Spiritual Healing and Victim Blaming

I’ve been reading books on healing lately. I feel frustrated. I feel an undercurrent of victim blaming with chronic illness in many of the healing books, especially those with a more spiritual bent. It feels to me like they’re saying that if we just get our emotional issues and possible spiritual issues worked out then we should be physically healed too. Especially from the ones that say they used “x, y, z methods” and they healed themselves of their chronic illness. I’m just not so sure it’s that simple.

Oh, they always throw in the disclaimer that “your healing may not be the elimination of physical symptoms, but a healing of acceptance” or something like that. But the undercurrent feels like, “well, I was able to heal my chronic illness with this, so you should be able to also.” Sometimes it’s even more overt than that, with actual victim blaming of you’re still sick because you’re not right with god, didn’t pray enough or believe enough, are still allowing negative thoughts in/aren’t thinking positively enough…

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely believe in the mind-body connection. When my body isn’t doing so well my emotions are affected. When my emotions aren’t doing so well, my body is affected. But I’m just not sure every body can be physically healed. Sometimes the body just gets broken beyond repair.

But then I worry that maybe I’m wrong and I AM just not thinking right, doing enough of the emotional work, etc. You hear all the time about “blockages” and such. Is my “blockage” not believing I can get healthy? Is that what’s keeping me sick? Am I keeping myself sick? My biology background says no. My biology background says that body systems can be broken beyond repair and science can only do so much for them. But there’s always that little voice of self doubt in the back of my head. What if I’m keeping myself sick? What if the past nearly 20 years of chronic illness and disability HAVE  been all in my head? Not imagining it, but that I’ve somehow kept myself sick. It makes me feel crazy when I know deep down I’m not.

So I try harder. I push a little more. And I crash, physically and emotionally. It’s such hard work trying to find that oh so fragile and delicate balance of pacing and doing what you can without overdoing and triggering a crash/flare.

I guess all I can do is the best I can. All I can do is try to keep a balance of mind/body/spirit. I can do the best I can to address each of these to try to bring about the best I can. Maybe that will be full physical healing, or maybe just acceptance. I dunno. It’s a fine line between acceptance and resignation…

Oh, I highly recommend Toni Bernard’s books. She’s an amazing author who talks about her experience with chronic illness from the perspective of a practicing Buddhist. She’s still sick… I’ve read all 3 of her books. I recently finished her book “How to wake up, a Buddhist inspired guide to navigating joy and sorrow.” I found this one to be the most helpful for me.

Have you seen or experienced victim blaming in coping with chronic illness? Please feel free to share in the comments.



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