what is a symptom?

three questions about your state of being that will raise your awareness and deepen your understanding

Dear friends of homeopathy,

I’ve asked this question before: how do you think about illness?

This is a multi-faceted question — and one dimension of the question that we can consider is how we relate our illness.

But here’s another question: what qualifies as illness in the first place?

How would you answer that question?

How does the mainstream medical community answer that question?

How do you want your practitioners to answer that question?

When I ask the question: what is a symptom? My intention is to open up a conversation, to explore some of these questions.

Understanding what we think of as illness — how we define what is normal, and how we define what is pathological — helps us understand what we are trying to accomplish, and what our measure of success might be.

We are all uncomfortable sometimes. And we all get sick, sometimes. How do we differentiate between discomfort and illness? How do we determine whether a condition is a natural, healthy variation of normal, or whether it requires attention and support?

Here are three guiding questions that I’ve found insightful as a practitioner, and a mother, to help determine what kinds of symptoms are really symptoms.

These are questions that help us become more aware of ourselves and our experience, so that we can understand what is out of balance.

When we can answer the question what is out of balance? with accuracy and precision, we are able to more easily determine whether we need a remedy, and what the remedy — homeopathic or otherwise — might be.

1. What is your experience right now?

Sometimes, in the rush to validate our experience with external tests — everything from taking our temperature to evaluating blood work — our actual experience is lost.

Last week, for instance, one of my kids woke up with a scratchy throat and a load of congestion. His immediate reaction? Let’s check my temperature! He immediately fell into our collective conditioning, this idea that running a fever is the gold standard for whether we are not well, and whether we are able to go on with our day as usual.

So…his temperature was normal.

And, I decided to keep him home. Because he was experiencing illness — even if the “test” came back “negative.”

If you’ve studied psychology at all, you’ll know that self-report — a person’s evaluation of their own experience — is considered unreliable, a poor measure of whether an actual change has occurred.

This attitude is reflected in medical culture, which has turned testing into the prerequisite for, rather than the confirmation of, diagnosis, often side-lining the self-reported experience of the person sitting in front of them.

Have you had this happen? You go into the doctor, feeling crummy, and are told, there’s nothing wrong, and nothing we can do to help you, because the “tests” came back “negative?”

Your experience is valid, in and of itself. You don’t need any test, other than self-observation, to determine whether something is not right, and to start investigating how you might start to feel better.

Check in with yourself. What are you feeling, physically? Emotionally? Mentally?

Careful self-observation and reflection are as valid, and as critical as any lab test.

Lab tests can tell us something about the processes in your body, but until you feel better, you are not better.

2. How does your current experience compare with your past experience?

Okay. Once we’ve established how we feel right now, we can compare that to how we typically feel, to get a sense of whether what we are experiencing is in the realm of normal for us, or not.

Not everyone has the same experience of life.

Some people, for instance, enjoy, and even require, a lot of solitude to feel good. For them, wanting to be alone is not necessarily pathology.

But for someone who is usually outgoing, and gregarious, a desire for solitude, and an aversion to company, might be pathology. We can certainly make a note of those changes, and maybe we start paying closer attention. What else is going on?

In homeopathy, we differentiate between personality and pathology, because we understand that what makes us unique isn’t what makes us sick. And when we give a remedy, we aren’t trying to make you like everyone else; we are trying to make you more like yourself.

We’re trying to bring balance, not uniformity.

Anyone who has more than one kid knows, two different children act out in totally different ways, and respond to the same parenting tactic in totally different ways. Different kids need different parenting.

Different people have different ways of falling out of balance, and different expressions of being in balance.

So another point of reference to keep in mind: is this normal FOR ME?

3. Is your current experience interfering with your ability to live your life — your work, your relationships, your sleep, your happiness?

For me, this question is the determining factor as to whether I let something ride, or start piling the support resources on.

When we ask whether our experience, or some aspect of our experience, is interfering with our ability to live our lives — we can establish a metric to understand not only whether something is an issue — but also how it is an issue, and how we will know when it is no longer an issue.

For instance, my kiddo who was sick last week did not need additional support beyond some vitamins and garlic tea. He was sick enough that his comfort was impacted, but not sick enough that his illness was interfering with his ability to sleep, eat, or even to play outside.

He had a pleasant, quiet day at home, and was ready to go back to school the next day. The sore throat and congestion resolved themselves with a little rest and fresh air.

No real interference with life.

But sometimes, we get sick enough that we have difficulty getting out of bed, difficulty eating. Sometimes we are sick enough that we don’t have the energy to work at full capacity, or to be present in our relationships.

When debilitating illness is a temporary situation, as with an acute cold or flu, sometimes, even often, it can resolve on its own. But sick enough to interfere with rest and nourishment — of mind, body and spirit — is also when I would feel well-justified to give a homeopathic remedy, even if that will only speed the recovery by a few days.

As an ongoing situation, fatigue, loss of appetite, inability to work and strained relationships are not sustainable.

And yet, you can have exactly these symptoms, and seek out medical attention, and hear that, because blood work is in range, you are fine.

When you are incapacitated in any way, you are not fine.

You are having an experience of illness that needs support.

Because if you recall, health, from a homeopathic perspective implies that we have flexibility, and freedom. Freedom from pain. Freedom to feel our emotions, without being overwhelmed by them. Freedom to pursue our purpose in the world.

When illness is interfering with our sleep, with our work, with our relationships — it is interfering with our freedom.

When a particular kind of experience — mental, emotional, or physical — interferes with our freedom, we could call that experience a symptom.

And we could consider that symptom to be resolved, when freedom is restored.

This is a view of health that prioritizes balance and our internal compass over tests and bell curves.

Because we honor your uniqueness. Always.

So one last word.

The way we define what a symptom is — also determines how we will address that symptom — and when we will consider it to be resolved.

Some forms of medicine will take away pain, but will not restore freedom.

Some forms of medicine do both.

Some forms of medicine actually do neither.

It takes some discernment to figure out not only what is out of balance, but what to do about it.

Next time someone you love isn’t feeling well, consider asking these three questions:

What is your experience right now?

How does your current experience compare with your past experience?

Is your current experience interfering with your ability to live your life — your work, your relationships, your sleep, your happiness?

And let me know how it goes. Does this change the way you think about symptoms? Does it change your idea about how to approach the symptoms?

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment and let me know what you think…

Love,

Chelsea