Psychological causes of diseases
Psychologists look at the causes of illness differently than the church. According to psychologists, most diseases are caused by complexes, emotions that a person holds back and does not show.
For example, women's illnesses often turn out to be a manifestation of reluctance to closeness and hidden hostility towards men on the part of women. They often affect those who marry for convenience or are afraid of sexual relations.
Other diseases arise similarly: eye diseases - when the body protects itself from negative emotions caused by vision, ear diseases - when a person hears something that traumatizes him.
Throat diseases are considered to be associated with unexpressed anger and dissatisfaction, when one cannot openly express anger just like that.
However, the church does not agree with everything that is written. Many scientists who believe in Orthodoxy hold a different point of view about diseases.
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Moral and spiritual crisis
The motivation for chemical addiction is structured in such a way that higher motives (creativity, aesthetics, morality, ethics) are subordinated to base ones. The latter allow the individual to get out of negative situations by imaginary satisfaction of his needs.
At the heart of the disaster of modern society is the so-called crisis of the soul. The destruction of this sphere, completely or partially, becomes the basis of drug addiction or alcoholism. In the spiritual field, the experience of value choice, correct life, and personal work in terms of one’s own achievements is not conveyed.
A moral crisis is a feeling of the meaninglessness of existence. Escaping the present through illusion through taking drugs and alcohol is an attempt to muffle pain and mental wounds. The change in political and social views of society has led to a colossal change in values. They are now viewed from a monetary point of view and form an erroneous opinion about the development of the relationship. The human soul is devastated. That is why it is very important to support people who are experiencing a crisis of spiritual revelation. Only professional help can support your potential.
As we see, the spiritual component of the problem of drug and alcohol use plays a major role. It is necessary to prevent personality degradation and strive with all our might to help the “drowning person”.
Authors: Zakova Natalya
Categories: About the disease, Relatives, Blog
Metaphysics of diseases
The body malfunctions if the outflow of energy is disrupted and something negatively affects organs and tissues. For example, a person wants to go to the toilet, but he has to restrain himself for a long time. If this happens quite often, intestinal and stomach diseases may develop.
Or a person experiences certain negative emotions. Some of them cause crying and suffering. As a result, the hormonal balance is disrupted and illness occurs.
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It is never possible to say for sure whether the cause of the disease was physical or mental.
Sins and diseases connection - table
Orthodox experts write a lot about the relationship between sins and diseases, but they advise not to trust too much of this relationship, since the exact causes of diseases have not been fully studied, so you should not hope that by ceasing to commit some sin, you will get rid of a physical illness, addiction or mental illness diseases.
Table of possible connections between sins and diseases (click to enlarge)
Therefore, it is worth not committing sins and leading a correct lifestyle. After all, diseases arise not only as retribution for sins, but also as a violation of the usual rules of hygiene and health, consumption of the wrong foods, abuse of fatty, spicy and fried foods.
And yet there is some relationship between diseases and sins. For example, if a person violates his freedom and becomes addicted, for example, to drunkenness, then his lungs and heart may become ill.
Melancholy destroys the heart, as do conflicts with others. And anger often causes heart attacks and strokes.
But the causes of illnesses do not always lie on the surface in Orthodoxy, therefore the church has a negative attitude towards interpretations associated with the sinful causes of illnesses, unless this is proven from a scientific point of view and calls for treating illnesses with official means of medicine, and not just confessing and saying prayers.
What is internal conflict and how does it affect our health?
The basis of any psychosomatic illness is internal conflict. For example, the contradiction between “I can”, “I want” and “I must”. If a person does a job he doesn’t like and still earns good money, he is in a state of conflict between “I want” and “I need.” The source of constant tension remains with him constantly, the psyche cannot cope with stress and turns on a defense mechanism - somatization.
The brain channels tension through the autonomic nervous system, which controls the functioning of internal organs. What it will be - osteoarthritis of the knee joint, pyelonephritis or a banal migraine - depends on the human body, its weak points and inclination.
Are you doing something you don't like? Expect health problems
Spiritual causes of diseases according to Torsunov
Oleg Torsunov writes that some behavior patterns cause the following diseases. In the church, many of them are called sins.
Oleg Gennadievich Torsunov is a specialist in the field of family psychology and personal growth practitioners
This is how he interprets the relationship between illnesses and emotional states, including sins:
- Greed often causes cancer, bumelia, and excess weight.
