The Courage to Take Up Your Own Health
In the time of the expert where there is always someone waiting to tell you what to do, to claim health agency is to claim sovereignty over your entire life.
Photo courtesy Canva
My husband and I were recently having a deep conversation around how incredibly courageous it is to take up your own health. And it all started when he mentioned how anxious he was feeling about an upcoming appointment with a practitioner who focuses on the underlying mental and emotional causes of physical symptoms.
His worry?
He was concerned about how much it was going to ask of him to change the longstanding ways of thinking and behaving that are contributing to keeping him stuck in old physical patterns. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to muster the inner fortitude necessary to let go of the thoughts, emotions and behaviors contributing to his imbalance. He was afraid, and rightly so, that working with his health in this way was going to ask a lot of him.
To challenge any of our beliefs in life is never easy, which is why it is such a brave thing to do. This is especially so when it comes to our health.
Our beliefs around our role in our own health and healing are often entrenched and unconscious, having originated in childhood. Meaning, we are mostly unaware of what we even believe, and therefore what is driving our health conditions and what we believe is possible for us in this regard. But without greater awareness, it’s hard to see the outdated beliefs that are keeping us from experiencing the full potential of our lives and what is possible when it comes to health and healing.
One of the most entrenched mindsets is that our healing belongs in someone else’s hands. That it would be foolish, and even dangerous, to take on the full responsibility ourselves. This cultural belief, entrenched in the approach of our current healthcare systems does little to teach us about what health is, while putting a majority of its approaches and resources into testing us and prescribing to us with almost no understanding of how our daily thoughts, emotions and behaviors have created the health predicament we find ourselves in.
This and so much more is why to even contemplate, never mind question, whose hands your health belongs in, can feel like the leap from believing the earth is flat to the earth is round.
But here’s the good news: Our bodies are always changing, and so can our minds.
If what I am saying here resonates, consider paying more attention to your thoughts the next time you are sick, or the next time you hear something scary on TV about health threats. Does your mind go to feeling frightened, small and powerless? If so, these are the thoughts and feelings of the child still locked up within you. The one who had to defer to the authority figure because they had no power to act. The one for whom the bigness of health felt beyond their reach.
Pay attention to when the little kid in you pops up, and then spend some time deciding if you still want to hold beliefs you took on as a young and disempowered little one, or if you are finally ready to begin the journey into full adulthood by learning to develop the courage you need to take up your own health. While this can feel daunting, or even unnecessary in the time of the expert where there is always someone waiting to tell you what to do, to claim health agency is to claim sovereignty over your entire life. And to claim full sovereignty and responsibility over the direction of your own life is to create deep health, wellness, clarity and sanity not only for yourself, but for all of those around you, because a healthy society is based on the actions of each and every one of us.
Susan McNamara is a woman who cares deeply about how we are living and how it is that we treat ourselves, each other, and the planet. She is the founder of The Healer Within: A Unique Online Health & Healing Community for Women and the author of the book Trusting Your Body: The Embodied Journey of Claiming Sacred Responsibility for Your Health & Well-Being. She can be reached at RememberingWhatMattersMost.com.
