Sickness as Sanctuary
Have you ever gotten sick just before something big? A presentation, a tough conversation, a moment where you had to show up and shine?
I made sickness my sanctuary for most of my life. Didn’t know I was doing it. I excelled at it.
Grade school, high school, college — I was always sick with something. Respiratory infections, antibiotics at least eight times a year. My friends said I was either dead in the water or full speed ahead with all turbos engaged.
Same thing as an adult while consulting for advanced high technology companies. Clients called me the Energizer Rebel, the Texas Tornado. They didn’t know I crashed and burned on the other side.
I’d work 80-hour weeks at full throttle, then boom. Buried under the covers for days. Then back I’d come, supercharged.
Rinse and repeat. For decades.
Until I had to face the truth about my sickness, and my truth.
Years ago, after a series of life events broke me wide open, memories I’d buried since childhood came flooding back. A decade of abuse by people who should have protected me.
My little girl’s mind had to survive. She found a way to be safe, at least part of the time.
When I was sick, my mom took care of me. Watched over me. Kept me oh so close. When mom was close, the abusers couldn’t get to me.
Sickness became safety. My little girl figured that out before she could spell the word.
Here’s the thing about being that young. Before you’re seven or eight, your unconscious mind takes whatever you’re told, whatever you learn, whatever you experience — and files it as absolute truth. Those truths become the programs that direct your life.
My little girl’s program? Sickness equals safety.
My unconscious mind filed that away like gospel. Activated it for over forty years without my permission.
Every time I was over-stressed, overwhelmed, afraid, out of my depth — I got sick. Not because I was weak. Because my mind was doing exactly what it was programmed to do: pull me into the only safe harbor it had ever known.
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I took it to the extreme. So much so that even after I discovered my truth, I fell back into what was oh so normal to me as life shifted again.
I got really sick, and there wasn’t an obvious answer. I chalked it up to the trauma from the memories, until it was so in my face that I had to admit that something else was happening.
My magical functional medicine doctor found Lyme disease, black mold toxicity, and a handful of co-infections that made me wonder if there was a partridge in a pear tree hiding in my blood work. I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time, on and off for years. It got worse and worse until I was convinced I was dying. I almost wished for it, I was so damned sick.
The simple truth? I did what many of us do when faced with a big challenge.
I focused on it. Made it the center of my attention.
I read everything about all the toxins, from Lyme and its co-infections to black mold and more. Tracked every symptom. Noted every reaction in detailed diaries. Told my friends every update.
I also focused on healing, but the balance was much more about the disease and its power. I certainly wasn’t focusing on my power to heal.
Until a dear friend kicked me right in the face with the truth: “You’re giving your sickness your focus. You’re thinking about it all the time, talking about it all the time, writing about it all the time. You’re fueling it. STOP IT.”
I protested. I know my mind better than anyone. He was wrong.
I was sitting on my couch planning my week…when I heard myself thinking, “Well, if you do that on Wednesday, you can’t plan on doing anything Thursday because you’ll be sick in bed.” Kinda hard to ignore that one.
I was planning for my own sickness. Deepening my unconscious mind’s programming around sickness. Expecting it. Focusing on it. Limiting my life, my very future.
Here I am, someone who coaches people to claim the power of their minds, caught in the trap I help others escape.
Because that’s how programming works. It’s inherent and invisible to the person running it.
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Your unconscious mind acts using a fundamental rule: What you focus on is what you want.
It doesn’t distinguish between “fighting sickness” and “requesting sickness.” In fact, it doesn’t recognize negatives at all. Read that again.
Your mind only registers the target of your attention and creates more of it. It ignores the Don’ts and Can’ts and Nots.
“I don’t want to lose that contract” becomes “I want to lose that contract” in your unconscious mind. It simply reads the sensory data around the subject and ignores the rest.
Your brain’s reticular activating system — the filter that decides what makes it from the 11 million bits of information around you into the ~57 bits you actually perceive — follows your focus like a GPS tracks a destination.
Focus on sickness, even to release it? It finds more evidence of sickness.
Focus on wellness? Different destination, different result.
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The Idle Mind Pivot
Here’s a powerful tool I use to retrain whatever mind program I want out of my life — a simple yet oh so powerful shift method.
Pay attention to what your mind does when it’s idle. Driving. Showering. Folding laundry. Cleaning the kitchen or office or whatever. Those moments when your conscious mind relaxes and your unconscious takes the wheel.
What is it saying?
For me, it was a running monologue of sickness. What I couldn’t eat. What I couldn’t do. How limited and miserable I was. A long list of symptoms, do’s and don’ts charging front and center in my mind, no matter what else might be important at the time.
I didn’t even know it was happening until I started paying close attention to my idle mind chatter.
When you catch it — and you will — pivot.
How? I laugh and then say something along the lines of, “Oh unconscious mind, I understand why you might believe that, but what I actually want is this…” Then I give my mind a pure focus on what I want — with full sensory data.
Don’t argue with it. Don’t analyze it. And BE KIND. Your mind is simply doing what it was designed to do — follow your lead. Its purpose is to serve and protect you. You’re the one telling it to focus on and create things you don’t want.
One more thing. Thinking isn’t the same for your conscious vs unconscious mind.
Your conscious mind is logical. So you can tell it things — words are its language.
Your unconscious mind is sensory. Words slide off of it. So, in my example, instead of only thinking “I want to be healthy,” I showed my mind the complete sensory scene. Saw myself healthy, riding my horse, up and going every day, energized and pain-free and totally back to me. Detailed the colors, the brightness, every detail about the image of my wellness. Felt the energy in my body as I virtually experienced the feeling of wellness. Clearly listened to all the sounds around me — the dogs playing, my horses whinnying as I walked toward them with a bridle, birds chirping as I experienced energy and vitality.
You can too. Gift yourself and your mind sixty seconds of vivid, sensory detail that shows what you actually want, as if you already have it. Right now.
Your unconscious doesn’t split hairs when it comes to the difference between what’s real and what’s vividly imagined. It views your focus, your attention, as its guiding light.
It also doesn’t know that you’re focused on the negative — why would you be? You’re designed to create with your focus. It thinks you only focus on what you want, and it delivers just that.
Every time you catch the chatter and pivot, you’re weakening the old neural pathway and strengthening a new one.
Repeat it with deep feeling, vivid sensory information and knowing. Then watch the shift that happens in your life. Expect it.
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The Idle Mind Pivot is how I always begin a shift. It’s great for everything.
For now, start listening to your idle mind. That’s where your programming runs unchecked, creating your tomorrow on autopilot.
Whenever you catch yourself worrying or grousing or just plain being negative — stop. Laugh. Pivot. Show your unconscious mind what you truly want, in glorious sensory detail.
Whatever your mind has created to limit you — probably to keep you safe — you can shift it. Right now.
Then pay attention to the shifts that send you thriving toward what you actually want.
Then keep paying attention to what you want.
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Want to understand the mechanism behind your mind’s programming? The Power of Attention Free ebook reveals how your unconscious mind creates your experience — and how you can take control of your life experiences.