When Friends Are Sick: A Psychological Angle

I’m at a stage in life where of course friends get sick. This was not the case before. People I knew were hospitalized, yes, of course, during the AIDS epidemic, which called for a personal and political response from friends. Otherwise, hospitalization was a rare occurrence, such as when my then-40-year-old husband’s tumor burst during an economic conference in the Russian desert. Now illness is a normal part of my life friendship network weekly news: Who was diagnosed with what? Who gets chronic disease? Who is deprived? The disease is so ingrained in our social life that I and my peers are taking the course no matter who it is. we when friends get sick. The answer seems surprisingly complex.

The disease is emotionally demanding. It just is – for some people more than others. Where one person can take it in their stride, others react strongly, sometimes irrationally. This is true even when we are sick ourselves. But at least our actions don’t affect other people who feel very vulnerable. Even among those who can readily respond to a friend’s weakness, care the methods can vary greatly, from sending flowers to making soup, or from taking a friend to treatment to inviting them to get well in a hospital bed in your living room. Two of my friends did this for a third friend and moved him into his 3 bedroom/one bath apartment. They are lucky people who are free from illness. But I’ve noticed that other people aren’t, which sometimes includes myself.

In my experience, most people expect to respond with love and care, but when the time comes, some withdraw from the friendship altogether or unknowingly burden the patient with their own discomfort rather than help. This is where the psychological component comes in, and this is where the distinction between response and reaction to illness is important.

Responsiveness is a conscious and emotionally regulated opening of the heart to another’s distress. On the other hand, a reaction occurs when you provoke your friend’s illness unconscious and often disproportionate feeling. It may be very upsetting to see your friend helpless or scared. It could be human sadness, angeror fear feels very bad about their friend’s illness. Maybe they can’t handle losing that friend or they can’t face death. Instead, they disappear when your friend needs you. At the other end of the reactivity spectrum are friends who try to take control, offering unsolicited medical advice, telling the patient to see this doctor or take this potion. This is to make sure that the disease does not occur they they may say that the sick person should exercise more or take certain supplements, implying that it is their fault that they are sick. What happened to all this? How does reactivity undermine our love for our friends?

Illness seems like a microcosm in which we can observe the unconscious at work. Not only do we have to deal with the practicalities of our friend being sick, but we also deal with our unconscious feelings about the illness. To understand these feelings, we need to consider the fact that we ourselves get sick. I get depressed when I’m sick, even if I have a cold. As my friend Catherine says, I feel like I’ve lost my wings. Illness scares me. OK, I’ve had some bad experiences with the disease, starting with watching my father die at a young age. If I am aware of this, I can avoid this depressing point of view to my friends. When I’m sick, I can fight alone. But when my friends are sick, I have to respond, not react, it means understanding their experiencing the disease allows them to show me how to deal with it. I have to listen carefully. I have to empathize.

When my friend’s husband became seriously ill, he didn’t need the practical help or emotional support I wanted. Taking care of practical things strengthens his strength and power. Emotionally, he feels strong, sad moments, but does not deviate depression, panicor insomnia. When I resisted letting him know my needs (or felt bad because he politely refused my soup), I learned what it was like to listen. she is need He needed an eyewitness to his experiences, who could describe his day. Another friend of mine, who is high-spirited but almost immobilized by a chronic illness, prefers to live a somewhat normal life with me—eating, books and movies, talking about his interests and mine, as if nothing terrible had happened in his life. As if we were just ourselves. And during this time we spend together, we.

Both my friends and I laugh about the crazy reactions the disease has provoked, like when someone tells them a relative was diagnosed with the same thing and died two months later. Apparently, this is a lot. Or your friend says, “I know you’ll be fine to feel u.” As if this matter should be resolved.

It’s hard when friends get sick. We want them to be good, to be happy, to be who they are, so that the friendship will be the same as before. Change is disruptive. Illness is often greater with the suffering, loss, and helplessness that accompany it. At the very least, we can use our awareness of the psychological angle to “do no harm” as doctors promise. Maybe we’ll even be among the lucky ones to be with our friends in that uncharted territory of disease.