This is a chapter out of a book called "How To Really Piss Yourself Off" written by the German Professor of Psychology Rainer Sachse

The original title is "Wie man sich schwarz rgert - aber richtig".
It was written by this professor because he found it difficult to teach his patients how to change their behaviour to improve their lives, so instead he wrote a "how-to" book of how to "screw up" your life to show his patients "what not to do" - and calls it a paradoxal advice book. I found it funny, and a good workbook for co-dependents. Remember this is all advice you are NOT supposed to follow.

This book is not available in the English language. I translated it myself. Please let me know if you would like it emailed to you as a PDF file.


Advice for Advanced Psychosomatics

The Proper Behavior Concerning Feelings

A Word about the Meaning of Feelings

Many people still believe that feelings are not important; that they are superficial function of the brain; that they are not important for rational thinking: Mr. Spock, the fictional alien Star Trek figure, is the perfect example. Psychology and evolutional biology have proved otherwise. Feelings have a very complex function in human beings they serve to express ourselves; to help communicate; and to regulate and create our relationships to one another. The by far most important function feelings have is their informative function. Feelings inform a person what is important to them; what they like; what they want. They also inform a person if everything is in balance with their body and their psyche. Feelings inform us about disturbances, such as when a person doesnt like something or doesnt want something; when something is wrong; when a person has exceeded his own limits; when something or someone has violated a personal border; when a person is being threatened; when a person should do something to remedy a situation. Feelings are the principle source of information for an effective form of self control: without this information no one can really know what they want; no one would be in touch with their own personal needs; no one would be able to recognize something disturbing; no one would know if a situation is all right or needs to be changed.

Some emotions have very precise meanings, such as joy, happiness, fear or anger. Joy informs us that we have received something we like and want; happiness tells us that our needs have been very satisfied. Annoyance and anger inform us that something has taken place we do not want, and we have experienced as being unjust; something or someone has done something, which has hurt us or has violated a personal boundary, or has taken advantage of us. Anger also does us the service of informing us where our boundaries are. It informs us what we expect from other people. Fear informs us when we are possibly being threatened. It informs us about the possible consequences if this threat is carried out, and informs us where we could avoid dangerous situations.

But feelings are not always cut and dried. Sometimes people have vague and uncertain feelings that something isnt quite right. If we accept these feelings, then a rational psyche will begin to analyze what could be wrong. Sometimes these feelings can be felt tangibly in the form of neck tension, stomach churning, back pain and tension. It could take awhile before a person finally understands what this feeling means. But generally, it has a higher information value if a person accepts it and tries to understand what it means! Thats what they mean these days when they talk about emotional intelligence. They are talking about the ability to recognize feelings and to utilize feelings as advisors about how to deal with situations.

When viewed from an evolutional-biological standpoint, emotional evaluation systems are far older than rational thought process systems and are far more fundamental. Obviously, emotional evaluation systems have given us a definite advantage in evolutionary survival, and this hasnt changed at all in our modern-day society, either. Emotional evaluation systems are absolutely essential for self-control; for an effective adoption to our environment; and for the regulation of relationships to others. If a person chooses to ignore their feelings or fails to notice them, or accept them, then they cut themselves off from the most important and elementary biological systems they have. They wont be able to differentiate what is really important, whats disturbing, whether they feel well, whether they feel relaxed or stressed, whether they feel threatened or happy, etc.

Above all, they no longer can differentiate whats bothering them. When a person cannot determine whats disturbing them they will not be able to do something about this disturbance. This means ignoring disturbances allows the situation to prolong itself ignoring disturbances conserves disturbances. That is one of the most important (and probably the most basic) fundamental principles of solving psychological problems a problem that cant be recognized or defined usually wont ever get resolved (except by accident).
In the meantime, the importance of feelings as a major information source for an effective self-control system has been widely recognized. Daniel Goleman defines it as emotional intelligence, and expounds on the abilities to accept and recognize feelings in order to influence ones own behavior, which is generally considered a form of intelligence.

Disturbing Feelings

After that being said and done, you will probably now see that one of the major keys to fostering your psychosomatic disturbance is to:

--> Ignore your feelings!

