One of the great unanswered answers in psychology is what is its object of study, and there are many diverse answers to that. According to t...
Within these visions and possibilities, there is the undeniable reality that, whatever the answer, much of what happens in bodily reality has to do with our emotions, our thoughts. What happens to us on the plane and our emotions affects the body. And this also includes the phenomenon of disease.
Probably throwing myself into this topic is like going into a storm, since there is a real and delicate situation that we live in as humanity: the crisis of a new epidemic that threatens us all.
How to explain an epidemic disease in the view that emotional conflicts are diseases?
It is quite a complex issue, however, I will try to address it.
Individual disease
When we speak of illness as an emotional conflict, we do not mean that the entire biological process does not exist. This means that thoughts, emotions, have a direct effect on physiological processes.
A clear example is when faced with danger, as simple as the presence of a spider, we feel fear. Given this, the brain sends signals that cause a secretion of adrenaline, which gives the force either to run away from it or to trample it with courage.
In this example, the event had an emotion, an expression, a solution. Similarly, when there are other situations in which there are emotions, the body is modified, but there are times when they are not expressed or resolved. This is when the disease arises.
There are many studies, some coincident, others not, regarding which conflict corresponds to which disease. It exists from the symbolic correlation of the function and meaning of the organ in question to the medical study of ontogeny to connect diseases with conflicts.
What diseases try to tell us
With this, we cannot affirm that we should refuse allopathic medical treatments. Simply that diseases always carry a message of growth, of what issues we still need to look at in order to improve. Feel better, not only at a physiological level, with medicine that eliminates the symptoms; feeling better can also mean resolving an emotion that was left unprocessed. This is the challenge.
Given the statement that mental health has a correlation with physical health, it is essential to be able to take care of ourselves in a comprehensive way when we talk about health.
For example, there are scientific studies where the attitude to a serious disease such as cancer can favor or harm its evolution. There are also studies where stress is correlated with the response of the immune system, which is compromised.
It is therefore important to be clear about our emotions. Naming them, processing them, solving them What is solving them? All emotions correspond to a need. Being able to give rise to emotion is to contact the need in order to solve the situation.
In the case of a pandemic, for example, the danger is that fear invades us. Not only the fear of being infected but of the economic and social consequences that the isolation that we currently experience entails.
It is, therefore, part of our care in the face of this contingency, to be able to attend to what happens to us emotionally.
The collective disease
Since the dialectic between the individual and the collective does not have a delimited border, what happens personally has a social effect. If, in addition to this, we assume that we are a subsystem in the face of larger systems, we will know that we have an impact on what happens to us.
For example, if a woman had a problem at work with her boss, and she comes home stressed, she will most likely have a very low tolerance for her children. In this way, it affects your family subsystem. In turn, a child who experiences stress in his family, when going to school, may present unsuitable behaviors with his peers, which affects him socially. And so, we go from a subsystem to a larger system.
If we add to this that we all live in the same economic, social, and political system, we can better explain how we are all part of a whole. Each country is even part of a world organization, to which to join. So we are all part of humanity.
What happens affects us all. At this moment, we are all vibrating with the same emotions. In general, we live with economic tensions, love, and bonding needs, which we tend to avoid with technology and with socially accepted addictions such as alcohol, work, tobacco, even compulsive purchases. We look outside trying to fill a void that is inside. In doing so, we lead the world towards destruction.
The path to individual and collective health
This particular situation invites us all to look inward. Within our homes, our relationships with partners, children, parents, even within ourselves. Look at the real gaps, voids, needs. Look at and heal our relationships with the world, with others, with our person.
It is very certain that if many of us attend the call, we can renew ourselves. And so, doing each one a micro renovation, we can take it to the macro. Starting as a grain of sand, we will end up making a huge beach, paying for a world change.
May in this crisis we find the opportunity, individually and as humanity, to heal. Heal not only physiologically; not only avoid the spread of a virus but heal comprehensively, so that we transform our spirit.
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