Suffering and Healing

Question 1

What is Younger’s (1995) take on the personal dimensions of suffering?

Answer 1

The primary experience of suffering is alienation in three phases:
- You become alienated from yourself even hatred
- Alienated from others (rips aside the social self, need to speak, unsure of reception
- Makes strangers out of those you know well (an insight into foreign territory)

Question 2

Define Cassell (2004) version of suffering?

Answer 2

From Cassell (2004) suffering is a state of distress brought about by an actual or perceived threat to the integrity or continued existence of the whole person ie body/self which includes cultural and social dimensions

Question 3

Why are pain and suffering not the same?

Answer 3

• When pain has a purpose the it is not suffering and this requires no healing - it it not something we avoid.
• It is only when pain serves no useful purpose and appears to be unending then we suffer, become demoralised, and seek relief.
• The deeper meanings mark the pathway from suffering towards healing because within the deepest experiences of suffering there is also hope - the task of healing is to find this pathway outwards

Question 4

What is Younger’s (1995) take on the healing of suffering?

Answer 4

If we can find some way to regain our voice this is the basis of mastery of suffering. In regaining a voice this is where the role of narrative can appear.
The regaining of voice has three phases:
- mute suffering
- expressive suffering (the narrative)
- finding an authentic voice

Narratives help with healing: choice is often associated with suffering, quest and witness narratives help us move forward, restitution helps with curing.

Jaye 1998: Healing relates to notions of transformation, restoration, resolution, being made whole

Question 5

Can healing occur in biomedicine?

Answer 5

Healing in biomedicine sometimes refers to resolving emotional difficulties
Biomedical healing can occur in a very muted spiritual sense - it is possible in a secular environment to be religious
- Curing is about returning to what used to be, whereas healing is finding a new way to be (and coming to terms with it, healing goes beyond curing most of the time)

Question 6

What aspects that helped with healing were identified in the Liggins reading?

Answer 6

Making sound or whole, journeying both forwards and backwards, hard work and transformation, connection, finding meaning, transcending suffering, blooming and contentment, exploration, gaining wisdom