Overcome the self-pity and disease-gain trap

“You cannot manifest thin from thoughts of I hate being fat.

You cannot manifest purity from I despise being an addict.

You cannot manifest health from I abhor being sick.

In each of the above assertions of what you dislike, you are giving of your thoughts to creating more and more of the same.

Since you become what you think about all day long, once again, the solutions involve a different level of energy to any of these and similar circumstances.”

Wayne W. Dyer

My time with rheumatoid arthritis brought new experiences both socially and mentally.

There is hardly anyone who wants to be stigmatised. And certainly not as a “psychosomatic” because of rheumatoid arthritis. We want to be socially recognised and taken seriously.

Mental problems, including those that affect the body more noticeably, generally bring very little social recognition to most of us.

On the contrary, a “purely” physical, an “actual” illness, of which one is “innocent,” on the other hand, is regarded as respectable. The question of whether the affected person is of a lesser worth, which is, either way, impertinent, is then no longer asked by the majority of the social environment. There will mostly be no doubt about one’s state of mind and goodwill. They are a good patient and bravely bear their ordeal. Very quickly, others will pity their fate and appreciate them for “accepting “the disease. Additionally, one can gain belongingness to a group of people suffering from the same disease. This, in turn, can become a source of appreciation and kind attention that wasn’t there before to the needed extent.

If one gains more validation and social connections through their illness than before in life, a disease can come to represent itself as an asset, a gain.

The less true self-esteem exists, the more tempting the doubtful profit can be for the feelings of affirmation and comfort gained through the disease will boost self-confidence. However, the pleasant feeling only prevails if this kind of social confirmation is maintained.

I found the profit from my illness to be valorising. There were attention and appreciation from the doctor, the nurses, the pharmacists and others affected by RA. For my life with pain and inflammation. For my problems, my bravery, my suffering and my “reason” not to complain, to keep my appointments punctually, to take my medication regularly, and to cooperate as a docile patient. This situation created a role for me that, on the one hand, was shaped by others but, on the other hand, designed by me so I could identify myself with it. I pitied and appreciated myself for my suffering by itself and my life with it.

Once found, there is hardly anyone who would turn down this source of happiness and false self-confidence – au contraire. Most people will automatically and naturally start to protect it. Since when something feels soothing, of good use or as a source of well being, such as loving attention or appreciation, the inner magnetic needle will point to it.

Concurrently rheumatoid arthritis and sequelae took an increasing influence on my life through pain and movement restrictions I could back then only adjust to as best as possible. In doing so, I had to give more than I gained in strength. So mostly made more energy for the condition than I could get for myself and lived with less energy every day than I needed. I did less, got tired faster and used up my reserves.

So I tried to address this problem as best as I knew: I consulted doctors, took medication, and completely changed my way of life.

Nevertheless, the RA persisted, continued to gain strength, and I kept trying to recover and strengthen myself as best I could every day, with days of help, beautiful experiences, and relief. However, overall I could not regenerate to the needed extent.

RA was only better or worse to handle.

Managing it didn’t get me out of it.

Without healing, I stuffed only a few gaps consistently caused by chronic inflammatory disease. Ultimately, however, RA, the loss of power due to it and their attempts to deal with everything remained. Only by managing them, too, could I handle my day at all.

The RA treadmill and the misery management often quickly become life-determining and continue into the habituation to the disease state rather than out of it.

Time and energy are lost as they are spent again and again for essentially more of the same.

So I started asking myself:

Do the others honestly care about me as my whole self? Or just about me as someone sick?

Am I meant, will I be supported and loved for going down my road even if that means going against the grain and making new experiences?

Is my life with the disease just grist on the mills of other people who draw a benefit from my situation?

What do I get from certain habits, and how do they benefit me?

Do I need self-pity?

Am I afraid of societal stigmatisation as psychologically burdened and guilty of my RA, and dazzle, therefore, that mental aspects naturally also play a role in developing and maintaining many physical illnesses?

Do I want to be healthier, fitter and stronger or stay the manager of my maladies?

Was there perhaps something more that I wanted to achieve, other goals and desires in my life?

