Halloween is coming – trick-or-treaters will soon be at our doors, ringing the bells, and asking for a treat. Superheroes, ballerinas, and goblins of all sorts will be invading, but we will not be afraid, because we know that beneath each disguise, no matter how scary, is a child.
We do not define the child by the costume or mask he is wearing – it is a fake. Similarly, individuals are increasingly taking a stand to be identified separately from a disability or disease they may be facing.
“I am not my disease”, Patrick McNamara, PhD, posted on about.com, “Although the disease may invade virtually all parts of my life, it nevertheless cannot touch me – who I really am – unless I give my consent – unless I allow it to do so.”
He continued, “…perhaps one of the best things we can do for one another – [is] to remind one another that we are not reducible to a disease – no matter how serious or severe that disease is.”
Rollingwithhusky, a blogger on the Experience Project website, agreed. She wrote, “I refuse to be defined by my disability. I will not let anyone reduce me to being a diagnosis.”
The health benefits of choosing how we think about ourselves is increasingly being researched.
Kelly Turner, as part of her doctoral dissertation, interviewed 80 cancer survivors. She found that most of them felt their state of mind helped produce the remission. “According to my research, there are many ways to clean up a body,” she said, “You can do it with diet. You can do it with meditation. You can do it with forgiveness.”
But to change the state of one’s thinking is not always easy.
Turner calls what her interviewees experienced “radical remission.” She stated, “It involves radical changes, which is really the heart of my research – that these people [cancer survivors] made radical changes in their lives.”
St. Paul made radical changes in how he saw himself and how he lived his life. He also healed people of some incurable diseases of his day. In one famous talk he urged men and women (of all faiths and none) to similar shifts in thinking. He said “put off the old man, and put on the new man.”
It’s time to better understand how a shift in our image of who we really are can produce real health results.