Psychological complaints
Psychological Aspects – Moral Support – Attention to Meaning
From the moment someone learns they have a life-threatening illness, their world changes, and they live in uncertainty about their future. How will the disease progress? What will its impact be on their quality of life? How long do they have left to live? What awaits them?
A person experiences themselves as a whole. Negative thoughts, feelings, or moods can trigger physical sensations of pain or fatigue, and vice versa. Moreover, no one lives alone. An illness always affects multiple people in different ways. Not only the sick person, but also their loved ones are forced to adapt to new, uncertain, and sometimes painful living conditions.
Good medical and nursing care ensures a patient optimal physical comfort and minimal pain and discomfort. However, the psychological and existential suffering resulting from a serious illness and a possible impending death cannot be solved or eliminated, even with the best medicines. Being able to express and name this suffering does make it more bearable.
Some people believe that dealing with existential questions is a matter of feeling and too personal to be addressed within a care framework. Facing and processing your own mortality, or the mortality of someone you love, is excruciatingly difficult. You could certainly use some help with that.
Finding meaning in life concerns things that are close to our hearts in everyday life, such as the desire to be loved and to be a good parent, partner, child, or human being. Questions of meaning touch upon the very essence of life, and thus, confronted with the "pain of being," we can sometimes feel deeply powerless.
No one is a blank slate. Personal life history, including one's philosophical or religious background, largely determines what one expects from life and how one copes with it. No two people experience illness in the same way. But everyone longs to be accepted and respected as a person, right up to the end. Existential loneliness weighs heavily. To feel any sense of well-being, people need connection with someone or something outside themselves.
Questions about meaning are often hidden behind other questions. For many people, it's easier to express physical pain and discomfort than, for example, "I'm scared, don't leave me alone." Concern for loved ones or fear of rejection can also prevent people from expressing their feelings.
Specific attention and care for the patient's inner world can contribute to their comfort and well-being. And this has a positive impact on those around them. Being able to express every thought and feeling with confidence and safety, to a stranger who isn't part of your story, but who genuinely listens and strives to understand, can be a very liberating and beneficial experience. It's not without reason that people say that by telling their story, they find their way back. Existential or spiritual care is more about "being there" than about "doing." It involves a special form of closeness, in which the caregiver is primarily interested and concerned with the other person's inner self.
Facts cannot be changed, but the meaning one assigns to them and the way one deals with them is something one can work on. Looking at oneself and life differently can be healing. It can evoke a sense of well-being through suffering and create new possibilities for reconciliation with oneself and what one is.
Meaning and philosophy of life are closely linked. Each belief has its own moral code, specific symbols, customs, and rituals. In their faith or philosophy of life, a person finds the "keys" to dealing with life, death, and dying.
Mental health care providers are also there to reflect on what is happening together with the patient and his/her family, and to support them in searching and making choices that suit them.
Corinne Assenheimer Liberal Moral Consultant