- Anger – peptic ulcers, gastritis, colitis, hepatitis, insomnia and gastritis.
- Dejection – lung diseases, inflammatory diseases.
- Depressive state can provoke diseases that destroy the lungs.
- Envy – mental disorders, cancer, heart disease and strokes.
- Anger - sore throats, pharyngitis, loss of voice, stomach diseases, increased acidity.
- Condemnation - arthritis, liver and kidney diseases, inflammation of the pancreas.
- Perjury - allergies, alcoholism, decreased immunity and fungal infections, various skin inflammations.
- Depravity – women's diseases, metabolic disorders.
- Hatred and intransigence - various heart diseases, strokes, oncology and much more.
- Touchiness – diabetes, cystitis and chronic diseases.
Right Healing Thoughts
The first thing you need to do is to sincerely repent and reconsider your life. Only in this case will you be able to free up energy to give your body the strength to fight the disease.
To begin with, think through the completely earthly reasons that could lead to illness. For example, gluttony, smoking, abuse of spicy foods and much more.
Very often, illness is caused by excess in food and drink, which are sins (drunkenness, gluttony).
The next stage is putting the spirit in order. In the church, it is considered a sin to violate any law of love, including one’s love for oneself. Even priests sometimes ask during confession whether you have harmed your health.
Therefore, you should try to forgive your offenders, not disrupt your daily routine, and take care of your body. Correct thoughts are love for yourself and your loved ones, forgiveness of sins for yourself and others, spiritual growth.
For many centuries, the human personality has been faced with the problem of health and illness: the definition of these concepts, their delimitation and transitions between them. The religious and moral understanding of any illness, including mental illness, differs from the rational and scientific one. For a believer, illness always causes surprise, bewilderment and the need for self-examination, clarification of the spiritual meaning of the test sent: a person in illness has time to think, concentrate with the help of friends, relatives or spiritual father, check his life, his mistakes and falls that could have caused the illness , correct their consequences through repentance and thus use the time of illness for spiritual and moral correction.
Humble acceptance of illness, patient enduring of this period, hope for help not only from doctors, but also from the One who is able to heal all illnesses - all these qualities have always been typical of people of high spirit during periods of illness. Every person should have this attitude towards illness as a role model. It is precisely this acceptance of illness that opens up the possibility of spiritual growth, serves to calm a person in the face of difficult suffering, and is a source of consolation; self-knowledge and spiritual uplift in misfortune (Jaspers). A biological understanding of disease, as one of the forms of manifestation of violations of the universal law of adaptation to the conditions of existence, requires an objective clarification of the causes and mechanisms of this (in this case disturbed) adaptation; knowledge of the causes and mechanisms of development of these violations is the basis for helping the body overcome the damage caused by the disease , and the mobilization of protective, compensatory mechanisms that help eliminate or at least reduce the manifestations of the disease. The universal human attitude towards illness, as it is reflected in life, philosophical and artistic works, is associated with an understanding of the imperfection of human nature, some of its initial violations and damage. For some (like Nietzsche) this is an initial damage, revealing the depravity of the human personality itself. For others, it is the result of some deep metaphysical spiritual and moral catastrophe that took place in the depths of the human spirit and perverted the primordial harmony of the human personality, which is now given and sought for by man. Any illness, especially mental illness, causes bewilderment. surprise, protest. A person goes through a series of steps - levels from disharmony, decoordination of the structural parts of his personality, to their collapse, disintegration, degradation. In a number of cases, at different stages of the disease, there is a sharpening of individual personality qualities, the identification of previously unnoticed creative possibilities and even some special wisdom and moral height of these people (examples of DON Quixote, Hamlet, Prince Myshkin and many others). These universal and philosophical attempts to define the essence of health and disease may have some interest.
Actaeon defined health as the harmony of opposing forces. Cicero - how the correct relationship of psychic forces. For Epicurus, health is the complete satisfaction of all needs. For a stand - a high moral approach to overcoming suffering. For Nietzsche, health as such does not exist in nature. For Grule, health is the free development of the innate attraction to goodness. Weizsäcker defines health as the natural opportunity to fulfill human destiny or to find oneself in the most complete and harmonious inclusion in society. The UN WHO Expert Committee is close to this and defines health not only as the absence of disease and suffering, but also the possibility of full social activity. I.P. Pavlov saw the basis of a healthy personality, the integrity of our “I” in the correct relationship and interaction of three authorities, three systems of higher nervous activity:
- unconditioned reflexes - innate biological needs and instincts,
- conditioned reflexes reflecting the specific experience of the individual and
- third instance - the second signaling system, reflecting in speech and generalized abstract form the highest achievements of human history and culture.