In order to develop your psychosomatic disease, it is absolutely essential that you ignore your own personal feelings. You should adopt the same attitude towards your feelings that you would towards those warning lights on the dashboard of your car. Think: Warning lights on my dashboard are my mechanics problem not mine! and just take the mental piece of bubble gum out of your mouth and stick over the warning lights, so that you wont be bothered by them anymore.

Probably feelings are so biologically elementary you probably wont be able to prevent it from functioning. But you can do two things to prevent it from functioning properly:

--> You can ignore your feelings all together!
--> You dont have to take your feelings seriously!

Many of our successful clients have often complained about a vague uncertainty in different situations in life a feeling that something was wrong or the feeling I shouldnt really be doing this. Its not really a rational thought; its just a sort of a sinking feeling (sort of like that so-called gnawing feeling that most people usually have). But our successful clients do not take this seriously; feelings are annoying nags you have to work hard at to ignore. Sometimes you dont really understand what they are trying to tell you. Thats why our clients simply ignore them instead of trying to find out what they are attempting to tell us.
?
Ignoring feelings means that a person doesnt pay any attention to what kind of feelings he is experiencing, or if he even feels anything at all in a given situation. It means the person systemically ignores everything he might feel about anything or anyone. They, for example, generally ignore their anger when they fear something. Instead they concentrate on their assignment. When they feel shame and embarrassment they act as if nothing happened, and when they experience joy, they are still unsatisfied with results and keep on working. If a person works hard enough at ignoring his emotions, he can become quite skilled at it after awhile. Pretty soon it becomes an automatic reaction. As soon as they start to feel an emotion, they divert their attention to something else and they learn a form of automatic feeling avoidance. If they keep it up for longer periods of time, the person will soon unlearn his innate ability to feel anything at all. Its not as if they no longer have any emotions whatsoever.

Emotional processes cant really be completely shut off. Its just they are no longer in touch with their emotions, and this gives the person the feeling that he doesnt have any emotions whatsoever.
When a person trains himself relentlessly to the point he can ignore his emotions automatically, he no longer has to make an effort anymore he can automatically suppress his emotions. Once a person has reached the point where he automatically ignores and suppresses his feelings, it is very difficult to reverse this process. You should know that once you reach this point, you have seriously altered your emotional self-control system and your psychosomatic illness is practically in the bag at this point.

Another method to disturb this self-regulation system is to allow yourself to experience an unchecked emotion in a particular situation (such as uncontrollable anger). In this case the information this emotion is attempting to convey is ignored. Anger usually informs us something is taking place we dont like a violation of our personal boundaries or an act of humiliation. Anger can also inform us that perhaps our own personal rules and viewpoints are being disturbed.

For example, a person can always get angry because theyre extremely sensitive or because their expectations are higher than of those around them. Above all, anger can be a signal that a person might have to reconsider their behavior, their values and their method for dealing with situations. This would give them the opportunity to change something in their lives to alleviate this anger. Anyone would be able to accomplish this, if:

--> They take their anger seriously
--> Consider their anger as a warning signal

If you dont do this; if you dont take your feelings seriously and try to understand what they are trying to tell you, then it is just the same as if you ignore your feelings altogether.

So, if you decide that you dont want to ignore particular feelings, but instead decide to experience and accept them in their uncontrolled bandwidth, then you should at least ignore the meaning these feelings are trying to convey. Assume that feelings do not have anything important to tell you and contain no relevant information in themselves. This way, you can foster an emotional self-control disturbance, even if you do allow yourself to feel some emotions!
?
Just like in other mentioned examples, the proper attitude is the key here. A very popular attitude that fosters disturbances is, emotions only get in your way and complicate things. Assume that emotions only disturb normal behavior; emotions distract; emotions draw your attention away from things that are more important and relevant. For these reasons thinking about your emotions is a waste of time.

Assume emotions cramp your lifestyle and get in the way of the really important things in life. Mr. Spock can be used as a good example again emotions distract from rational thinking and flaw logical thinking (something that is totally elusive for human beings but who cares?).

