Hypochondria The Imaginary Malady
They say that “the worst enemy is the one so close that we cannot see”. In this issue’s article this enemy is the Subconscious. It can be defined as those dark areas of our psyche, thoughts and ideas that we cannot see or understand but nevertheless control us from moment to moment. “Blind spots”. Studying the human subconscious is to dive into an unknown sea, discovering with amazement ancient monsters and strange creatures living in its depths...Fears, anxiety, worries, regrets, resentments, mistaken beliefs... So if we claim to be “normal people” it means we still haven’t taken that dip. We don’t know ourselves. The truth is nobody is “normal”; normality is appearance, it’s a mask that cannot stand the greatest psychological test ever invented: COEXISTENCE. It is certain that those who are close to us have probably met several times with these “strange psychological characters” we carry within; our small insanities, our daily obsessions, our “dark side” full of ideas slightly, say…absurd. In coexistence we reveal our own Mr. Hyde. And if we’re not careful, bye, bye relationship. So when it comes to human beings…normality doesn’t exist. As Shakespeare correctly put: “When we are born we cry that we are come…to this great stage of fools.” One of these strange “characters” we might carry within, well hidden in
our subconscious, is the Hypochondriac. Although it is pretty common, we seem to regard it as a myth or an exotic disease; it’s mostly something eccentric that we joke about. One of these comic – but serious – portraits of Hypochondria is the theatre play by Molière called “The Imaginary Invalid”, or “The Hypochondriac”. As usual, Molière uses comedy as a tool to give us a raw portrait of the human nature. He makes us laugh, but teaches us some truths. Like this:“Nearly all men die of their remedies, not of their illnesses.” A hypochondrium is a psychological condition characterized by the belief that you suffer from a serious disease. It’s generated by the fear of disease (and death), and it generates an excessive concern for health, anxiety, melancholia and depression. The “inner hypochondriac” always believes there’s something wrong with his body and creates a process of constant self-examination to feed his belief. He perceives normal organic reactions as symptoms of some serious illness that he keeps struggling to discover. Examples: Digestion sounds, heartbeats, small stitches, headaches, dizziness, bad digestion, minor skin spots, etc. An easy way to recognize him is to look at his “medicine kit”, frequent drugstore visits, too many rules for eating, sleeping...living. He also loves reading and talking about health issues. If he sees a doctor and is told that he doesn’t have any serious problem, he feels angry, frustrated and looks for some other doctor, saying that Dr. X. is no good. However, modern hypochondriacs have a more “practical” diagnosis tool:
the Internet. They spend hours doing searches on their symptoms and pains, just to get a little more desperate. Most times this ends up in self-medication; they buy a medicine for an illness they don’t have. And if there actually was a health problem, it won’t be treated. Actually what made me want to write about this is not intellectual curiosity; I’ve lived it. Maybe if I had found out earlier, I would have had more peace and fewer illnesses…Anyway, one of the experiences I had was when I was in my early twenties. I’d just realized I had some skin spots and I was worried. Without telling anyone I started doing internet searches (of course) and found an incurable disease that caused similar spots. That was it. The agony lasted several days, just to discover that I was perfectly healthy. But the thing is, since hypochondria is a psychological element that must feed on new fears to stay alive, the relief of not having a disease quickly leads to new anxieties, new pains. The hypochondriac mentally creates over and over what he hates the most: disease. He’s unconsciously addicted to it. So some time after not having that other illness, a very peculiar kind of headache started. I then remembered I’d beaten my head severely three months before, in the same exact spot! Oh God…Skull damage? Or even the brain… These thoughts unleashed a wave of anxiety, mood swings and sleepless nights. I just couldn’t see that the more I worried, the worse were the headaches. Summarizing: I later found the pain was connected to a jaw articulation problem, which was psychosomatic: caused by anxiety and stress. That’s when I realized I’d been inflicting myself that pain and pills would never cure me. I had to overcome my negative emotions. I had to relax. And as by magic… the pain disappeared. As for my jaw, I feel that if I keep working on my anxiety, this problem will simply disappear. This is the message I want to leave you: most diseases are caused by negative psychological states on a daily basis. Therefore to achieve health we must project light over our subconscious, through Comprehension. And if we’re feeling some kind of pain, we should do something practical and logical about it: go see a good doctor.
Dominical Days 18