Ten: Benefit Finding

Reactions to a difficult medical diagnosis are fraught with extreme distress.  Especially in the beginning, worry over coping with the mental and emotional anguish can be just as bad as coping with the illness. 

An early, fairly automatic response to bad news about your health is to grieve.  You feel loss, of the perception of the person you once were.  This feeling passes.  Then it’s necessary to develop coping methods for what lies ahead.  One that is a form of self-encouragement is benefit finding. 

As you learn to accept a new normal that may include medical treatments, medicines, and a reliance on the medical community, benefit finding, which is the acknowledgment of any and all positives in the face of adversity, fosters positive emotional adjustment.  An example is, if you comply with taking meds, you will proceed to improvement.  Another is, if you find out as much as possible about the condition you have, you may take more charge over your symptom control.  

A caveat (warning) in using this coping method is, the benefit finding should be self-directed.  Other people in your life want to help.  However, their ideas of the positives can burden you because they want you to give ready agreement when you are not at the right mental and emotional place to do so.  The pressure to ‘cheer up and see the bright side’ can cause more distress.  Patience is very important. 

Benefit finding is an effective resource for adapting to illness, and is a mental defense against negative emotion.  As benefit finding buffers you from adverse experiences and negative emotional episodes, you develop a sense of meaning and self-worth.  If becoming ill steals your sense of dignity during periods of stress and tumultuous anxiety, benefit finding restores it.  

The outcome of this process is to become accommodated to your particular situation, and to build new life goals and priorities.  The positive mood this engenders enables you to engage in creative problem solving.  You become a better manager over your illness.  Benefit finding works best when it is used in compliance with your own terms and needs, at your own rate of progress. You learn that you can help yourself.

 As we think, so it shall be.

Happiness