Another helpful attitude is relying on absolute rationalism. A person should always solve their problems in a civil rational manner and concentrate on the objective rationality. Logic is the best way to deal with challenges and problems. (Try to resolve the conflict that falls under the topic of falling in love using logic! But dont forget! Humor is also an emotion!) Not that you should totally ignore rationality, but you should consider the emotional processes involved, because the fundamental balance of the psyche lies between rationality and emotion. But if you are going to assume that emotions are pure humbug, then you have a very good chance in bringing your psyche out of balance and catapult yourself into a one-sided personality.

Here are a few helpful tips on how you could accomplish this:

--> I only accept things that are fact!
--> I only use logic!
--> If you cannot prove it empirically, then it doesnt exist!
--> Irrational aspects have no place in my life!
--> Aspects that cannot be rationally understood have no place in my life!
--> What I do not know as a fact is not important!

If you adopt this attitude, then you will have absolutely no problem in developing your own psychosomatic disturbance. This attitude is so dependable because it guarantees that your sensitive psychic balance will be massively disturbed. This will definitely take place using one of two methods:

--> A person ignores his feelings
or
--> A person ignores the significance of his emotions.

A word about the first case: A person ignores his feelings. In case you decide to settle for this option, then you should try to divert your attention from situations that cause emotions. If you annoy someone, dont think about it. Dont try to think about the person, or what this person did, and dont think about what bothers you about this situation, and for heavens sake dont even think about what you want. Divert your attention! Think about something else that is nice or anything else, but think about something else. Tell yourself, Its no use thinking about that! or Its no use worrying about that! or Dont make such a big deal about it! or Thats not a matter of life and death!"
?
If you get angry, for example, because your repair garage didnt fix your car properly, then you should do the following:

--> Tell yourself that being angry (disappointed) is a useless and disturbing emotion that no one needs.
--> Tell yourself that there is no point getting upset, because there is nothing that can be done about it anyway.
--> Tell yourself, that you shouldnt waste time thinking about it.
--> And distract your attention think about something pleasant think about your work or something along that line.
--> Do not pay attention of what might be going on in your body. Try to concentrate on more important things.

If you get good at this, then you will create the most optimal conditions for contracting an ulcer or some other digestive tract ailment. And you wont have to feel bad about missing a heart attack, because intestinal disorders are very unpleasant, cramp your lifestyle in ways you havent yet imagined, and can be fatal.

Maybe your first attempts to control your anger might be hard, but the more you train, the better you will get at it. In time, you will be able to distract yourself easily from these annoying emotions, and you will get better at ignoring how your body reacts to anger. Keep on trying! Practice makes perfect!

And if, by chance, that you forget to suppress your emotions, then please dont take them seriously. Tell yourself with conviction:

--> Emotions are useless
--> Emotions only bug you
--> You shouldnt give in to your emotions
--> Emotions only distract you from more important things in life

And now to Case 2: A person ignores the meanings of his emotions or doesnt take them seriously. This means, for example, that if you experience anger (intense anger) your anger fails to inform you something very wrong in your life needs correcting. You do not analyze the situation; you do not investigate the source of your anger (namely, your disadvantageous attitude), and you do not correct the situation. This, in turn, causes you to get angry over and over again, up to the point that you contract heart disease.

Dont Spoil Your Chance to Become a Psychosomatic Patient!
Dont make the mistake of considering your emotions as important, or asking yourself why you feel the way you do, or what it all means, or heaven forbid ask yourself the question what you should do about it! Do not follow any advice your own feelings might be giving you: specifically hints about disturbances, such as that you would like to assert yourself, or you would like to defend yourself, or something is definitely gone wrong in your life.

--> If you take your emotions seriously, then you will spoil your chance of ever becoming a psychosomatic patient!