Something that was more than just the daily struggle to keep up to date? Did not I want to develop, move on, make more and become fitter, healthier, and more successful?

Where every single day were my time and strength, to evolve and change my daily life?

This can’t go on like that, I told myself. I wanted so badly for things to change for the better because this life is the only one I’ve got, and I needed to be stronger than I was before. What could I do differently? Did I have a choice to change my condition?

I didn’t want any benefit from my disease. It was neither good nor healthy and with ideas about how I could master my life without it losing its worth.

What I needed was a change in my condition for the better no sentimentalism or substitute gratification.

So I started with what had often helped me to solve difficulties and first described my problem:

I ended up gaining something for my rheumatism that I would have needed for my wishes, ideas, and interests but also for my uncertainties, fears, my loneliness, and my helplessness.

This way, I realised that I “benefited “from my illness and at the same time, was helpless in terms of finding a solution to my dilemma.

Furthermore, the acknowledgement that I am sometimes more, sometimes less susceptible to everything with which I chained myself to the state of my condition isn’t pleasant but helpful. Helpful because I could question myself about my needs:

I learned how much I needed care, loving attention, and friendliness and how these former often ignored needs had determined my actions and stopped me from getting what I wanted: health.

So my subjective disease gain sustained both appreciations from others as well as self-pity. Appreciations and self-pity in a self-aggrandising way: how much I have to suffer, how I fight, how reasonable I am and how well I cope with the disease) for my suffering and my life with RA. This shaped my identity, and thus, it shaped my decisions on how to handle my RA. Mostly one was stuck to the other, but they had their roots in the troubles I had.

The subjective gain I had from my disease was the breeding ground to set myself up for my condition, to come to terms and to stop fighting it, even though I was suffering from it at the same time. The subjective gain, I found in my disease formed the background for me to set myself up for my condition, come to terms with and stop fighting it, even though I was suffering from it simultaneously.

Therefore, in my first months with RA, I was subconsciously interested in sticking to my condition. It slowed me down in terms of healing efforts that would have meant leaving the nest of revaluation, (self-) pity and care that I received because of the disease, by myself and by others.

Besides, such a nest offers feelings of safety and orientation. On the other hand, leaving it can bring your worries and fears into consciousness. However, if you want to leave this nest and, with it, your comfort zone, it is crucial to learn from these worries and fears more about yourself and your needs. That’s also helpful in not letting fearful thoughts and concerns determine your mindset. But that doesn’t mean we have to chain ourselves to them, let them determine our present and future or push them to such a high level that we can’t see anything else.

To get to know ourselves better – through a navel-contemplation or as a part of psychotherapy – fears can be handled with profit. In everyday life, they may be quietly put aside because through long fruitless pondering on the state of the disease, can this exactly unsuspecting is reinforced and become overpowering by their excessive attention when it causes more worry, doubt, perplexity, sadness and shame. These are not useful as constant companions of recovery if we only rotate with them in circles because they weaken us and are thus unproductive. Then they mean negative stress, through which you lose only a lot of energy instead of using it to get care, protection and strength and improve your situation.

So I first had to let go of all the “benefits” of my disease to seriously take care to heal myself.

Because as long as I was part of this problem, I couldn’t leave it. However, it took a long, long time for me to figure that out and free myself from old thought patterns: Since then, self-pity and subjective disease gain have no longer caught on with me. They are often fiercely protected as life lies. And it’s essential to consistently reject them for as long as it takes to get rid of this toad entirely poisoning the well.

My desire and need for freedom from pain, mobility and ending the inflammatory process with its destructive consequences helped me out of my self-pity.

Even if most of my physical energy went into doing the most critical tasks, I still had my thoughts, which gave me plenty of room for reflection and planning. They were a source of new courage, creativity and motivation for me. From here, too, I was able to start creating more good energy of my own. I was able to intensify this process further and further. Sometimes it turned into a sure-fire success. Sometimes, it required more intentional thinking.

I wondered what could additionally strengthen me.

At first, I couldn’t think of anything other than what I had already done. So I would let my thoughts continue to thrive in this direction and keep my mind open.

