Are you suffering from the delusion of the instant cure?

If you are suffering with chronic symptoms, particularly if they are persistent quality of life-threating symptoms, you may have had some of these kinds of thoughts.

“I’d be so relieved if anyone could just figure out what is wrong with me.”

“If I really knew what was wrong then somebody could fix it. Something has to be wrong, you can’t feel this awful and have nothing wrong.”

“Maybe I have a disease that hasn’t been discovered yet. Maybe there isn’t a test of for this disease, if there was, wouldn’t somebody have found it?”

“Can these really be all the treatment options available? I’m taking my meds but I still feel awful. Is this how life is really going to be?”

If you suffer from a myriad of symptoms and simply don’t feel well, there’s a tendency to believe in a silver lining, a magic bullet that will make you feel better. You may crave a diagnosis to provide an explanation.

There are millions of people today suffering from a broad range of chronic symptoms, some of which fit neatly into the growing list of named diseases but many do not. In the majority of cases, the symptoms develop as a result of the person’s inability to cope with the demands of life. That’s not necessarily from inherent weakness or a lack of personal care or effort.

The reality is that when you look at the sum total of stressors people face, the load often exceeds their body/mind’s inherent capacity. Let’s look at some of the common stressors that people face;

Overburdened weekly schedules with insufficient time to rest.

Multiple demands from work, children, aging parents and household management.

Lack of fresh air and regular exercise.

Poor diet, lack of living foods, too many processed convenience foods.

Environmental toxin exposure including Wi-Fi.

Emotional stress from fragmented families, lack of childcare support, financial pressure.

Residual impact from trauma and unprocessed emotions.

Underlying genetic susceptibility to particular conditions.

The cumulative impact of your personal mix of stressors can wear you down over time. When one body system breaks down, it triggers compensations and subsequent dysfunction in other areas. At some point, you may accumulate enough symptoms to qualify for diagnosis.

If you look at disease as the compounding effect of a lifetime of compensations to stress, would you still be looking for an instant cure? Instead, consider the notion of unwinding these compensatory symptoms by adding therapeutic support and rebuilding your resilience and strength.

If it took you many years to get sick, it might take a while to unwind but that doesn’t mean you have to put blind faith into any treatment. Just the same way that you can see yourself walking slowly, you ought to be able to sense yourself healing, one digestible step at time.