Subscribe to My blog

Your email:

Hot Links and Psychotherapy Resources

Harbor Area Counseling Services provides affordable counseling and psychotherapy in San Pedro CA. Wichita Counseling and Coaching Center provides experienced, private counseling in Wichita KS. Health Care Web Design Medical web design and health care development for medical groups, doctors and healthcare professionals. ePsyQ.com Top Ψ Psych Sites Complete directory of drug rehab centers, drug treatment programs and alcohol rehabilitation. Bloggapedia, Blog Directory - Find It! Superblog Directory Add to Technorati Favorites

DAILY CARTOON click to enlarge
ANDERTOONS.COM PSYCHIATRY CARTOONS

San Diego Therapist Blog: Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD

Current Articles | RSS Feed RSS Feed

Anything Positive about Cancer?

Posted by Regina Huelsenbeck on Thu, Feb 07, 2008
 | Digg digg it | Reddit reddit | del.icio.us del.icio.us | StumbleUpon StumbleUpon 

Illness and loss are difficult to ponder. BUT, is there any value in illness, although difficult, uncomfortable, is there a value in this darkness?

Cancer survivor and controversial author Susan Sontag (1988) suggests that illness is dislocating and confusing for the sick and the well. Sontag implies that illness is similar to a feared foreign country that no one wishes to visit.

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

Things once taken for granted are questioned; one’s body, once accepted, is doubted. Uncertainty abounds as one moves through this new territory. The experience for the ill and those close to him or her evokes feelings which are unfamiliar, unpleasant, and uncomfortable.

Sometimes, the ill person may evoke a disharmony in others. Sometimes friends may wish to distance themselves as they are not quite sure how to handle this change. Not unlike the divorcing couple that married friends avoid for fear they might “catch” the problem; It evokes the insecure feelings and questions hiding inside, the thoughts that strike at one’s very core.

Kat Duff (1993) a woman with chronic fatigue syndrome explains, “There is often a feeling of exile, wandering, searching, facing dangers, finding treasures”. She additionally shares that illness defies “the rules of ordinary reality, [And] shares in the hidden logic of dreams, fairy tales, and the spirit realms mystics and shamans describe” (p. 13). One can have vivid dreams, visitations in fever-induced states, and experience isolation and reflection unlike any well time in their life. The experience can be scary, but also expansive and growth producing. When viewed from Duff’s perspective, illness sounds almost mystical. This territory is wide open for exploration. Again, I ask, is there any value in illness at all?

Love and Light,

Regina

Tags: ,

COMMENTS

Currently, there are no comments. Be the first to post one!
Post Comment
Name
 *
Email
 *
Website (optional)
Comment
 *

Allowed tags: <a> link, <b> bold, <i> italics

Receive email when someone replies.