Here it is appropriate to recall what was said in chapter 1 about the understanding of health by Bishop Theophan and Nicodemus Svyatogory, for whom the main sign of health was the unity and harmony of all three stages (spheres, tiers, layers) of the human personality - spiritual, mental and physical , and this unity and harmony is achieved only under the predominant influence of the sphere of the spirit, which must rule over soul and body. In this unity and harmony lies health, the norm of human life. This is salvation (the Greek word Soteria means both salvation and health). In illness, on the contrary, they see the disintegration and isolation of opposing forces or elements and layers of the personality. But in history, poetry, and art we find a constant desire to comprehend the meaning of illness for a person. It is often noted that there are some hidden relationships between illness and the deepest human capabilities, between wisdom and illness, creativity and illness. The question is constantly raised: does the development of creative potential in a mentally ill person occur due to illness or despite the illness, due to the remaining creative capabilities of the individual? The question of the relationship between a person’s religious experiences and illness is among these problems. We will look at three aspects of this issue using specific examples:
- A person’s religious experiences are manifestations of illness, when the patient perceives them as a revelation, as reality, false mysticism in the terminology of Western psychologists and psychiatrists, a state of delusion, seduction in the terminology of Orthodox ascetics.
- Religious experiences of a sick person, their role in the fight against the disease and their significance for compensating for the consequences of the disease.
- Religious experiences associated with illness: can they be a source of positive religious experience?
The answer to these questions requires a careful analysis of the relationship between spiritual and mental processes in various mental illnesses (pathological forms), taking into account the nature of the course and stage of the disease, as well as the clinical condition (syndrome) in which the disease manifests itself at one or another stage of development. For our task, it is advisable to keep in mind the modern division of three types of mental illnesses depending on their course and the degree of participation of organically destructive brain processes in their development.
1st group
diseases based on somatic diseases and organic processes in the brain. Psychopathological manifestations here reflect established physical changes. Their exact qualification, and not just psychopathological analysis, is the final goal of the doctor: a correctly made diagnosis opens the way to treatment and help for the patient. These organic brain diseases in the proper sense account for about 28% of all patients treated in psychiatric hospitals and dispensaries. These include brain injuries and tumors, the consequences of encephalitis and meningitis, brain-specific infections (cerebral syphilis and progressive paralysis), cerebral sclerosis, atrophic senile and presenile diseases, conditions of congenital dementia and mental retardation. This relatively easy-to-understand group of diseases still leaves unresolved questions due to the lack of overlap and parallelism between the severity of brain disease and mental disorders. There are severe psychoses with moderately severe brain damage, and there are severe somatic brain lesions with moderately severe mental disorders and even with clear consciousness and mental health until death.
2nd group
mental illnesses are so-called endogenous processes. There are no somatic signs specific to diagnosis in this group. The diagnosis is made mainly on the basis of characteristic changes in the psyche. In many cases, there are individual somatic disorders that suggest the presence of pathological processes in the brain or intoxication phenomena (self-poisoning) in the body. But often there are no somatic disorders, especially at the initial stages of the process or when its course is favorable. If they are discovered in the future (in which some psychiatrists, in particular our domestic ones, are confident) - then these diseases may move to the 1st group. In these diseases, specific and unusual mental manifestations for healthy people have been identified, psychoses, seizures, personality changes, which have certain and established patterns of development and form the basis of the nosological characteristics and mechanisms of development of the disease. These diseases make up the vast majority of diseases found in hospitals and dispensaries (50-60%). This includes three main nosological forms:
- Manic-depressive psychosis, cyclothymia, the entire group of affective psychoses, their typical and atypical forms.
- Schizophrenia with its various forms and course options (slowly ongoing, so-called flaccid - favorable forms, periodic attack-like recurrent forms, continuously ongoing delusional forms and juvenile malignant ongoing diseases).
- Genuine hereditary epilepsy.
For all these diseases, a certain significance of hereditary predisposition has been established, which gives grounds to recognize their endogenous nature with a certain significance of environmental factors, education, mental trauma, defense mechanisms and personal resistance to identify this hereditary predisposition, which is not considered fatal. Anatomical findings in the brain are absent in manic-depressive psychosis, are not characteristic of schizophrenia, in epilepsy they correlate with the course of the disease and may not be the cause, but a consequence of repeated seizures (epileptic diseases with organic processes in the brain belong to the 1st group of diseases).
