Whenever we become ill, we are never only facing the illness or disease itself.

It’s natural to wonder why we’ve become ill in the first place.

Why me? Why now? What did I do wrong? How did this happen? What does it mean?

And where do we usually find this meaning? In the ideas, stories, fears, hopes, and values of the culture around us.

Our culture can be compassionate and understanding about some illnesses. But it can also be condemning, judgmental, and cruel about other illnesses, and the people who have them.

Someone who contracts a sexually transmitted infection? They’re dirty, perverted, and sinful. Those who get it deserve it because they’re morally bankrupt.

Long after the antibiotic has destroyed the illness, the “sickness” that is the meaning that’s been attached to it lingers on.

The meaning that gets attached to our illness can have an enormous impact on us and the course of our illness, and even become far more destructive than the illness itself.

When the culture around us is ignorant about the actual cause of an illness – especially when western medicine does not know the cause or even how to best treat it – this ignorance and lack of understanding blossoms into fear.

And that fear. more often than not, turns into judgments about the character of the person who was unlucky enough to become ill. It plays out something like this:

Why am I sick? Because you’ve been bad.

But how do you know I’ve been bad?

Because you’re sick!

The culture around us is trying to understand the illness or disease by condemning the one who is ill. These condemnations come in many flavors, all of which have so much to say – the Christian, New Age, medical, karma, Gnostic, psychological, existential, holistic, Buddhist, magical, holistic and scientific…

All of this criticism and judgment that has been layered on top of the illness is what we also face when illness is present.

Part of what I do with my clients is help them reclaim the meaning of their illness and define it for themselves.

Because for most chronic illnesses – NO ONE KNOWS WHAT CAUSED IT. No one can tell you with 100% definitiveness why you are ill, why this is happening, and why now.

But you can choose to give your illness a meaning that is all your own. What do you want it to mean? What purpose do you want to give to it?

You can choose a meaning that makes you feel morally bankrupt, flawed, guilt-ridden and weak. Or one that empowers you to make life-giving choices and changes that you want to make anyway.

With any illness, we must address the physical aspects of it. We must support the body to do what it needs to do to heal.

And then we must look at how we are holding our illness, and the meaning we are giving to it. Are we holding it in a way that supports our healing? Or add more “sickness” to it?

The more we are willing to courageously face the fears or judgments we or others might have about our illness, and consciously choose how we want to relate to it, the better our health outcomes will be.

And the more meaningful and life-giving our healing process becomes.