-
How “Healthist” Are We?
My column this week is about something that might seem a little bogus: Being healthist.
I first read about it in a lovely article on Self.com called “We Have To Stop Thinking of Being Healthy as Being Morally Superior“, even though the term was coined in 1980 by Robert Crawford.
In short, it’s basically another form of “ism” in terms of judging someone else for something they can’t control or were born into. Just like sexism, ageism, racism and beyond: healthism is a way to separate yourself from another, and cast assumptions or accusations about something you might not fully understand.
I am VERY guilty of this in the past, sadly… and I have no doubt we all are at one point or another.
Often, healthism is seen when strangers comment on someone’s healthy habits online (sometimes a form of sizeism too), or whenever we assume another has equal access to the same healthcare and healthy living options we do. For myself, the latter hits hardest. Any time another person assumes I have access to certain foods, medications or supplies, without knowing my full story, it makes me feel defensive because… well, if I could live in #healthylifestyle world all the time I would! I try, but I am not always perfect.
Have you ever faced healthism before?
Meaning, have you ever felt like your economic, social or physical status in life has caused unfair blame from someone else, perhaps because they believe you should be “healthy” in a different way?
I feel like this hits CF patients in different ways from different sources, so I’d love to know your experiences if willing to share!
-
4 Replies
-
I just shared a little bit on Instagram about a conversation I had a few weeks ago. During this conversation, I was told that coronavirus is a “weak virus that only attacks weak people” and that if a person isn’t healthy enough to survive this pandemic, it’s due to their own health choices. To me, this translates to: if a person contracts and dies from COVID-19, it’s their own fault.
Similarly, a few years ago, an Alabama congressman said that “people who live good lives” don’t have pre-existing conditions. I guess he’s never heard of genetic diseases or, y’know, had any kind of health issue himself.
The healthism I’ve faced most often is the kind where people believe that health is a virtue and illness is a moral failing. I’ve been told (by strangers online and by people I dearly love) that my health challenges are a direct result of choices I’ve made or failed to make regarding my health.
-
You are right, healthism is a way of separation and judging – but the opposite of it also is that and they can only occur together. I think healthism is a wrong identification with health, as illism is a wrong identification with the absence of it. Both positions are false. Thinking of yourself or other people as being healthy or ill is the start of a lot of trouble you get into when you have to defend your position. No one is either perfectly healthy or completely ill. Every one is somewhere in the spectrum between those extremes and is constantly moving in between, not even conscious of it mostly. The body is alive and complex, not to be defined with simple concepts as health or illness. Things and life are just happening all the time according to circumstances inside/outside the body (really the body is both inside and outside all the time). Life is diverse, that’s how it thrives.
So looking closely at it, health nor illness exists. It is our mind that makes it appear that way by setting up what we like against what we dislike, and it is mistaken in that. The body functions in a certain way which is different for all of us, no need to label it with words like healthy or ill, that just confuses the truth. There is nothing to gain in that process. I don’t see or experience myself as either ill or healthy. My body simply functions in its own best way, that’s all there is to it. It is a bloody miracle every way I look at it. Who am I to call it anything? It is good nor bad, healthy nor ill. And the same goes for every one. Any other qualification would not be true and a complete misapprehension of reality.
Just be, don’t compare, compete or confuse. Comply to what is, you are it anyway and resistance is futile. Thinking of yourself or others in terms of bodily (dis)functions is so very immature and ignorant. We are sooo much more, please wake up to that. When do we get over this? (sigh)
-
Paul, I know your comment was in response to Bailey, but she’s not here today, so I’ll jump in. (She may respond later as well.) I want to say that in my best moments, I can accept all that is and push aside the things that don’t matter. Unfortunately, I’m not always the best version of myself.
I think it’s important to remember that this is a CF forum where we come to share stories, thoughts, experiences, triumphs, and struggles. CF affects our individual lives and experiences in a variety of ways. I find it helpful and cathartic to talk about those things, and this is a place designed for that exact purpose!