Because the potential to ignore your own emotions is an awesome power if you ignore your feelings, you wont know what is bothering you; you wont know what you want; and you wont know when somethings not right in your life anymore. That means that you wont be notified about fundamental problems in your life anymore: you wont be able to recognize those problems; you wont be able to pinpoint and identify them. If you are no longer able to identify and pinpoint them, you wont be able to resolve them. Although you will find temporary consolation by ignoring your emotions, but in the long run the problems will still be there and this will continue to bother you. The more problems you ignore, the more you conserve your problems. This way, you can pile up an enormous amount of problems on your psyche. Some will be minor, while others will be average size, and yet others will be huge. The sum of all these problems will weigh you down with their dead weight upon your psyche, which in the end means an enormous stress load a stress load, which you have convinced yourself doesnt even exist. And all because youre no longer capable of perceiving problems! In fact, you can combine the creation of new problems very easily with your conviction that you dont have any problems whatsoever. Wow! Now try topping that! (Well, of course, unless youre already psychosomatically sick). Its not hard to see that this is a great tool its the best method to cause stress; elegant and effective and nonchalant. Dont spoil this chance! Ignore your feelings! Block out all of the warning lights on your dashboard! And if you stop taking your car to have it repaired and inspected altogether the next junkyard awaits patiently! But dont forget you can replace your cars motor, but intestinal tissue and heart muscles are hard to get. Big deal! It isnt going to be your heart no way!

The health damage potential contained in ignoring your feelings can only be squeezed to the last drop if you are diligent. If you dont feel well and dont know why, dont ask your feelings why! Tell yourself that if you explore your feelings, this is only going to make things worse. Tell yourself that you will be all right, and that you really have every reason to be happy. Dont be fooled by things like disturbances or disturbing feelings or a sinking feeling in your heart. Emotions are irrelevant! They were always that way and they always will be!

In order to prevent some misunderstandings at this point, I would like to stress these aspects. There are some feelings you can allow yourself, like worry, which, based on the circumstances, is absolutely unavoidable. Worry about:

--> How bad everything has become
--> Everything that you did wrong
--> That its only going to keep getting worse, etc.

This method of dealing with your feelings is the surest way of not finding solutions, yet the best way to increase your stress level. So if you must pay attention to your emotions, worry a lot. But do not, under any circumstances, do the following:

--> Analyze your problems constructively
--> Make some decisions
--> Work on some solutions to your problems
--> Do something to get rid of some of your problems

If you use your emotions for these purposes, then you are going to sabotage your efforts in becoming a psychosomatic patient, and that would be such a shame!

Now you have the basis for developing a psychosomatic disturbance. If you can rig it so that you have other external stress factors, then you should be able to make yourself pretty sick by the end of the year. But I still want to give you a couple more tips you wont want to miss! Youll need them if you want to become an expert psycho.

Bodily Signals

If you really want to develop a quality high-value psychosomatic disturbance, then you cant remain sensitive to your own body. In fact, it would be better if you would ignore all of your body processes altogether. Otherwise you might notice youre being taxed, that you are feeling exhausted, or you might get the impression you have to get away for a couple days. And then you might do something about these signals your body is sending you. You might take a break, not work as hard, take a vacation or take time off to unload your burdens.

This, of course, would be detrimental for a developing psychosomatic disturbance it might actually destroy the breeding grounds for one! For this reason you should avoid these kinds of mistakes if at all possible. You motto should be:

--> Ignore Your Body!

This is another important aspect: do not pay attention to what your body is telling you. Do not concentrate on what you body might be feeling, because then you might become aware of your own needs. Avoid this at all costs! Just tell yourself body signals are physiological bullshit; just a lot of static you should tune out altogether. Ignore it as much as you can. Listen to the radio or drive your car around so you can distract yourself. Of course this also applies to the early warning signs of a psychosomatic illness. You should most definitely ignore these signals.

If you find yourself chronically unhappy and notice that maybe you often feel a pain in your neck, then dont believe that crap about how might be wrong with you. Assume its an organic problem and get a massage or have the doctor give you prescription for painkillers.
?
If you have a talk with your boss, and you start feeling sick, dont ask yourself what this might be and where its coming from. Just tell yourself:

--> Vague feelings dont mean anything!
--> Vague feelings cannot be fathomed!
--> Vague feelings are distracting and disturbing!

