Without sufficient health, life is a nightmare. But ironically, if you are living for your health and obsessing over it, you are walking on a psychologically painful, fruitless path that not only distracts you from the real issue, but depletes the body while wasting your life.
Now, to a certain extent, fear of ill health is normal.
Fear is intended to keep us alive, but it can backfire. Ironically, excessive fear will lead to premature literal and figurative deaths.
Can you really live if you are deathly afraid of death? Can you expect to live a long, satisfying life if the sympathetic nervous system is activated more often than not?
No.
Most people I’ve interacted with who have obvious health issues don’t seem to take the effect that thoughts have on their bodies seriously.
They are convinced they will find the silver bullet to fix all their problems that conveniently comes in the form of some diet, fasting regimen, exercise routine, or supplement.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
-Carl Jung
We naturally seek external, easy solutions, but the actual issues and solutions always come from within, which is painful to accept. Confronting ourselves is hard.
Victimhood, cutting corners, and denying our roles in our own problems are the real global pandemics.
Fear of ill health is a psychological phenomenon that goes hand in hand with the fear of death, as well as placing excessive importance on the opinions of others, especially if the health complaint is visually obvious. The ego is closely involved.
The ego is your protector, but if it becomes too powerful, you become its slave.
How thoughts impact organ systems | A TCM Understanding
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, negative emotions have a negative impact on the function of various organs.
The emotion of fear is associated with kidney function due to the kidney’s relation to the neuroendocrine system.
The longer you suffer from excessive fear, the greater the stress is on that axis, which results in a greater depletion of kidney “essence”, leading to immune problems proportionate to the severity of the depletion.
Kidney deficiency and immune dysfunction go hand in hand. Prolonged fear leads to immune system issues, and is acknowledged both in Eastern and Western medicine.
It’s impossible to achieve and maintain physiological balance under a constant hormonal storm of fear and panic, which triggers the body to fight, flight, or freeze.
Constantly thinking something is wrong, scouring the internet for answers, and exaggerating the danger of everything floods the body with these hormones, and wreaks havoc.
The subsequent yin and yang disruption inevitably leads to psychological issues, including depression, anxiety, and hypochondria.
This is the quintessence of a vicious cycle.
This disruption alters your neurochemistry, and it certainly changed mine.
As a child, I had an irrational phobia of getting kidnapped. I was terrified of strangers.
Then as a teen, I was paranoid I was going bald and gray. The gray actually started at 15, likely due to the constant, intense stress. I am now 28 years old and am probably about 20% gray, but have accepted it, and will never dye my hair. I’ve earned it.
As an early 20-something, I was trying to figure out why I had developed severe facial Seborrheic Dermatitis.
So between the ages of 15-25, I visited multiple practitioners and doctors. I devoured online comments sections, reviews, articles and studies pertaining to the health problems I thought I had, which kept creating new problems.
I was completely blind to the real issue, and was in a hellish hamster wheel.
This eventually cultivated an addiction to health supplements and adhering to a variety of trendy diets. Like an addict, I kept looking for my next fix in the Whole Foods supplement aisle, or YouTube video.
Driving home with the latest expensive supplement, I would feel temporarily relieved, believing that it would be the answer to my problems, but none of them were.. The real root cause was my altered neurochemistry, which was relentlessly poisoning my organ systems.
How could nature be so cruel?
Nature is intelligent. Everything happens for a reason. Nature both rewards and ruthlessly punishes.
It’s not all about you. As human beings, we are social creatures who are required to collaborate and work together in order to survive. This is a massive beehive, where we are supposed to be working towards the positive development and evolution of our species with our bodies and brains.
If you are simply focusing on your own problems, you are useless to the greater good, and nature will make things hard for you so that you are either eliminated or improved.
What comes to break you was sent to make you.
When you walk the right path, things work out. When you don’t, you will be punished accordingly in a multitude of ways. This can be ill health, psychological turmoil, poverty, or any other misfortune.
Nature is trying to put you back on the right path by making life painful for you. It’s a last-ditch effort. Ignoring the pain and continuing to play an active role in the vicious cycle will obliterate those who aren’t willing to contribute to humanity in some way, or at least harbour the neurochemistry associated with these ideals.
If you have the right mindset, you are rewarded with good health in order to be a contributing member of humanity.
It’s not about how long your life is, or how “good” you look as you age, but what you do for others. Obsessing over your health is a selfish, stifling obsession because it keeps you from sharing your gifts.
Don’t take your body too seriously. It’s simply a vessel that won’t be here much longer, and you are not limited to it for eternity.
In Conclusion
Certain supplements, the right foods, medicinal teas, the right environment, detoxification methods, acupuncture, avoiding toxic substances, etc. can certainly help heal the organs that have been weakened.
But, if the end goal does not involve using your healthier body in order to spend your time and energy partaking in something that matters, and making a conscious effort to massively reduce your fear of ill health and calm your nervous system, it won’t be sustainable.
Otherwise, you’ll have to take those supplements, or stay on that diet forever, and it’ll all be for nothing.
Go outside. Play. Get healthier, but don’t be attached to getting healthier. Find what you’re good at and do it for others. Have a cigar and smell the roses.
