struck me as odd that I could have been healthy once and suddenly, here and now be ill, that the illness would haunt me longer than my own youth. If only to retrieve a piece of that past in the present, to live in the memory as opposed to the difficult and diseased current moments.

This way of thinking gave me some hope. Being philosophically minded I suggested to myself that the illness despite being labeled chronic was more a matter of chronology. I asked myself questions: Why did I think the illness arise in this time? Were there some inklings of it in the past? What had changed in my life to make the illness present now as opposed to then?

I figured with some emotional and mental effort I could be well again but how? If I had been well before, it was possible to be well again, I argued, here in the present and for the future I assumed.

Because I wasn’t ill before, that it wasn’t something I was born with or had existed in my family, this encouraged me to see myself as someone on the way to healing. The illness was the anomaly, not me. And I struggled to see myself as an individual facing illness as opposed to an individual being ill.

I trained myself in minor ways. My mother often discusses the idea that we are not human beings having spiritual experiences but rather spiritual beings having human experiences. As such, in the past, during the worst years, I wanted to view my life and myself, its coherent chronology in a similar framework, that of being an individual having an experience of illness as opposed to being illness personified. The misconception of identifying myself with being only a sick individual threatened to undermine my own path to healing and wellness.

I knew this.

In addition, to curtail any identification with the illness, I refused to speak of ‘my’ illness and instead worded it as ‘the’ or ‘an’ illness. Ownership of such a condition, from my perspective back then, could only further a bond and what does bonding do but fortify individuals against future separations?

This meant not joining support groups.

When I volunteered at a Crohn’s and Colitis Fund Raising BBQ I found myself in the company of the sick and their supporters, both groups relying upon each other.

It might seem crass to suggest that there is a ‘reliance’ upon an illness but it does exist and admitting to it certainly helped me. For one, I personally used the illness to shield myself from others, to not participate in life, to remain arrogantly opposed to the world. And the other benefit: illness absolutely offers an identity, perhaps one stronger than the one that existed pre-diagnosis.

In regard to the supporters of those sick, at the fundraiser and later, in conversation with relatives of IBD sufferers, I noticed these individuals embraced their altruist roles, enjoying the experiencing of being either charitable or the nurturing ones. A fine intention but not beneficial to healing.

And when I think of the proverb, you are the company you keep, I vowed never to return to any such sick support group or identity with such a group. I wanted to keep with the company of the healthy, those who I regarded as well. They were the example to learn from.

Also, throughout my healing years, I sought out those more like myself, striving to go beyond the illness. I met individuals further in their progress. Through them, I learned to regard the illness as a form of messaging, a compass, a tool as opposed to a punishment or a vicious mystery punitively enacted upon my body and being.

These individuals on their own paths were also encouraging. They reminded me stay strong and not give up or give in. Doubt was fine but hope was better. They told me as the months passed and the phases of healing came and went, with one and half leaps forward, and the disheartening and faltering leap back, it was always wise to mark my progress as opposed to mourn my setbacks.

Healing, true healing they said would come to mean being honest with my past and revisiting previous and repressed hurts and frustrations. Healing could be surprising they said. And it was. I learned it didn’t come from one main approach but through many. It was more than just perspectives that needed to be adjusted. My healing included unorthodox methods such as hypnotherapy and past life regression therapy (things I discuss in the book I am currently finishing).

And again, healing would mean assessing my attitudes and even my own ownership of the illness, the means in which I used the illness as a shield against myself, as a weapon and a tool of not only punishing myself but loved ones surrounding me. This would mean examining my own perception and perspective of the illness and taking responsibility of my experiences as ill.

This responsibility meant being aware of my self’s cultivation, whether conscious or unconscious of the illness in my life.

If I had completely and wholeheartedly identified with the illness then the experience of being ill would have blinded me as opposed to guiding me. Instead of upholding the viewpoint that my illness was me and that this ‘me’ could be seen as anything but incurably ill, I was taking cues and hints from the illness’ manifestation. The symptoms indicated to me a larger and deeper cause within the greater narrative/chronology of my life the way that smoke indicates a fire or the grumble of my stomach, hunger.

The re-interpretation of my previous experiences and interactions with mine own psyche and emotional soul through the lens of compassion and understanding eventually assisted me in my healing of Ulcerative Colitis. When I regarded and released the repressed anger of previous years it was a matter of time before I began to experience the illness as a guide. I knew that healing still needed to be achieved when the symptoms persisted and over the years, the intensity of my deeper rage dwindled thus showcasing less and less in my body.

But again, this healing only came with the minor but important recognition that I was a self dealing with an illness. By identifying with the illness the path to healing can be easily ignored. The idea that the illness exists as a statement made by the body, namely the expression of emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds is an idea that needs to be explored by sufferers and to be done with the support of family, friends and of course, physicians.

To identity with ourselves as opposed to an illness is the healthier approach. This recognizing ourselves, seeing the self in a state of ailing is where we must begin to unravel and untangle previous repressions and misinterpreted experiences.

When we identify with illness, we misplace ourselves and misplace potential healing. When we identify with an illness, we fortify our resolve to bond with this new identity and healing, paradoxically becomes a threat to this identity.