The Protection And Illumination Of Illness Pt I

In the EFT Specialty Series II DVD, EFT practitioner Stephen Daniel, who specialises in using EFT amongst other energy therapies for chronic illness said that a client is less likely to heal from a chronic illness if they have a spouse and an intact family.

When I first heard him say that I rewound the DVD back to ensure that I'd heard the right thing. Then I read it in the notes. He says that the family dynamics often reward illness behaviours and all parties are getting something out of the illness. The illness is, at some level, perform a valuable role.

He also mentioned working with a woman who had MS and didn't seem to be getting better. He noticed that her husband was extraordinarily attentive to her and mentioned how impressed he was by that. She replied that he wasn't always this way and it was only after being diagnosed with MS that he'd become so caring.

Holding onto illness

So, is it possible that she is holding onto the illness to ensure her husband's consistent love, caring and attention? Stephen Daniel said that once he said that she had to recognize that she may well have to give up her reliance on the illness to ensure her husband's attention, then she was healed within six months.

Those working in personal development often state that we create our illnesses. This doesn't often go down very well with people who see it as an unjustifiably hard and cruel thing to say. But it is my belief that most illnesses are created by unresolved emotional conflicts. Once this conflicts are brought out in the open and released, the illness has done its job and is now unemployed.

Illness as Protection and Illumination

So illness offers both a protection from looking at the unresolved internal conflicts and it also provides illumination for what is really ailing someone. It depends on how you want to look at it.

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with having an underactive thyroid. The doctor described it as my cells attacking one another. It was an internal civil war. No wonder I felt ill! I didn't realise it at the time but emotionally I was very conflicted and unhappy about where I was in life, but didn't really know where I wanted to be either. I felt trapped and powerless. It took a really stressful time at work for me to crash out and give my body the rest it deserved by leaving London and then going on a round the world trip - something I'd always wanted to do.

This same problem came up again when I was having a stressful time at work at another job. And this time I used diet to counteract the effects (I wasn't on medication for very long - only a few months), which helped.

But looking back now I realise that my body was giving me signs about the work I was doing and that I wasn't honoring myself or my purpose in life. I was feeling angry and resentful (great emotions for being ill by the way) but wasn't really expressing it.

What kind of person has this illness?

The Chinese have a saying, not: "What illness does this person have?", but: "What kind of person has this illness?". Unexpressed and unreleased anger and resentment will find a way out somewhere and the body is the most obvious vehicle, because when we have pain in our body we will treat it. Unfortunately, we tend to think that it is solved externally, when the real answer lies in addressing the unconscious (and sometimes) conscious conflicts that we are living with.

Stephen Daniel says that if the client is living with a very conscious conflict (I want to leave this relationship, but am frightened that I won't be able to financially survive) then it is likely to slow down the healing, if not impede it altogether. The unresolved conflicts have to be addressed first.

In an article titled: "How Emotional Conflicts Block The Flow of Energy" by Dr Reimar Banis says that most patients want to heal, but are unable to locate the emotional conflicts because they are hidden at a level within their energy field and subconscious that they are not aware of. In any case most of us are not encouraged to be emotionally literate and aware.

And the great news is that with persistent use of EFT, you can do just that. I am no longer afraid to look at my more "negative" emotions, because they are trying to tell me something and I can release them using EFT. It is a much healthier alternative than suppressing or judging them and wearing down my immune system. It means taking responsibility for my emotional and mental health and it's a liberation to be able to do so.