3rd group
diseases - the mildest, functional and psychogenic, as well as constitutional personality anomalies that are not based on destructive ones, i.e. destructive processes in the brain. These diseases do not threaten a progressive course. destruction of personality, decreased intelligence, dementia. This includes reactive psychogenic diseases and neuroses. psychopathy, pathological characters, anomalies of personality and behavior. In hospitals, these forms give no more than 10-15%. They can often be found in sanatoriums, dispensaries, and even in general clinics. According to foreign data, in the conditions of urbanization and industrialization, most of humanity suffers from neuroses, if we take into account the mildest forms. Consequently, these are those borderline diseases that stand on the border between health and illness, with which the psychotherapist and the pastor in the church most often have to encounter:
- Psychopathy, pathological characters (congenital and acquired in connection with unfavorable upbringing conditions) such as excitable, emotionally labile, pathologically withdrawn, emotionally cold, constitutional asthenics, neurasthenics, infantile, emotionally labile hysterical, self-centered inert stubborn people, prone to overvalued (overvalued) and delusional formations (obsessed with ideas of jealousy, litigiousness, invention, social reformers), dreamers, sexually perverted, etc. Immaturity of judgment and infantile traits are a common feature of most of these patients
- Neuroses, neurotic reactions and protracted neurotic personality developments that arise in response to psychotraumatic situations in constitutionally weak or unbalanced individuals, especially when they turn out to be untenable in the face of unbearable demands or super-strong environmental stimuli. Neuroses are divided into hysterical obsessive, phobic, hypochondriacal, and psychasthenic neuroses.
The doctor will approach these forms in search of somatic and biological causes and the soil on which they developed. The psychotherapist will try to eliminate the traumatic causes or at least teach the patient to react correctly to them. An experienced confessor will help the patient overcome moral reasons, defects in education, and help the patient achieve healthy level in spiritual life, find feasible and interesting occupations and professions, overcome moral difficulties Here, psychotherapeutic work is often associated with a deep analysis of mental experiences and many years of education, patient management, psychogogy (from the Greek ago I lead) as a type of psychotherapy Depending on conviction and capabilities the patient, he often turns to the confessor for this. But even psychotherapists in these cases appeal to the moral side of the individual and always pay attention to the presence of conscience and feelings of guilt in the patient.
One person sees an illness as a way out and a benefit for himself (in case of hysteria); for another, a moral reaction to a symptom of an illness arouses protest, awakens conscience, and the ability to criticize (Weizsäcker). American psychiatrist Karpman, in his classification of borderline states (neuroses and psychopathy), even completely departs from the medical-biological point of view and attaches decisive importance to the moral self-esteem of the patient and the reaction that only a negative reaction causes, because psychopaths are soulless, carefree, and devoid of guilt. They take place in a primitive animal plane. They do not take into account external circumstances. Their behavior is determined by animal instincts that do not obey the dictates of consciousness. They are not capable of complex emotional reactions. Karpman even proposed replacing the term “psychopathy” with the term “anetopathy” (a pathological lack of moral sense). One of his followers, R. Miller, on this basis proposed the following differential diagnostic feature:
If a patient has a conscience and a feeling of guilt, this is not psychopathy, but only neurosis. A psychopath has no conscience and no sense of guilt. At best, only a feeling of inconvenience from certain manifestations of a psychopathic nature. We have presented here in such detail this extreme, purely moralizing point of view in order to show that it is far from the objective medical-biological and social characteristics of psychopathy, from the scientific-medical and psychotherapeutic approach. For the Christian approach does not replace or replace the medical-biological approach, but only complements and enriches it. This moralizing point of view is essentially alien to the Christian approach to patients with mental abnormalities; it contradicts the entire centuries-old experience of the Orthodox Church and, in particular, monastic psychiatry, the covenants of Christ to help the sick and the above rule of Bishop Ignatius Briancheninov. But this will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters, when describing individual forms of diseases and specific examples. Here, at the end of these introductory chapters, it is necessary to say something important that unites the efforts of all three representatives of science and religion, who are called upon to heal mental illnesses, a doctor representing a medical-biological point of view, a psychotherapist who uses methods of mental influence on the patient and a confessor representing a religious point of view and using methods of spiritual and emotional influence. In the process of working with patients, all of them have one common task: to help the patient understand his illness, to think critically about the symptoms of the disease, his shortcomings, mental defects (intelligence, temperament, character and behavior). A doctor using biological and medicinal (psychopharmacological) methods to suppress delusions, hallucinations, agitation or depression will see the success of his treatment if the patient begins to understand the painful origin of these symptoms and treat them as phenomena alien to his personality. Such a critical attitude speaks of recovery. In other cases, the patient tells the doctor: it was in the past (voices, delusions of influence, witchcraft, possession), but now it is not. They left me and don't bother me. Such patients sometimes do not understand the painful origin of the symptoms, but knowing that the medicine helps to overcome them, they themselves come to the doctor at the time of exacerbation or begin to take again the previously prescribed medicine that helped previously. In these cases, the doctor notes incomplete recovery, temporary relief of the chronic disease, remission with incomplete criticism of the disease, with an ambivalent, wavering, unstable attitude towards its symptoms.
