The task that faces the patient includes: (1) identifying the needs being met through the illness, and (2) finding ways of meeting those needs directly without illness. How can you identify these needs? We invite you to participate in an exercise we use with our patients to help them begin to recognize the benefits of their illness.Get a piece of paper and list the five most important benefits you received from a major illness in your life. (You may find that there are more than five.) If you have or have had cancer, use this as the basis for this exercise.The following is an example of how the exercise can work. During the preparation of this book, we had a conference with a business associate in Vail, Colorado. We got through the conference ahead of schedule and our associate, a nonskier, decided he would take some skiing lessons. He returned from the lessons exhausted and flew home. By the next day, he had developed a case of the flu that kept him in bed for two full weeks. In an effort to get well again and to apply the concepts we had described to him in Vail, he discussed the situation preceding the onset of the flu and then listed six benefits he derived from his illness.At the time I became ill, I was having a lot of trouble finishing a job in which I had a great emotional and financial stake. It was very important to me that it be completed in a splendid fashion, but the work was going slowly and I had doubts about the product I was producing. By getting sick I was able to meet many needs at once:1. I wanted my wife’s help on the project but felt that, unless I literally couldn’t do it myself, it would be wrong for me to distract her from her own activities to help me.2. I needed the excuse of “something beyond my control” for not finishing the project on time.3. I may also have been preparing an excuse for any imperfections that might appear in it.4. It gave me a reason to get seriously involved with my own health, which meant among other things resolving that when I got well I would find the time to play tennis, an activity that I enjoy but which I normally don’t do because I’m “too busy.”5. It was a simple rest from my daily labors, which were giving me a lot of stress.6. The work at Vail called up many memories of my father’s own death from a brain tumor. The unresolved issues of that situation were very much on my mind.Clearly his physical exhaustion, both from the unusual exertion of skiing and the stress of completing a major job, contributed to his susceptibility to disease. But, as his answers show, the disease also gave him permission to rest, to ask for help, to take care of himself, to recharge his energy, to release himself from’ the tension of meeting very high standards, to remake decisions regarding priorities and lifestyle—all of which he had been unable to do without the illness.The final pressure, the feelings about his father’s death, was stirred up by the discussion of our approach to cancer treatment. Getting comfortable with this approach required that he start to resolve his feelings about his father’s death.In going over the lists our patients write, we find five major areas in which they most frequently benefit from their illnesses:1. Receiving permission to get out of dealing with a troublesome problem or situation.2. Getting attention, care, nurturing from people around them.3. Having an opportunity to regroup their psychological energy to deal with a problem or to gain a new perspective.4. Gaining an incentive for personal growth or for modifying undesirable habits.5. Not having to meet their own or others’ high expectations.Now review your own list. Consider what underlying needs were met by your illness: relief from stress, love and attention an opportunity to renew your energy, and so forth. Next, try to identify the rules or beliefs that limit you from meeting each of these needs when you are well.One of our patients discovered that she felt a lack of physical closeness from her husband, but it was unthinkable for her simply to ask for affection and caring when she was well. Now she has given herself permission to say to her husband at any time, “I want a hug.” She also learned some important things about herself as she looked at why it was so difficult to ask for physical closeness from her husband.Ask yourself if you have been unable to allow yourself periods of release from tension. What personal beliefs stop you from giving yourself this freedom without needing the illness as justification? You might believe, for example, that it is a “sign of weakness” to give in to pressure or tension, or that it is your duty to put others’ needs ahead of your own. Because these rules are mostly unconscious, this self-examination will take effort. But taking preventive action to avoid future illness is worth your time and energy. Once you begin to become aware of your internal rules and are able to see alternative ways of viewing situations, you are on the road to a healthier life.By using the lessons of illness as a starting point, we can educate ourselves to recognize our needs and take the opportunity to satisfy them. This is the creative use of illness.*38\347\2*