Listening to Your Symptoms
by Martin L. Rossman, M.D.
 Symptoms are like warning lights or gauges in your car. When the oil light
goes on in your car, would you take it to the closest gas station and ask the
mechanic to rip out the light? Would you tape over it so you can go about your
business? Then why go to the doctor looking only for relief of symptoms? You may
miss a warning signal that can help you prevent a future catastrophe.
Careful histories of people who come down with serious illnesses almost
always reveal earlier warning signs that were ignored or treated superficially.
Doctors commonly see patients who have treated their stomach pain for years with
medications -- palliating, tolerating, or ignoring the signal that something is
out of balance until something more serious, like a heart attack, brings the
message home. Unfortunately, we are not usually taught that our bodies are
intelligent and can communicate with us. We are disconnected from our body
language, just as we are from our emotions. We have somehow given away our
birthright in the area of health and healing. We have come to assume that, yes,
a symptom is a message -- but that all it's saying is "Go see your doctor!"
What would it be like if you were able to understand your symptoms and to
use the self-healing intelligence of your body, your feelings, and your spirit?
Why not ask yourself what you need and be receptive to the answers that come
from deep within? Is it so strange, after all, to think that the intelligence
that created your body in the first place would be able to let you know what it
needed to be healthy? Whatever created your body -- whether you call it God,
nature, life, or DNA -- was smart enough to create your head. If it can create your head, why not a
headache? And if it can create a headache, why not a thought that can tell you
what the headache means?
Meanings and Functions of Illness
Illnesses may simultaneously express a person's distress and represent an
attempt to relieve that distress. It is often useful to consider any benefits an
illness may bring as a means of understanding its possible function.
In Getting
Well Again, the Simonton group describes the five most common benefits their
cancer patients listed when they were asked to identify positive things about
having cancer. They were:
1) having permission to get out of dealing with
troublesome situations or problems;
2) receiving attention, care, and nurturing from
others;
3) having the opportunity to regroup
psychologically to deal with a problem or find a new perspective;
4) finding incentive for personal growth or for
modifying undesirable habits;
5) not having to meet the high expectations of
themselves or others.
Whether these factors play a role in the formation of cancer is unknown,
but they are certainly important in the development of many other common
illnesses. Further, even if they are not causative, benefits derived secondarily
from illness may interfere with your motivation to recover. Identifying the
possible advantages of having your symptoms or illness lets you begin developing
healthier ways to accomplish the same objectives. At worst, if you recognize any
benefits that come with being ill, you can make the best use of them.
Other potential benefits of illness have been identified by many clinical
observers. Dr. Gerald Edelstein is a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist in the San
Francisco Bay area. In his book
Trauma, Trance, and Transformation, he reviews and
paraphrases the work of another well-known psychotherapist, Leslie LeCron, who
suggested that there are seven common unconscious reasons for the development of
symptoms. They are:
1. The symptom may be a symbolic physical expression of feelings you are
otherwise unable to express. This can be called "organ language" -- having a
broken heart, a pain in the neck, not being able to stomach something, getting
cold feet, feeling weak in the knees, putting something behind you, and so on.
2. The symptom may be the result of an unconscious acceptance of an idea
or image implanted earlier in life. Thus, the message "you're a bad girl, and no
one worthwhile could ever love you" repeated often or under particularly
emotional circumstances could result in poor self-image, depression,
self-destructive behavior, and difficulty in relationships later in life. In a
real sense, we are all hypnotized as children. We look to our parents, and later
to our teachers and peers, to define our sense of self. The images we form of
ourselves in these early years often form the unconscious basis for patterns of
feelings, behavior, and physiology later in life.
3. The symptom may result from traumatic experiences that have been highly
emotional and then generalized. Edelstein feels that such experiences are often
at the base of phobias. Someone badly frightened by a dog, for example, may
expect all encounters with dogs to be similarly bad. While these symptoms tend to be behavioral or psychological, they may
also manifest physically.
4. The symptom may provide benefits or solve a problem, as the Simonton
list indicates. If so, a person's focus needs to be on ways to enjoy the
benefits without having to be sick.
5. A symptom may be the result of an unconscious identification with an
important, beloved person in your life. The "anniversary illness" is a
well-known phenomenon in medicine. People may fall sick on or near the
anniversary date of someone's death. Frequently, the symptom is similar to the
symptoms the deceased person experienced. The identification may also be with
people still living or with historical or fictional roles. One patient of mine
with cancer was shocked to find through her imagery that, as a child, she had
always imagined herself as an actress playing the role of a heroine who dies a
tragic, dramatic death. She was struck by the similarity of this scenario to
feelings she was experiencing about her current illness and its effects on the
people around her, and she began imagining herself instead as a heroine who
overcame and survived adversity.
