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Who Are You Sick For?

Paul Bahder, MD & Teresa A. Bahder, MA

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Being sick is a social activity. It is something that we do with others. We are never sick in isolation, for sickness is a kind of a dialogue between the sick person and an important, special person. This person need not be in our immediate presence. He or she need not be in our physical proximity, or even alive. And yet the language of symptoms is always a message communicated to another person, in a symbolic way saying something that we have not said directly and consciously.

Dialoguing with another person using symptoms requires a high price: illness may be grave, or it may even be terminal. It is always uncomfortable and, at least on the conscious level, undesirable. Understanding the message of our disease, grasping its meaning for us as well as for that one special person for whom the message is intended, is one of the most powerful means of becoming healed.

It is simply impossible to be sick for ourselves. The pain and suffering that we go through, while being sick, must be offered on the altar of another. We would never be sick for ourselves, for being sick for ourselves would not pay. It is far more advantageous to be healthy for oneself. Even if you don't have what you want, you still then have your well-being. We would not destroy ourselves for ourselves. Destroying ourselves, as in having our tissues become inflamed, degenerated, or in any way disordered, does not serve us. In the ultimate analysis it is meant for another person, who has not heard the messages that we have, either in words or in thought, tried to communicate.

To understand the nature of disease as a form of communication we need to discover some basic underlying metaphors that our mind believes to be true.

Being sick for another person does not mean that we will outwardly tell another person that. It is very rare and requires either a great insight and courage, or unabashed arrogance and pride to say, for example, "I am sick because I want you to pay more attention to me." Or, "I am sick because I hate you and I want you to have the burden of taking care of me," or "Look at my suffering and feel guilty for what you have done to me, because it's all your fault."

Most of the time we are even unaware of the intent of our illness. In fact, it is generally believed that when we are sick we are being victimized by our discomforts. We seem helpless in the face of our pain. At that time pain is something greater than us; it is something overwhelming, frustrating, or scary. It is something we resent or fear. It is a force that can make us or break us. Or, it is a pain that nags at us just when we want to feel our best. At such times, any talk reminding us that we could have something to do with bringing the illness on is upsetting and not tolerated. "You mean I brought this on myself? Why would I do that if it takes so much suffering?", you may ask. "If I had anything to do with it, I would get rid of my discomfort right away."

The answer is not as farfetched as it seems. Are we always aware of what we are doing? How many times have you gone through a whole series of automatic actions without even noticing that you were doing them? Like taking the keys out of your pocket and opening the door? Or eating without having realized how much you've stuffed yourself.? Or how many times have you been attracted to the wrong kind of company, or to a wrong spouse, or to a job that is utterly frustrating and unfulfilling?

The answer is that most of us are not conscious of why we do things. We are not aware of the intent of our actions. We find ourselves drawn into situations, jobs, relationships, food cravings, cigarettes, alcohol, compulsive nail biting, or chronic nervous stomachs, without understanding the message of our dis-ease.

We are motivated by what "feels good," or what draws on us stronger and plays on our guilt feelings more forcefully. We do things because we feel we "should," or because we would feel so anxious and "tense" if we would not do it.

Rarely do we do something with a conscious intent. The motivation for most of our actions is hidden in the dark, suppressed recesses of our mind. Deeply within our mind are buried the sources of our motivations. Hidden from our conscious awareness are our real motives, the messages that are just bursting to come out and be acknowledged, but that are continually thrust back into the darkness of our ignorant forgetfulness. Much of the time we forget that we really do not know why we end up doing something.

Lost for reasons and looking to give ourselves some semblance of power, we come up with explanations, really excuses, as to why we chose one thing over another, one person over another, one job over another. While we can logically defend our choices in mundane matters, such as becoming physically intimate with somebody or separating from them, we have a more difficult time to excuse our choices for dis-ease, for that does not seem to make sense. We either need to get far enough away from our common sense to admit to wanting to be sick, or become brutally honest with ourselves and humbly recognize our confusion.

Most of our actions are directed toward others. Did you ever try to do something without in the least way thinking of somebody else? You may not have told anyone about it, but have you been able to do something without thinking about someone? Without at least having some kind of an image, or a fantasy of relating to someone? What would your mother say, or your father, or brother or sister, or even a buddy, if they saw you doing what you are doing? Have you caught those fleeting thoughts of wonder? How would they behave, what would they think, how would they react? Yes, for most people it is next to impossible to act without there being an audience, a panel of judges watching, commenting, condemning or condoning, criticizing or complimenting them all the time.

Most of these processes take place in our head, without there being anyone around. The constant internal chatter that goes on in our head is the comment that we seek. It is the judgment that we crave. It is the curse that we resent. Yet, hidden deep in the secret comers of our mind, is the desire to indulge in that unwholesome company in our head. We are a veritable walking menagerie of people, places, and things. Images, memories, fears, and resentments form the internal environment in which we 11 move and have our being."

No matter that there are no people around us at the time, no matter that we may never tell the people that we fantasize about what exactly we are thinking. The reality is that we are constantly engaged in the process of talking, talking to the people, places, and things in our head. This chatter has taken on such a persistent and intrusive quality that we hardly even notice what it is about. It is as if something from somewhere was running a continual dialogue with us, nagging, frustrating, criticizing, encouraging (although that's rare).