The psychotherapist will focus on those symptoms that are of mental psychogenic origin, which are associated with traumatic experiences (depression, obsessions, fears, hypochondriacal ideas) or with a severe reaction to a physical or mental illness of organic, brain origin (cerebral sclerosis, epilepsy, schizophrenia) or due to the constitution, painful predisposition (character pathology, psychopathy). In all these cases, the task of the psychotherapist is to find out, through a detailed study, the origin of the disease, the obvious or hidden psychological and constitutional roots of the disease, explain them to the patient, bring them to his consciousness, help them to realize them, critically evaluate them, overcome them using the methods of psychotherapy, rational psychotherapy by explanation, dissuasion, suggestion, hypnosis. self-hypnosis. autogenic training, finally educational work using psychological methods, etc. Awareness, with the help of a doctor, of sometimes long-forgotten or repressed traumatic experiences helps the patient free himself from their influence (katarsis - the ancient Greeks). A correct, rational attitude towards psychopathic character traits or painful impulses with the use of the necessary biological therapy also alleviates the condition of such patients. In these stages of the disease, systematic psychotherapy and continuation of medication, now called maintenance therapy, are needed.
The confessor faces the same task: to help the patient to take a correct critical view of mental illness, to recognize it and actively resist it, using the help of a doctor when necessary. A believer, living a healthy spiritual life, constantly controls himself, the state of his heart, hears the voice of conscience, as he grows spiritually, he realizes his sins, can have a hard time repenting (crying for sins), but in prayer, in repentance, in the liturgy he finds relief, liberation and joy (sadness, which from God produces constant repentance towards salvation - leads to spiritual healing. A completely different worldly sadness, depression, which does not go away from prayer and repentance, leads a person into a state of melancholy, despair, despondency, “produces death.”
The confessor must be able to show to those who come to him the painful nature of such depression, whether it is the result of an excessive painful reaction to a particular loss (close people, expensive things, fortune) or the result of a violation of brain activity, vital depression, endogenous, circular or even schizophrenic (i.e. i.e. comes from nature, from nature). In such cases, in addition to drug therapy, it is necessary to constantly and patiently remind the patient that this is an illness and it will pass (affective psychoses are now available for therapy). It is also necessary to bring the patient to an awareness of the disease in the opposite states - excitement, overestimation of one’s strength. proud delusional thoughts about one’s wealth, about exceptional abilities, about inventions of world significance, about exceptional understanding and the right to teach and denounce everyone (paranoia - delusions of invention, reformism, litigiousness, jealousy, etc.). In these cases, the task of long-term and persistent treatment is to lead the patient to a self-critical assessment of his condition. The same is true for hallucinations, delusional ideas of influence, obsessions, irresistible obsessions that are especially painful for a believer and automatic, unregulated by the will ideas of blasphemous content (so-called blasphemous thoughts). They require long-term treatment. The confessor, with his authority, must help the patient understand that these ideas are not the result of the influence of an evil spirit, demonic possession, but come from a painful state of the central nervous system, from nature, from nature. The same applies to hallucinations and voices of an encouraging, critical, imperative nature or type of recurring insights, revelations. In all these cases, a special sobriety of assessment, a correct spiritual diagnosis and the ability to distinguish spiritual phenomena from painful ones are needed. Examples in the following presentation will show that the experience of Orthodox ascetics in particular helps to distinguish truly spiritual experiences from painful ones, which, in the absence of a critical attitude towards them, invariably lead believer in a state of delusion.