6. A symptom is often a manifestation of an inner conflict. You may have
an unmet need or desire that feels forbidden by family, friends, society, or
one's own inner judgments. The symptom may prevent you from carrying out a
forbidden action or may allow you to fulfill the desire symbolically. Sometimes it does both at once.
A priest I once saw as a patient had an extremely painful immobile right
shoulder. It prevented him from using his right arm and had not responded to
extensive conventional treatment. He said it was so painful that he wasn't able
to carry out his responsibilities as a priest and had asked his superior for a
sabbatical leave. In an imaginary session he saw himself angry, righteous, and
carrying a placard on his upraised right arm. The anger and placard spoke
directly to grievances he had with the church bureaucracy that he hadn't been
able to express effectively. As he began to share these feelings, he saw how his
painful shoulder simultaneously allowed him to stop doing work he didn't believe
in and to express his pain and anger to his organization. He also saw, however,
that the message was disguised, unclear, and less effective than it would be if
he were to articulate it openly. He realized his need to come to terms with the
issues involved. During the weeks that followed, he was able to clarify his own
values and bring his grievances to the proper authorities. His physical healing
paralleled his psychological and emotional healing in an almost linear manner.
7. Symptoms may be a result of an unconscious need for self-punishment.
This dynamic often results from the childhood hypnosis mentioned above, whereby
you have unconsciously accepted a message that you are bad and need to be
punished. It may also be an unconscious attempt to atone for a traumatic event for which you feel responsible or
an attempt to prevent something from happening again. Children often feel they
are to blame for their parents' unhappiness, illnesses, alcoholism, divorces,
and so forth. They may carry this unconscious sense of guilt until it is
unearthed and worked through. Disguised and under the surface, it may manifest
in many ways in their lives -- as physical pain, illness, failed relationships,
or underachieving.
There may be more than one factor at work in the formation of a particular
symptom, and there may be factors other than those mentioned. When you explore
your own imagery, any of the above dynamics may become apparent, or your
symptoms may represent other needs or functions. For now, notice whether any
memories, images, or strong emotions were triggered by any of the dynamics
mentioned above. They may be helpful clues as you continue to explore the
personal meaning of your symptoms.
The Saving Grace of Illness
The first time I became aware of the possible benefits of an illness was
when I was at the University of Michigan Medical School. I had just started my
three-month rotation on pediatrics and had been assigned to the university
hospital ward, where the sickest children were treated. As we made rounds with
the chief resident, he told us each child's history, both medical and personal.
I felt increasingly depressed as I heard the stories of these small children
with serious illnesses.
I had at that time very little awareness of my own emotions. I was
learning to be a doctor, and in the 1960s the medical students and doctors I
knew didn't discuss their feelings about illness. Then, a remarkable thing
happened. As we sat around the conference table after rounds, the chief resident
put his head in his hands and began to cry. His crying turned into deep sobbing,
and through his tears he said, "I can't take it anymore... I can't stand to see
one more kid die." The attending staff physician told us to go home for the day
as he moved to comfort the chief. The next day, the chief resident quit. The day
after, I developed severe nausea, a fever, and extreme weakness.
I underwent the kind of medical workup that is only possible at a
university medical center. My liver was enlarged, and my liver enzymes were
abnormal, but everything else looked fine. I had some type of hepatitis (the
cause never was identified) and was not allowed to return to the wards until my
lab tests were normal. I was very ill for a few days, then moderately ill for a
few days, and I felt fairly well after that, though I tired easily. My
liver-function tests remained elevated, however, for two and a half months. I
had my first normal lab panel the weekend my pediatrics rotation ended.
While I never thought at the time that I got sick because of my pediatric
experience, I was aware that, after the first few days when I was really sick, I
was grateful not to have to go back to the wards. If I consider this illness in
light of the functions I have reviewed, I can see that it relieved me from a
responsibility I didn't want to have, and it gave me time to think a great deal
about whether or not I wanted to continue in medicine. To some extent I think
that I identified with the chief resident, whose feelings and honesty I admired. Looking back, I have no
doubt that this illness served an important function for me.
It is often easier to see the benefits of illness in retrospect. It may be
useful to you to review previous experiences you've had with illness before
exploring what is happening now. Dennis Jaffe, a noted health psychologist and
author of Healing from Within, offers a helpful way to do this. Dr. Jaffe
recommends you take a large sheet of paper and draw a time line across the
bottom, with marks for five-year periods. Above this line, mark important health
events in your life -- serious illnesses, recurrent health problems, and
accidents. Above that, note the important events and changes in your life during
those periods. Notice if there seems to be any correlation between stressful
events, or clusters of changes, and your health.