Thats why you should ignore your feelings as much as you can!
Many emotional things that need to be worked out often make themselves noticed through bodily signals, such as a squeezing feeling in your chest, cramps in your stomach, tension at your temples, or similar symptoms. Usually these bodily reactions are a result of some important emotional thing you should have been registered, e.g. they mean something, and you should be getting to the bottom of it. The key here though, is you systematically learn to ignore body signals. Make this attitude your own: My body should tell me in a cut and dried message whats wrong with it, and what it wants from. Weird messages will not be accepted!

One of our clients came to therapy and insisted that she paid exact attention to what her body was telling her. After testing her body reactions in a lab, we found out that she could hardly notice anything whatsoever, and it would appear that if she did notice, then it was sheer coincidence. Despite this, she insisted that she knew exactly what was going on in her body. And believe it or not, our lab often produces results which confirmed that what people often think what their bodies are telling them does not correspond to reality.

But there are other helpful attitudes to help foster a psychosomatic disturbance. The best way is to assume that your body is a machine, and it has a job to do. It must function without complaining! And that means, like all machines, it doesnt have the right to complain or make demands; it should just work perfectly all the time! And like all good machines, your body should only require a minimum on maintenance something to eat, something to drink, and a little sleep. It should be able to suffice with this. When your body, despite this, fails to function properly, then you should consider this a temporary dysfunction that will get back to normal all by itself sooner or later. If you start to listen to what your body might be telling you, it will only make things worse. You body will take care of itself, and if nothing else helps, then just swallow a couple aspirin. Okay, maybe you will be forced to spend the day in bed, but that will have to be the exception to the rule!

It will really come in handy in this context, when you start to notice you have severe back pain, and you dont take it seriously. Your body sometimes has the stupid habit of over-reacting. Then it will send you signals that just cant be ignored. It will react with headaches, stomach cramps, diarrhea, infections and swellings. Do not pay any serious attention to these signals! Better yet, assume that your bodys reaction has absolutely nothing to do at all with your own behavior. Blame your headaches on the weather; blame the diarrhea on lousy food; and blame your weakness to catch every cold on the books on that fact that there are more aggressive forms of flu going around these days than there used to be. That will reveal nothing about your life, your behavior, or your problems. You and your body dont have anything to do with each another. This is a very important attitude (and the first step to becoming an advance psychosomatic patient): your body is practically no longer dependent on you; it works on its own without anything to do with you. Why would your body react to lifes burdens, conflicts and problems anyway? Why should the immune system, the vegetative nervous system, or the endocrine system react from something in the psyche? Body and mind are two separate worlds that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Just keep repeating this Descartes myth long enough and you will end up believing it. By the way, this Descartes example is very essential: The soul is something that functions absolutely independently from the body (the brain isnt important at all, its just the house the soul lives in); because the soul can take possession the body, yes, even put bodily functions in their place. The body is just a tiresome cloak for the soul; the souls cage if you will that cant be removed, but at least you can ignore it, if you try.

And just the opposite is true for the body, which functions only according to somatic principles and is not influenced by the psyche. Now that youre making wonderful progress and have already contracted a psychosomatic disturbance, you should keep up the good work and keep ignoring what your body is trying to tell you. Dont let your body dictate things to you! You know youre really good, when you start ignoring the warning signs of encroaching heart disease.

That way, youll be able to ignore the early warning signs of an impending heart attack. Thats why you should keep telling yourself: Its not really that bad! Chest pain goes away again (Yeah, right! It goes away just after you die); I just need to sit down for a minute (!) and rest. Your insurance company and the government will thank you, because it just means one invalid less to pay for.

Cases and Effects

The above-mentioned attitude is very helpful for fostering psychosomatic disturbances, and these attitudes will be reinforced by particular bodily reaction characteristics, which make it difficult to recognize the so-called contingencies. A contingency is the simultaneous intersection of a cause and an effect. If the effect rapidly follows a cause, then its relatively easy to determine a cause, but if the effect takes place at a much later point in time, then it is more difficult to determine a cause.

