In order to put together your personal treatment program in a way that will move you closer to inner readiness to heal and position, you to have an extraordinary healing response to the package of care you assemble. Your healing response depends upon what is in your dynamics and how stuck you are when dealing with a chronic disease.
The Disease Stuckness Quiz – What’s in Your Dynamics?
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 = not true for me, and 5 = very true for me, rate yourself for each item below. Add up your scores when you are done.
1. I have had a chronic disease from early in life (before my mid-life years). ____
2. My biological parents and grandparents were sick with serious diseases much of their lives. ____
3. I am the kind of person who stays in an intimate relationship or a close friendship with someone even when it no longer nurtures me. ____
4. I find myself in repetitive patterns in at least one area of my life that seem to end badly for me again and again. ____
5. The kind of chronic disease(s) that I have developed affects my brain or nervous system, or another major organ. ____
6. I rarely catch colds or flu. ____
7. I must take at least one prescription drug regularly. ____
8. I feel that my life is in a rut. ____
9. It is hard for me to bounce back from setbacks or big changes in my life. ____
10. I have to stay in my current job for the money, the benefits, and/or the security.____
11. I need to do certain things as much as I can or I do not feel well (e.g., exercise, control my eating, swallow my anger – or vent my anger, get out – or stay home – more). ____
12. I should work harder – or, its opposite – I should take it easier. ____
TOTAL DISEASE STUCKNESS SCORE ____
The maximum score is 60. A score above 36 suggests significant amounts of stuckness. The higher your score, the more stuck you are likely to be in your chronic disease – and your life, of which the mental, emotional, or physical disease is one major manifestation.
Feeling a need or having to do – or not do – something most of the time limits your freedom. A lower disease stuckness score suggests that the right individualized treatments will move you along more readily and perhaps faster than someone with a higher score.
Do not despair, however – you can usually get unstuck no matter how high your score, unless you are in your final moments of this life. A higher score simply means that it may take more time and persistence from you to get free and stay free of your disease rut. And even when cure is not possible, people can and do heal, especially in their final moments of life.
Use your Disease Stuckness Quiz score as a general guide: (a) to help you set up the extent of your treatment program. The higher your score, the more likely it is that you will need a full program at multiple levels of the system to get yourself unstuck and sustain you in making lasting changes to heal. With a lower score, a simpler program with one modality may be sufficient; (b) to prepare you for how long it might take to see significant change.
The higher your score, the more likely it is that you will want to give each treatment option and yourself a longer period of time to heal, e.g., perhaps on the order of a year or more. With a lower score, the simpler program may produce good results in only a few months.