Mind over Matter

I want to write about how powerful the mind is in not only damaging the body (through stress, for example) but also in healing the body. This subject tends to overlap with other pages on this website.

I believe that negative thoughts can actually impede recovery. Jesus asked the cripple (John 5), “Do you want to be healed?” although this does vary depending on the translation. On other occasions, he said words to the effect, “Your faith has made you whole”.

But does this not illustrate an interesting point? Are there some people who, although suffering, don’t actually want to get better? Or they are so accustomed to being ill that they can’t face the prospect of a life without pain. It does happen. This is not to express lack of sympathy. I suffer from a pain which sometimes is physical and sometimes mental and I ask myself the same question, “Is it so much a part of me that I don’t actually want to part with it?”

I believe that many human ailments have their source in the mind, the most obvious example is stress. I once annoyed a friend because he thought I was saying that the pain he was suffering from was, “in the mind”. Of course, I didn’t mean that, the pain was real – I was questioning the source.

Recently there was a contestant in The Apprentice on UK television who had cured her own Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) with a kind of acupuncture in the ear. She actually won a prize, I think. But an organisation of ME sufferers was highly critical of this woman for raising “false hopes” and saying emphatically that there was no cure. Talk about being negative! If I was suffering from this illness, then I would gladly grab at any possible solution to my suffering. The cause of ME is a mystery, then maybe the solution would be a mystery too. Just to make it clear, ME is real, in my opinion. I knew a priest who suffered from this affliction and he was for ever collapsing into an armchair in exhaustion.