WELLNESS VS. ILLNESS

Our families and our society are caught in a terrible illness trap. We all believe in wellness for ourselves and others. We all believe in illness too much. When illness happens we then believe that we must find a cure for the illness in order to be well.

There are several dumb things in all this:

• We assume we can find a cure
• We assume that the cure will then mean wellness
• We have this naive idea that wellness is just one step away

The facts are that wellness is a combination of a number of key ingredients. In the Rainbow model, there are six: health, relationships, information, roots, values and faith. Handicaps of any sort are not on this list.

The other fact is that a cure does not necessarily provide wellness. Why? Because wellness and illness are in two different leagues. Cures are about solving problems which just get us back to where we were - good or bad. Wellness is about getting life right.

Let's be practical. A person has a severe allergy. It interferes with breath, disturbs the person day and night. Do we say to that person, with the right medical attention you should find relief in three months. The answer is yes, but.......

The BIG BUT is why do we leave that person for three months before making wellness suggestions. What is stopping this sufferer from attending to a key relationship, a family member needing support, a new idea for the whole family?

We hold back because we are in the illness trap - where this fantasy controls a life.

The other big thing is that everybody has some form of handicap: physical, emotional or spiritual. These are not always evident even to the person in question. Nevertheless that is the big fact on which Freud made a good living.

So, there is every reason in the world to get onto wellness - both because it is great and because it tends to bring with it "cures" we don't expect. Besides, wellness is our best brand of preventative medicine.

Let's hear from you on this latest FAMILY CHALLENGE.