Читать книгу Close to the Bone - Jean Shinoda Bolen - Страница 14

The travails of being a patient and the physical illness together are an ordeal that can have a transformative effect on the soul. Psychological stress is a major part of the ordeal through which the soul must pass. When the possibility of a serious illness unexpectedly arises on a routine examination, or there is an onset of symptoms, or there is a need to be hospitalized, we may be assailed by fears and vulnerabilities. We fear—with or without justification—that we may never be our former healthy selves ever again. Those close to the patient may also be having these or similar concerns, or be having them when the patient is not.

Thoughts are shaped by how we perceive what is happening to us or to someone near and dear every bit as much and sometimes even more so than by objective information. Depending upon our psychological makeup, under such circumstances we tend to live in the present or in the future as we foresee it. If a serious illness is a potential that will only be known after the biopsy or after the workup, a person who lives in the present can often put dire possibilities easily out of mind: an attitude of “why borrow trouble?” comes naturally. A future-oriented person, on the other hand, especially one who worries or is aware of the likelihood and magnitude of the situation, may have the patient practically dead and buried before the results are in. Stress may be virtually absent for one, and off the chart for the other. When someone is in the throes of pain, limitation, weakness, or nausea, the awfulness of the moment may not only be all there is, but all there ever will be for that person, while another person faced with the same symptoms may experience this as part of a difficult time that will pass. When pain is not relieved, or obsessive negative thoughts crowd the mind, they leave little room to attend to the concerns of the soul.