Working With Illness: Do You Mind?

Patients may not find adequate answers in the doctor’s office for their emotional reactions. Physicians are admittedly often largely unprepared to deal with them. It becomes obvious, then, that psychological services are needed to supplement traditional health care both to help patients to create more positive images of their situations and themselves and even to improve their adherence to their medical regimens.

As patients, it is necessary to become aware of our automatic thoughts. We need to learn to define what we have lost and to deal with emotional realities. This will help us to release our emotions and go forward with our lives

 Beyond this “discovery” process, we must release the identity we have assumed that is associated with our illness. We must learn to overcome anxiety, both from the illness and life itself.

Emotional control and pain management are very effectively implemented through well-applied meditational techniques, such as breathing exercises. Goal setting and management are achieved through affirmations and visualization. We must learn also to monitor our thinking, eliminating negative and anxiety-producing thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. This will help us to dispense with our negative automatic thoughts and replace them with more rational, realistic thinking.

Loved ones must not be neglected; they must go through generally similar processes for the patient’s sake and their own. They must be taught that they cannot control nor bear responsibility for anyone’s behavior but their own. They must become educated as possible in the patient’s illness; the more they know, the more they can be of aid to the patient. They must support the patient’s endeavors toward independence, rather than to follow natural tendencies to maintain the patient’s dependence on them. They must be careful not to project emotions of guilt, grief, or frustration onto the patient. The patient has enough sense of loss to overcome without such negative involvement.

The conclusion is simple: The mind can hasten or inhibit the control over and recovery from virtually every disease and physical condition. Yet this may be the most neglected aspect of treatment and recovery. If we want the best results–or if we want them for a loved one–we must address the mind as diligently as we do the body.


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