Some bodily functions react relatively slow, for example the digestive tract or the immune system. Stress factors will not immediately cause a reaction they require more time. For example, if I fight with my spouse today, I might have diarrhea the day after tomorrow. If I am under pressure now, it could be that my immune system is weak enough to catch cold days later. Normally most people cannot connect events that dont directly coincide. That means direct cause and effect is a clear connection, but a direct cause and delayed effect is not so clear. This gets worse if you are well-trained in ignoring problems altogether, or assuming you dont really have any. Thats why almost all psychosomatics insist, My bodily reactions have absolutely nothing to do with stress. I dont have diarrhea when Im under stress I usually have it on the weekend or late at night, when Im not under pressure. So these reactions have absolutely nothing to do with stress. The missing contingency between stress and reaction is therefore used as evidence that psychic aspects have absolutely no effect on the human body, so why should you waste time thinking about psychic factors?
?
If you believe that, well thats just great! The fact that bodily reactions actually occur when youre not under pressure is proof your bodily reactions dont have anything to do with your psyche. If you really believe that, then youll never get the bright idea that your body is trying to tell you something. This will, of course, help you to ignore your bodys warning signs. But youre a resolute patient and thats what counts when youre doing your best to foster a psychosomatic illness.

Pay Attention to Stress Factors

It is very important for you to ignore everything that stresses you out, puts you under pressure, or makes you nervous. This isnt as hard to accomplish as it sounds. Most of lifes burdens, when you scrutinize them, are minute. The dumb thing about them, though, is that they accumulate. That means they pile up and work as a total dead weight on your psyche. Sometimes individual stress factors are quite minor:

--> Arguing with your spouse at the breakfast table
--> Being caught in a traffic jam
--> Searching for a parking space, when there isnt one available
--> Having a quarrel with a colleague at work
--> Getting reprimanded by your boss
--> Somebody giving you more work, when you are already up to your ears in assignments
--> Bitchy customers you have to deal with, etc.

All of these factors together create a larger stress factor than you imagine, because its the sum of their load that weighs down on your psyche. If you look at the individual problems that seem petty, you can come to the conclusion, Hey, stop pulling my leg! You cant get sick from that! And thats why professional psychosomatics have the patented expressions up their sleeves, such as:

--> I dont have any stress problems
--> I dont have any more stress than anyone else does
--> That kind of stress is just a part of normal day-to-day life

They forget that just like in the Agatha Christie novel, Arsenic and Old Lace, its the little daily toxic dosages that eventually poison the victim the total burden of accumulated stress.

There is, of course, still one other pretty disastrous mechanism. The human body can adapt itself to lifes load of stress. A fairly common example is like what happens when you move into a house or an apartment located on a street thats much louder than where you used to live. The first couple of nights you cant sleep, but after a while you get used to it, and pretty soon you dont even notice it at all.

The human body adjusts itself to the new stress load and no longer consciously considers this noise as a stress factor: you just dont notice it anymore. This lets many psychosomatics believe they arent under stress whatsoever. This is a very important human error, which helps foster psychosomatic illness immensely, because just the opposite is true. The body reacts just the same to this stress load, whether you notice it or not (proven in psychological sleep laboratories). The only thing thats different is that you dont register it anymore. This is great, when you dont even notice your stress load anymore, because then you wont do anything about it. Youll be making sure your stress load is always full, and will continue to pile it up. Thats why you should never believe it when a psychosomatic patient tells you he doesnt have any stress. Whats true in his statement is that he no longer notices it.

This is a big hint for you! Believe that your body and mind will get used to the stress load surrounding you. Believe yourself, when you tell yourself, that you dont have a stress problem. Never waste time thinking you might have a stress problem, and dont analyze your environment to see if there arent really some hidden stress sources lurking in the background. That would absolutely ruin your chances of contracting a psychosomatic illness.

This mechanism is very helpful, because it convinces you, you dont need any help in analyzing your stress load. This way, you will never get the bright idea that maybe you should visit a qualified psychologist. And thats great! Because he might be able to help you deal with your stress load, and that would be the end of your psychosomatic career!

