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Why Are There Different Terms Used for Describing Illness?
Illness is a generalized term used to identify the body’s not feeling well, meaning it’s feeling ill. The term doesn’t explain what’s causing it to feel sick or define to what extent the body’s health and well-being are being compromised. Since the term illness is so broad in its implications, allopathic medicine has created different terms to identify conditions that cause illness specifically. These terms also take into consideration specific symptoms that are associated with a condition.
To offer an expanded perception of these terms, I’ve also included the metaphysician definition of the terms. They’re in italics.
Illness: Illness is a sickness that causes an unhealthy condition of the body and the mind. Medicine defines it as an overall sense of unhealthiness for a prolonged period. It sees the primary cause of illness as being germs, viruses, bacteria, and infections that can cause disease. However, while illness can accompany a disease, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the source of the disease.
The initial goal of medicine is to diagnose. Once an illness is classified as a disease, medicine focuses on curing the disease. Medicine tends to move away from trying to understand the illness’s source or explaining its often random and idiopathic symptoms. Medicine sees illness as something to manage, valid for fatigue, pain, weakness, discomfort, stress, distress, and chronic complaints.
Illness: The metaphysician perspective of illness is that it’s a breakdown in wholeness. A breakdown begins as an energetic disturbance and ultimately creates an energetic obstruction between the four aspects of our well-being: mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual. For this explanation, spiritual refers to the connection with the soul.
This perspective sees illness more as the result of prolonged suffering. Suffering is caused by natural forces, supernatural forces, interpersonal factors, emotional factors, mental factors, mental derangement due to entity possessions, and soul loss. The metaphysician sees illness as negative internal states stemming possibly from isolation, the lack of connection with life, a prolonged state of stress, physical abuse, emotional trauma, or the loss of the will to live. Therefore, their approach to healing would seek to free a person from their suffering.
This perspective also sees illness more as a metaphor and uses the term illness to explain to a person why they’re experiencing ill health. They would let them know that illness develops as the result of ill thoughts, causing the body to feel out-of-sorts with itself. They would share that illness is as much of an attitudinal perception a person has of themselves and would then use that information when approaching the healing process—an example. A person who’s chronically unhappy or who feels unfilled in their life has a higher propensity for developing illnesses associated with the thyroid, stomach, pancreas, and immune system.
The metaphysician understands there are three distinctive qualities of illness:
- Negative internal states. Such states create victim consciousness, mental confusion, and feelings of being emotionally immobilized to make the changes needed to restore good health.
- Chronic fear creates anxiety and depression, which erodes good health.
- Soul disconnection. The person has lost the will to live.
The most common term in medicine to describe illness and its related conditions is disease.
Disease: A specific condition affecting a particular part of the body’s structure and function. Disease occurs when the cells in the body are damaged. Cancer is a disease. This term identifies the cause of the disease, if known, and the common characteristic symptoms associated with the disease. According to medicine’s way of thinking, disease is a physical breakdown that needs to be fixed and cured. The term doesn’t consider if there are psychological contributors causing the disease, which is the approach to healing.
Disease: Disease is disharmony in the energy body that causes a disease or tension between the energy body and the physical body. According to the metaphysician’s way of thinking, the disease isn’t a physical breakdown but rather an energetic collapse, meaning the origin cause of the disease can be found mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. To their way of thinking, once the collapse is identified, as well as the origin site of the collapse, then the appropriate vibrational healing therapies can be administered. The metaphysician doesn’t seek to cure. They aim to restore harmony between the energy and physical bodies, supporting the body’s ability to heal naturally.
Condition: Condition is a generalized term used to describe a compromised state of physical and mental well-being.
Condition: This term is used to describe the status of the functioning of the charka system, the physical body, the energy body, and the mental and emotional states. When all are in good condition, interacting and supporting each other, good health is experienced. If anyone isn’t in good condition, all will experience ill health.
Condition is also a term used to categorize a variety of afflictions and ailments related to a specific condition. An example is a skin condition. Under that category, there are more than 3000 different conditions related to the skin. The metaphysician, rather than considering 3000 different skin conditions, understands that skin is the physical characteristic of the soul. They recognize that a skin condition is the soul’s way of bringing to the surface the presence of ill thoughts and destructive emotional patterns that can potentially cause harm to the physical body. Therefore, the metaphysician uses healing techniques such as Reiki and Shamanistic techniques such as Soul Retrieval to energetically re-join the soul and the physical body. They’ll also use sound therapy to restore balance and harmony to the chakra system, where all illness and disease begins.
Affliction: A state of physical pain, discomfort, distress, or agony. An affliction is where a part of the body is misshapen or malformed. An affliction can occur as a result of an injury.
Affliction: A mental condition due to distorted negative ill thoughts. The afflicted thoughts cause uneasiness, restlessness, psychological disassociation, and pain. Afflictions weaken the spiritual connection between the mind, body, and the soul. They can lead to a separation from the spiritual nature of self. A person can have mental afflictions and not be sick or have a physical condition.
Ailment: A body disorder or chronic disease such as a stomach ailment. An unsettledness and discomfort. Any minor condition that tends to linger. Though a common term to describe an illness, it’s no longer used in the medical profession.
Aliment: An emotional state of discontentment due to prolonged emotional distress, sadness, dread, despair, sorrow, self-loathing, and grief. An ailment is a condition that negatively affects a person’s perception of themselves and their outlook on life. The metaphysician sees depression, anxiety, eating disorders, hopelessness, emotional breakdown, and the loss of will to live as ailments. Emotional trauma, such as PTSD, is also considered an ailment.
Disorder: A disruption, irregularity, or interruption in the systemic functioning of the physical body. It’s a generalized term for a condition where there are multiple contributors, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, which involves the immune system, the skeletal system, and the digestive system. A disorder may lead to a disease, but unlike a disease, there isn’t only one single cause. Genetic factors, trauma, and stress can also cause disorders. A disorder can be defined as a set of problems resulting in the loss of physical vitality, mental distress, emotional suffering and that inhibit the body’s ability to perform the daily functions of life.
Disorder: A combination of mental conditions causing emotional distress and physical breakdown. The combination of these factors is causing a state of disarray in the vibrational frequencies of the chakra system and the energy body, thus affecting the functioning of the physical body. In the case of an autoimmune disorder, this state of vibrational disarray can cause the immune system to attack the body rather than protect it. A disorder sends mixed vibrational signals that can cause multiple body parts to lose their ability to function in a supportive, consistent manner.
Syndrome: A syndrome is a recognizable complex of symptoms and physical findings that indicate a specific condition for which a direct cause isn’t necessarily understood.
Syndrome: A syndrome indicates that multiple chakras are simultaneously out of balance due to a single condition or a set of related causes. Therefore, it disrupts the entire chakra system’s ability to maintain a state of vibrational soundness in the energy body and homeostasis in the physical body. As the individual chakras are energetically connected with specific endocrine glands and organs, the metaphysician must determine which ones are involved. Once known, then the metaphysician works with each chakra to restore its healthy vibrational frequency. The process of working with each chakra is called chakra balancing.