Be open, receptive, and nonjudgmental as you consider illness from this
perspective. Few people would ever choose illness consciously. Your purpose is to discover what your
unconscious response may have been to a difficult situation so that you can more
consciously play a role in your recovery. When you discover the purpose of your
symptom, you have a chance to develop ways to fulfill that purpose that may not
require you to be ill at all.
Using Imagery to Explore Your Symptoms
While you may have found the above list of considerations useful, they are
essentially left-brain methods of analyzing the meaning of your illness. A
simpler, more direct way to understand your symptom is to relax, focus your
attention on it, allow an image to come to mind that can represent the symptom,
and then have an imaginary conversation with it. Ask it why it's there, what it
wants from you, what it needs from you, and what it's trying to do for you.
As you begin to work with imagery in this way, you will need to address
several points. One of these is the difference between a diagnosis and the
personal meaning of your illness. I have already discussed the necessity of
making sure you have a clear understanding of your medical condition and your
treatment options. While no one should be forced to have medical treatment, I
believe you deserve the best possible assessment of what conventional medicine
has to offer. Once you understand your condition on that level, however, you
need to explore the personal meaning of your symptoms. To do this, you must
temporarily put aside the diagnosis you have been given.
Most people, doctors included, don't realize that a diagnosis is not a
"real" thing. A diagnosis is the way we classify a certain pattern of findings
in a given system of medicine. Patients with the same symptoms and signs of
illness will have different diagnoses depending on when and where they live and
the systems of medicine practiced there. For instance, a patient with vertigo
and ringing in the ears may be diagnosed as having MTniFre's syndrome by a
Western physician. A practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, however,
might diagnose the same patient as having "yang fire of the liver rising". In
another culture, a shaman might say that an evil spirit has entered the
sufferer's head. To most of us, the Western doctor's diagnosis sounds the most
authoritative and scientific, until we look closely at what it means. MTniFre's syndrome is defined as "a syndrome believed to be caused by some
derangement of the inner ear, characterized by hearing loss, tinnitus, and
vertigo, which may be severe and chronic". In other words, by diagnosing your
problem as MTniFre's syndrome, your doctor is telling you that you have ringing
in the ears and dizziness. The diagnosis is simply a label.
In this instance, as in many others, our medical system of classification
fails to meet the two most important criteria of a diagnosis, from the
standpoint of the patient. It neither clarifies the nature of the problem nor
leads to an effective remedy. This is why it is important to realize that a
diagnosis is a name, not a life sentence.
People have widely varying reactions to most illnesses and to most
treatments. While there is an "average" or "typical" course of an illness, there
are almost invariably exceptions that are important to know about. You should
learn about the typical course of your illness, but you should also ask your
doctor about exceptional patients he or she has known. Do some people do better
than others? What seems to make the difference? If you have a serious illness,
then ask if anyone has ever recovered from it. What's the best possible course
of the illness? Will your doctor be willing to support your efforts to recover,
or does he or she think they are "unrealistic"?
Hope is a very important component of healing, and there is a difference
between hope and false expectations. A patient of mine with breast cancer told
her radiation oncologist that she had great faith in him and felt that he was
going to help her overcome her cancer. He told her that he would do his best but
didn't want her to get her hopes up. Shocked, she told him, "Doctor, I'm doing
everything I can to get my hopes up! Without hope, what do I have?" As Dr. Bernard Siegel, a cancer surgeon at Yale says, "In the
absence of certainty, there is nothing wrong with hope."
The point I'm making here is that diagnosis is important because it allows
you to assess your medical treatment options. When you use imagery to explore
your symptoms, however, focus on your symptoms as you experience them and
temporarily set aside what you have been told about your illness. If you have
back and leg pain, and it has been diagnosed as coming from a herniated disc,
use the pain, not the disc, as the focus of your imagination. If you have an
illness without symptoms, then focus on the involved area of your body.
 This article was excerpted from the book
Guided Imagery
for Self-Healing, ?2000, by Martin L. Rossman. Reprinted with permission of H J
Kramer/New World Library, Novato, CA 800-972-6675, ext. 52, or
www.newworldlibrary.com
Info/Order this book.
About The
Author
Martin
L. Rossman, M.D., is a physician and board certified acupuncturist,
practicing holistic medicine since 1972. As cofounder and codirector of
the Academy for Guided Imagery, he has taught therapeutic guided imagery
to over ten thousand health professionals. Through his writing,
workshops, and tapes, thousands of people have learned to use imagery
for their own self-healing.
In addition to his activities as
author, speaker, educator, researcher, workshop leader, and consultant
to major universities and health care institutions, Dr. Rossman serves
as clinical associate in the Department of Medicine, University of
California Medical Center; on the adjunct teaching faculty in the
California School for Professional Psychology; and as a consultant to
the Stanford Corporate Health Project. He lives and practices in Mill
Valley, California.
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