Until I one day remembered how I confidently and naturally conveyed love and security to my child, comforting and strengthening it, telling stories. How I planned and performed adventures together with my child. Things that made both of us happy. At first, I was able to do that much better for my child than for myself. Sometimes, it takes an inspirator, a listener, a friend, and a protector. One who constantly stays on the others’ side no matter what, laughs with them and empathises. One who preserves the freedom to call good things good and bad things bad. One that allows you to be just as you are. With all corners and edges, everything unfinished, everything imperfect, with mistakes and weaknesses. Insults, blasphemies, and other loud and open malignancies have no access here, as well as the quieter and better-hidden ones, which are often only in the gut feeling or even self-inflicted.

I could also do all this for myself, being consciously more aware of my needs than before.

As well as we can imagine how a familiar and mindful person would treat us, we can treat ourselves. I began to be more attentive, respectful, and benevolent with myself, and in this way, to better manage my well-being, even in the face of difficulties.

In doing so, I learned to turn debilitating feelings into restorative ones, intentionally turning frightening and sad thoughts of similar small stories into encouraging and happy thoughts and emotions to give more room to my hope and to plan my healthy future. Even the attempts to do so and partial successes help with some difficulties, crises, misperceptions and even injuries that life can bring when dealing with your weaknesses, such as feeling inadequate.

Distinguishing between self-pity and self-love helps with not putting more energy into the ill condition than necessary.

We can’t afford to lose energy senselessly because we don’t have infinite power, and what we have, we need for ourselves. So I focused on healthy living and threw my malady management overboard!

After two years of suffering from RA, I had endured so much pain that it wouldn’t shock or frighten me as much as at the beginning.

I increasingly perceived my medical condition just, as a matter of fact, no matter how bad it was. I denied it as much energy as possible by thinking less and less about it, grieving or frightening myself. This way, I preserved my strength and could use it for my HÜ exercises — our will to heal needs every support possible.

I dealt with the pain the same way we can with nightmares: I didn’t run from my fear but turned and looked it right in the eyes.

I get closer to goals that strengthen and inspire me with my intentional thoughts daily. With that, I don’t fall prey to feelings or moods. I take care of increasing my happiness, my ability to relax, and my courage. Good thoughts improve one’s mood and provide energy. They give life to ideas of the good I can do for myself and the things I can change for the better. The gaze lifts, the posture becomes more upright, and breathing becomes more natural. All of this is my good physical reality.

With increasing self-awareness, I further withdrew from the overload, such as stress due to insufficient self-understanding, lack of respect for myself, and stress with fellow human beings. So I could raise my ability to empathise with others to a new level alongside a new understanding of myself.

The better care I take of myself, the better I support my healthy mental-physical-psychic reality, which is also helpful in dealing with a disease.

It was the same with healing my rheumatoid arthritis. The less unhealthy, overloading strain and pressure, the fewer impulses of unhealthy, overloading tension my joints were subjected to, the less inflammation and pain occurred.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.”

Wayne Dyer

In all things, the thoughts and ideas that receive the most attention have an extraordinary influence on our feelings and actions before all others. We picture them more often and more precisely before our inner eye and connect them with more emotions – for better or worse. And we do it from dusk until dawn, even in sleep, in our dreams. That gives us the power of choice.

What can happen when one thinks and empathises with a specific disease can be observed in the example of people who are not or no longer affected but are mentally intensively concerned with an illness.

Studying specialised literature, medics sometimes visualise the described processes and symptoms so well that they, like any other person would, become seriously ill themselves if they successfully “do” simple physiological and psychological mechanisms.

Those who were formerly overburdened by tension can, due to their experiences, remember the time with emotional stress very well and spontaneously put themselves back in time. In contrast to the medics above, you can end the tension through deliberate relaxation within a few minutes. This may take a moment if a certain worried excitement has to be recognized and reduced first. The physical processes become conscious. “Is everything coming back now?” as a fearful breath when something frightening meets us, and a relieved exhale when the danger is over.

Every day I have a new energy that is there for me to use. And at least some of it I’ll always invest in myself, transforming it into training and development. With this strategy, I felt happier and hopeful, even as some parts of my body were still on strike. The rule was: I always had my grey matter to use against stress-related rheumatoid arthritis. And that provided me with joy, relaxation and hope.