Our physical body takes its directives from this inner activity of the mind, from the imaginary, fantasized tensions that we experience when we engage in the dream-like stream of consciousness. As we experience these tensions, our body obediently reacts with its own electrical, biochemical, and physical reactions. Without realizing it, our body manifests the changes in breathing, in the heartbeat, the subtle play of constrictions of blood vessels, rushes of heat or waves of chills, secretions of saliva, and changes in skin color. These reactions, compounded over a period of time represent the states of consciousness that we experienced, carved in flesh. Each symptom, each ache and pain, is a created image, a word spoken out of the dream-stream.

Much of this internal chatter possesses a compulsive quality. It seems to go on regardless of our will. It is a communication of some of our inner parts with the surface mind and with people around us. While we are walking down the street or driving a car, our mind is busy planning tomorrow's dinner, or speaking up to the boss, or dwelling on yesterday's hurt. Engaged in outer activities, our mind is involved in inner activity, often totally disconnected with the present moment and the needs at hand. In our minds we are relating to someone else, someone we resent, or worship, or criticize.

Disease is a statement, a cry of the symbolic web of our mind. It is a message and a question. It expresses our inner confusion and lack of harmony, and it begs for help. Disease speaks to the specters of our mind. It makes visible the confusion that was invisible.

Our symptoms do have a meaning. They are not meaningless. When we experience our symptoms we react to them. We do not look at them as if they were a meaningless, neutral series of sensations. We feel that they "bother" us, "annoy" us, "frustrate" us, or "depress" us. If we could look at symptoms as not having anything of value, as not being anything we feel compelled to react against, then they would either disappear or at least take on a minor role in our life. They would exist only as something in the background, as a nothing, just like a dry leaf lying on the ground, neither special nor not special.

A patient of ours related a story of how suddenly, after a long period of absence, her allergy symptoms came back. She could not understand why. She was happy, her life was working, her business going well. Then it came to her that her sneezing got worse on the evening of her wedding anniversary. It was a joyful time, and she was happy to be with her husband. It took her longer to realize that after the anniversary dinner she was afraid that her husband would expect her to become sexual with him, and that was something she wanted to avoid. Allergy symptoms were a way of saying "no" to her husband.

We are usually sick for the people that we are "close" to. Only the ones that we would go to the trouble of suffering for are the ones we get sick for. Most of the time it has to do with our parents, especially our mothers. But it is possible to be sick for your father, your brother or sister, your spouse, your child, your boyfriend or girlfriend, even your neighbor. Almost anyone whose opinion matters to us is someone we can be sick for.

Mothers hold an especially prominent place because being sick is an attack on one's body. Illness destroys body and body is what we have received from our mothers. The seed, or the spiritual blueprint, comes from the father, but the tissues, the material out of which the body is constructed, comes from the mother. So it is that body, being a gift of the mother, represents our relationship with her. And just like when you don't like someone, you may wish to throw their present out, so illness is a way of trashing the gift that comes by way of the mother, depreciating the body, mistreating it, using it as a worthless, painful nothing.

Often the role of the mother is fulfilled by another important woman, the wife or girlfriend. In such cases, the illness is a form of communication with her. It is a way of saying something that has not been said in another, a more healthy way.

One man, sick with lung cancer, was being reassured by his wife. "You have to get better!", said she with an expectant demand in her voice. From her determination and willful, domineering stance it was obvious what kind of pressure this man has been living under, for many years. Coolly, he turned around and said, "Getting better is the one thing you just can not expect of me."

(Cancer, in the eyes of most people, is a tragedy that people have no control over.) Later on that evening the same man, while on the side talking to others, remarked in a half-joking manner, "Even the worst criminal gets paroled after 20 years for good behavior, and I've been married for 32 already."

The intensity of his resentment toward his wife, his rebellion against her, and his desperate need to be himself, even through the means of his illness, all came out in a crack between his guarded defenses. Can you imagine such a man, for whom illness is the only way of being "free," giving it up to become healthy? Healthy for what? For the prison of living with his wife? In his perception, being ill was the only thing he was "doing for himself." Yes, this man's resentment inverted his perception. Looking through the eyes of resentment he saw illness as a way to "be himself ' " the opposite of the self that was outwardly demanded by his wife-but secretly provoked by her.

Was not his illness an eloquent statement of his upside-down values? Did it not shout out to his wife all those stored images of anger, in a form so condensed and compelling that even strangers took note of his "cancer" and made special considerations for him, by pitying him, humoring him, and so on?

Illness is a more synthetic language than words. It takes many stored, persistent images of past resentments, many upsetting words reverberating in the mind, many hurt feelings nagging, eating, frustrating us, to produce a physically visible disease. Yes, illness starts out in the invisible, and normally it takes time before it becomes visible.

Learning to understand and perceive that language of the invisible is the best prevention and the best cure. Meditation, staying in the realm before words become words, is the one sure way of remaining in health. In that realm, without internal chatter, with peace and clarity, we are not relating to any person, At that time we are communing with the Invisible Beyond, the source and root of health. In that realm of inner silence, where we are healthy and whole, we exist without other persons. There we "move and have our being" in the vastness of boundless consciousness. One can only be healthy for oneself. Relating to other persons, "personas" or masks, is like living among the mental images, specters of company. Forced to communicate with symbols of our mind, we set out on a journey of pain and suffering. Being sick is a social activity. Being healthy is a divine activity.