Sickness as a defense

It is a popular idea to see sickness as a reaction on some form of tension, something that would have been repressed, or ignored. Sickness is a reaction, but not on tension. It is the creation of tension. It is a reaction on a process within yourself that does not use the standard patterns of your personality. For example when you do something that you feared. Or when you move well through a really difficult period in your life. Or when you put a lot of energy in e.g. a project or a change in your living arrangements. Or when your personality feels powerless. Or simply when you are not impressed by an attack where you would normally be so. So when your inner strength turns out to be a source of inspiration, when your personality turns out not to be the one who controls and determines, when initiative seems not to be with you as much as you wanted. All this is against the interests of your personality. And as soon as he is able to, he will come with a counteraction that will focus the attention on himself, for which he is likely to use some form of tension through mental and/or physical discomfort.

This tends to happen in moments where the power with which your inner Self is into your awareness, lessens, for example when you relax, or when a difficult period has now come to an end and your choice of attention is "free" again. Or when you have a vacation for example, your personality may well use that as his personal playground. From the basics of physical or mental discomfort he will build a situation through which he can first promote fear (because of the uncertainty of the nature of your discomfort, or the seriousness of it), and from that position of weakness now can take up a star role: look at him, what he can still do despite these limitations. This seems like some form of creating tension afterwards, as you did not do that at the moment itself because at that time it did not seem an issue for you, because you looked at it from a different point of view. Now your personality is trying to reclaim control again.

It may come in very handy to your personality that you can have too much tension, or that you can overlook something through which he might be weakened, because now he can be on the alert for you and come up with all kinds of living arrangements in order to prevent this from happening, and meanwhile make you feel fearful or guilty.

The intensity of the reaction of your personality may vary per person. With one it may be hardly noticed, the other person is full in motion with the smallest of input. It is not about the intensity of the reaction either, relaxing and playing with your fingers, smoking, drinking, biting nails, play with your hair, scratching etc. are mild expressions of the same phenomena. And it is much easier to react to these subtle signals than to wait for the big explosion. You need not avoid this process, you use it to become aware of what is happening here. You may find that your personality often needs this time of "protest" and then, when you no longer believe this brings you anything you really want since it can offer no real solution, only a diversion, he can let go. When you work your way through a process like this, you will find that "getting better" can indeed be interpreted here as "having a better understanding".