Paying Attention to Exhaustion

Good psychosomatics learn to ignore a body signal known as exhaustion. Exhaustion has a number of characteristics that can be observed: tiredness, getting tired easily, restlessness, concentration weakness, listlessness, grumpiness, problems getting asleep, etc. Generally you could accept all of these signals as a sign that you should slow down take a day off, or go on vacation or reduce your stress load, etc. But these things wont help you, if youre trying to foster a psychosomatic illness. Thats why you should always ignore the signs of exhaustion. Tell yourself it isnt all that bad, and convince yourself there are no limits to your energy, that you are invincible (this is a very important attitude), that this feeling will eventually go away, that you already took an hour off, that a glass of red wine will bring you back on your feet! Not reacting to exhaustion is very important when it comes to exceeding your stress limits, so you should just play down the laws of creation! Dont take it seriously! Make the most out of yourself! Workaholics know no pain! Crawl to work on your knees if you have to, but go! For heavens sake dont let your body dictate to you what to do! This kind of advice is just what a psychosomatic candidate needs!

If your body wont hold up to the constant stress load and starts to react with a psychosomatic illness, then its helpful for you to ignore this (last) warning signal your body is sending you. Please dont believe that body reactions have anything to do with psychic processes in your mind. After all, you dont take those freaks seriously, who claim they have a psychosomatic disturbance, do you? You can rest assured you dont have any problems or at least you dont have any more problems than anyone else does, or any more problems than your colleagues do, who dont have psychosomatic disturbances. There is nothing wrong with your situation, so why bother with it? Convince yourself your illness has somatic causes. Just see your regular doctor, but dont bother with one of those quack psychologists or take up therapy. There are pills that solve those little inconveniencies in life, and if you must, go to the hospital twice a year and let specialists continue to perform endless lab tests on you. Better yet, do everything you can to make your disease chronic. Because if you treat a disease somatically thats caused by psychic processes, then thats just like looking for your keys on the table under the lamp, when in reality, they have fallen under the couch. You are treating the symptoms of a disease and not treating the causes. And in the long run, you wont be getting any better. Oh, sure, the disease will be alleviated a little bit, and maybe it might even go away for a while, but it will never be gone. The fundamental principle for the development of such a disease is that you do everything in your power, to retain that disease! Hey, keep up the good work!

Keep a Stiff Upper Lip!

One of the most important aspects to constantly ignore your feelings and body signals is to keep at it keep a stiff upper lip. Dont let little things like exhaustion, miserable feelings or illness keep you from your duties, your work, or whatever it is that you feel compelled that you must do!

--> Here are a few practical tips:

If you have a cold, and really belong in bed, dont let anyone keep you from dragging yourself into the office (not even your spouse) and fighting your way through the day! Tell yourself the others cant get their work done without you, or when youre not there nothing will be accomplished. Convince yourself youre not going to let a silly old cold keep you home. In addition to this, you should try to convince yourself youre like Superman and you can take it. Youre tough, and your body can take anything Mother Nature slings your way!

Even if you have already contracted the symptoms of a psychosomatic illness, dont let this get you down. Duty calls! You cant afford to let anyone down. The pain isnt really all that bad stop being such a wimp!

Its very important for you to follow this advice, because that not only prevents you from turning into a wimp; it also prevents you from recovering from your psychosomatic illness.

The attitude, I have to keep a stiff upper lip can be combined well with the motto, Nothing can faze this body of mine. That way you will convince yourself you really are Superman or Superwoman: body of Steel, your intestinal track is made of non-destructible asbestos; your heart tissue is made of silicon-coated titanium. This over-exaggerated assessment of your abilities is the perfect breeding ground to continuously overload your body with stress. If your psyche had a gauge on it, it would constantly be in the danger-overload zone.

But because you have tossed all of your safety gauges out the window, you wont even notice it. This is the kind of advice you would give someone who wants to blow a gasket on his car: dont add or change the oil; dont take it to inspection; dont add or check the cooling water; ignore all of the warning lights, and drive it as fast as you possibly can!

If this kind of advice sounds weird just think of everything you will gain:

--> You will be able to move mountains (at least for a while)
--> You will exceed the limits of your body (temporarily)
--> You wont have to show consideration for yourself (until you collapse)

Hey, isnt that a great feeling? You have gone beyond the limits of your body! Too bad your body will have to pay the price for this mistake.