Can difficult symptoms ever be useful? Imagine you’re driving along and the oil light starts flashing on the car’s dashboard. What do you do? Would you ignore it, or would you check it out?

Why are Symptoms Useful – Don’t Shoot the Messenger!

Our own system’s warning lights

Our modern world often sees our physical and emotional symptoms as uncomfortable inconveniences with no inherent value. We often try to make them go away or mask them with drugs or surgery. We can then carry on as we were. But if we are not careful, it can be like putting a sticking plaster over that oil level warning light and carrying on down the same track. Ignoring the warning light and not addressing the root cause. It’s not surprising that problems may crop up again further down the road.

These symptoms are our systems own warning lights. We are beautifully designed. A calibrated feedback loop works to keep us in balance, not just one part of the engine, but as a whole system. No one part works in isolation. Targeting one part without considering the whole can create an imbalance. And so many drugs come with side effects that can add to the list of woes.

The Messenger is not the Message

This might sound a bit Yoda-esque! But it’s true. The lovely Buddhist expression encapsulates this perfectly:

“…When the sage points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger…”

Our symptoms point us in the direction of our truth, they are not the endpoint. They are a signpost to help us find our way. Mistaking our symptoms for the key issue, and their apparent absence for the resolution of the problem can mean we forget to look and see the moon.

Symptoms Point to the Issue – Help Us Find our Way

When we have a physical symptom like high blood pressure, or experience anxiety, our system is communicating with us. Do we need to address how we living? Our diet, exercise levels, how we cope with stress or patterns of thinking and behaving.

It can be a combination of factors that lead to changes in our health. I remember talking with a patient years ago about a work colleague of his who had a heart attack. He was shocked because it came “right out of the blue”. We talked about how this man was always staying late at the office, working under huge pressure, getting take-aways at his desk, not having time to relax or exercise.

It’s likely he had some symptoms ahead of the heart attack. High blood pressure or angina perhaps. Maybe other physical symptoms like reflux, IBS or headaches. And what about his mood, sleep and sense of well-being, how were they affected by his approach to life?

Did the heart attack really come out of nowhere, out of the blue?

Symptoms are Useful – Don’t Ignore the Messenger

This man would not have been alone in struggling with the work-life balance. With the pace of modern life and the seductively simple solutions advertised to cope with it. We might postpone looking at things to when we imagine we will have more time, money, energy or bandwidth.

Maybe he had symptoms trying to give him the heads up that this way of life was making him ill. It’s so easy to drink Gaviscon and have a packet of Reenies to hand. Ibuprofen to make pain go without addressing why the headache was there. Blood pressure medications can buy us some time but in the longer run we need to address what is causing the issue. The list of drugs needed will keep getting longer and eventually the dam breaks.

A Message that is Hard to Hear?

What if it is a message that is hard to hear? We might have a stressful job or homelife. Many pressures and demands on our time. It might not be possible to magically transform all that it difficult in our lives. Trying just feels like another source of stress.

I believe that’s when it can be supportive to have a practitioner to help. In whatever way you need at that point. Whether it is practical support and information about how to improve your physical health. With managing the ups and downs of menopause or high blood pressure for example. Or it might be that the struggle feels more based in how you are feeling.

A Deeper Message from Within

Struggling with anxiety, low mood or unhelpful habits can make it hard too. Self-limiting beliefs can undermine or sabotage how we live and look after ourselves. Maybe we have been taught that taking time to relax, or exercise or prioritise our dietary needs is selfish. Perhaps the voice of an inner gremlin tells us we are not worth making the effort for. Or that we never stick at anything so what is the point?

As we become more aware of our own inner framework, and work with it, making positive and healthy change possible.

Why are Symptoms Useful – Our Inner Voice

Our symptoms are the inner voice of our system. Prompting us to steer ourselves towards better health and happiness. Working in a way that addresses the deeper message for change can have a profound effect on our lives.

There are times when pharmaceutical drugs and emergency surgery can be of immense value. Lifesaving or enhancing the quality of life. They can buy us time, but if it comes at the cost of making us deaf and blind to what we need to do to be healthy and happy in the longer run that is a high price to pay.

Muting the volume of a symptom can rob us of the motivation for change. We lose connection with our own feedback loops as our inner voice is muffled. We lose the value of symptoms being useful. Whether the imbalances are hormonal, work-life, dietary, how we feel about ourselves – listening to those messages and acting upon them allows us to move to a place where our systems no longer need to create those symptoms.

Our symptoms are messengers, created by us to serve a purpose – to help us see our inner moon.

Support with Chantry Health – Online and in Wales

I hope you have found this post on Why are Symptoms Useful to be of interest. I use a range of tools as a natural health practitioner and talking therapist to support the people I work with. We can either use a single element of what I offer or draw upon a range of resources, depending upon your situation and how you would like to proceed.

Chantry Health is based in Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion in Wales, and I also work online. I offer a free mini-consultation so we can see if we think my approach might suit you. Wherever you are you can contact me for help and support.

Thank you – I look forward to hearing from you.