You say resistance is futile, and I agree that it is. Deep down, I know that. However, resistance is also a natural human tendency. I sincerely commend you for being able to transcend many of the difficult aspects of this disease (and life in general) but I must admit that I’ve not yet found a way to do that all the time.
Please be patient with us as we continue discussing and finding ways to work through some of these things. Your opinion is always welcome and I’ve found so much value in your words. But as we each share our thoughts, I hope we can be mindful and respectful of the multitude of ways in which we deal with the impacts of CF.
-
The Lion’s Den
Hi Jenny, thanks for your great reply. I always try to point to that which is beyond the person who struggles, tells stories, identifies with his/her experiences. Beyond the individual. In doing that, being (a) patient is not a solution, it is feeding the problem because it allows for time to “reach” the process of just being, and time is not only not needed, it postpones the solution – until you run out of it and it is too late. The person says: I need time, be patient with me. Whilst all that time, there is the timeless being that just is. You don’t need time to become that, you are already that.
It is not about being some version of yourself, a role you can slip into every now and then when a comfortable experience allows it, it doesn’t need improving on, there is nothing to push aside, it is effortless, it is no state. Talking about the experience of being a person/patient might feel cathartic momentarily, but it does not really help in the long run, it only temporarily seems to alleviate the symptoms and then they come back, there is no going beyond in that, no growing even. I know it is what the person does, so I am pointing to this mechanism because seeing it is the first step of going beyond it.
I realize very well that this CF forum in a way is like the “Lion’s Den” for this message to voice. On the other hand, contrast is what creates visibility. And it is not about the value of the words per se but about that which they point to. It is not for the person/mind directly, but indirectly I am sure there will be some resonance on the level beyond. For that to happen, the message needs to be clear, immediate and without compromise. There is enough confusion going on at the person-level. Sure, the person/ego/mind will resist, asking for time, mindfulness, respect – that is how it survives. But it is only trying to escape the in-escapable, which is understandable but nevertheless needs to be exposed. I also realize that no matter what I point to, the person will still think it needs time. Until it doesn’t. So be it, this is all included in the play of life. Life is totally free; it can be immediate but it can also play for time. There is nothing innately wrong with either of these possibilities, but only the first leads to freedom and true happiness, and the latter is an uncomfortable contraction.
Still, you seem to be getting the other message very well when you say: “Deep down I know”. It is just an infinitely small step from this to “Deep down I am” and it takes no time at all, needs no patience. So despite you denying it, you already know the way to transcend the difficulties that are being talked about in this forum: it is going down deeply and reside there. Only just knowing it will not do. If you want to live in Rome, visiting it once a year on a holiday will not make you a resident. You will have to move for that. Putting it into practice is the only way, disregarding and not believing the tendency of resistance and mostly all of the tendencies and tricks that the person has up his sleeve. It is only when you do that, you will discover that Rome is all there is and ever was, and you don’t need to move an inch. You are Rome. What a beautiful contradiction.
By calling these tendencies like resistance “human”, you are correct if you mean “that is what the person does and lives by”. But I have no doubt that they are not natural at all and are the source of our dis-ease and unhappiness. Nature does not resist, just look around. You will not find any plant or animal resisting anything ever. Not a single molecule even. Nature always complies. That is why it is perfect and timeless. Only the human condition forces us to be at odds with What Is almost all the time, making up stories, labelling, praising, modelling and rejecting almost everything that we experience, thus separating us from reality. Calling that natural, and accepting it as a normal human tendency is what creates the limited experience of the person, with its need for catharsis, stories etc. Going beyond that is the only way.
The last paragraph of my previous post perhaps sounded a little impatient. It just came out that way and it will have its resonance to. Perhaps it already has, and prompted your answer. Please understand I seem only impatient to the person, not with who you and I and all of us really are. As said, patience is only helping the person survive and that is contrary to what I am pointing to.
Namaste,
Paul
Log in to reply.