Exploiting Your Weaknesses!

I saw a friend last weekend who had last seen me in New York City two winters ago--about a year and half before I was diagnosed. Her remark made me pause and ask her to repeat herself. She said: "When I last saw you, there was way too much going on in your life. I left New York thinking that you were putting yourself in a position that could exploit your weaknesses. And illness is always a show stopper." I have been thinking about this idea for some time now--the idea that physical illness can develop from diet, depression, stress, your psychological or emotional state or past.

Early in my diagnosis, I kept asking my medical doctors whether some aspect of my diet or my psychological state had in some way affected my health. I certainly had absolutely no risk factors (genetics, smoking, alcohol, etc.) Without exception my medical doctors said no. Now these are some very smart people who have been educated in the nation's best schools, are at a teaching hospital at an Ivy League university, and keep up with all the latest research that's out there. So they should know, right? Right?

This issue of causation is pretty controversial. Most medical doctors will tell you that you have no way of knowing "why" or "how" you "got" cancer. Notice the language: it's very passive. As it turns out, traditional medicine requires the patient to be passive in general. All you really have to do is show up and your doctors will "heal" you using a combination of surgery, medicine. I was never convinced that my doctors knew everything there was to know (or even believed the things that I knew were critically important to healing). I wasn't even sure that they knew more than I did on certain subjects!

My problem with the medical establishment's view of causation is very fundamental: If you have no idea how it came about, then how do you prevent it from happening again? This is the most important question in all of this, in my opinion. And saying: "We don't know. We don't know." does not sit well with me. The first person to give me an answer that satisfied me enough to move on was my naturopath, a well-respected man who has been practicing for four decades. He said: Amanda, there are enough people now out there whose illnesses have not followed traditional medicine's trajectory and projections of healing and survival. There are easily thousands. There is no reason for you NOT to be one of those people. I suggest you stop looking at 5-year survival rates and start reading the accounts of people who have had so-called miraculous recoveries.

Well hello! This answer resonated with me. I always felt like I did have a level of control. And I intended (and intend) to exercise it to make sure my cancer does not come back. Which brings me back to having put myself in a position that exploited my weaknesses. I had a pretty rough decade back there! On many levels--spiritual, professional, personal, friendships, relationships--I was under an incredible amount of stress. And although I would describe myself as a fundamentally happy and positive person, the last several years were marked by overwhelming negativity and cynicism on my part. Caroline Myss says in Anatomy of the Spirit that your biography becomes your biology. An old ayurvedic saying tells you that if you want to know how you'll feel tomorrow, look at what you're thinking today. I believe that at the very least I put myself in a position that exploited my weaknesses. I don't intend to make that mistake again.