Investing energy in something we can benefit from gives us strength that we can again spend in this process. The more energy we gain this way, the better we will strengthen ourselves.

While fighting RA, I used as much as possible of my daily energy to work on my HÜ exercises. During the worst times, I got this energy mostly from my thoughts. Often my body was already exhausted from the nocturnal pain. So I just sat down and started to think. In my imagination, I wrapped myself in a feather-light sun-yellow blanket. This imagination comforted me and made me feel protective of myself. This way, I could treat myself in the middle of the disease, and I knew deep inside of me:

I am a change for the better for myself. I’ve got a choice.

I directed loving, careful and friendly thoughts to myself and felt how effective I was for myself. My thoughts are a tool for me to get better. So I stopped caring much about everything I couldn’t do or missed out on. I didn’t focus on the two years I had spent in the rat race managing everyday life and disease but instead just cared about what I could do and do effectively. That was all that counted. It’s all only about the things that count. And: They accelerate and are a constant positive. Even if, in the beginning, it seemed as if there was no energy left for any action at all.

Everything we have at some point done for our own good can always be drawn on from our experience. For me, every effort and every success, no matter how tiny, stayed as an experience. Even if there were more or less small breaks in my practice of the HeilÜben exercises because of my illness, exhaustion, distractions, doubts or helplessness.

Breaks can even be vital for successful emotional, mental and physical processing. I could always get back to the point in my HeilÜben exercises at which I had stopped before. I had some somewhat involuntary and therefore know from experience that getting back at it challenges one’s mental strength and are excellent training opportunities. They matter just as much as the HeilÜben exercises themselves.

We practice with what we have:

When we are down on our knees, we’ll do it from there.

Once you are ailing, you must train harder than others for some time as you put yourself back together, especially since that can be a very disheartening task sometimes. But ultimately, for me, it meant that I became stronger and more persistent than others who didn’t have to pull through.

With the HeilÜben programme, we direct our thoughts and emotions to our health. Loss of energy (due to an illness or a conflict) could be noticeably reduced as I replaced energy-consuming persistence in worries and cloudy thoughts with strengthening feelings (feeling of happiness, confidence, courage) and thoughts of family, friends, encouraging experiences and other things that give me joy.

Thus far, we can help ourselves (with pain and insecurities) we can determine how we feel.

We can calm down our breath and loosen up our bodies to regenerate strength.

Doing so doesn’t mean backing off but actively working on our goals. It’s not about avoiding all unwelcome confrontations with painful or unsettling things but about allowing security and strength to grow in us again and again amid unpleasant situations by using calm and relaxation. When we are more peaceful and relaxed, we spend far less energy on excitement, fears and insecurities. Over time we become more experienced and can also recognize those situations which, despite everything, will still overwhelm us. These situations, however, aren’t failures, and it’s okay to step away at those moments to recover until we can look at things from a distance. We can only act and train from the level we are currently at and expand our possibilities from there.

The better we can do so, the more energy we get and save.

For this, you’ll need every action directed to health, every helpful thought and every positive emotion, I told myself.

Every single one is a success on our way to healing, whether it works alone or connected with others. Therefore every little aspect needs full attention while we practise HeilÜben exercises.

The more we train, the better we’ll get. We learn to trust our abilities. Our successful actions start taking up more space in our daily lives. Thus far, our efforts have begun to determine our life – instead of RA – we stop feeding the disease with attention and energy.

Every training requires attention, time and energy. The more HeilÜben exercises become a habit, the faster we can use them. Then they’ll give power back to us.

Illness can be a lifestyle as well as health. It depends on which we choose.

Compare the effort you take for your illness to the effort you take for your health. And ask yourself:

How much time, emotional attention and energy do I spend right now on the disease?

How much time, emotional attention and energy do I spend on my health right now?

Do I have an emotional energy leak that my thoughts and feelings are often tied to without actually changing anything?

Am I throwing myself a pity party?

Do I get anything from being sick?

Which are the apparent or hidden “benefits”?

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Manja and the HeilÜben team

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