Wow! You must have had a fantastic past! LOL! I think you need a new
counselor. And maybe if you had laughed at the time it would have waked
him/her up. That's really depressing.(LOL!) Stick with this bunch and
you'll get better support even with cabin fever and those flare-ups.

A good week-end to you and thanks for the laugh, Rhonda. :-)

Bud

I wish you had laughed really hard!  She needs some waking up!  I think I'd
have a serious talk with her on the next visit about auto-immune illnesses
and be prepared to change counselors if she sticks to the opinion expressed
above!

Hi Rhonda

Oh if it were only that's simple :-)) we would all deal with our past and be
free of pain and flares etc.

Keep on this group and you will never have to see a counsellor again, some
of the best are right here.

Susan.

Hi Rhonda,,     Like any well told lie,  there has to be some truth in it.
No one that is an RD will make the statement your counselor did.
    Stress, depression both have influene on what a persons immune system
is doing.   When those problems have been taken care of,,,, you could very
well go into remission or your inflam.arth could very well improve a great
deal.
   It is a sad truth that how something is said could have a great deal to
do with how the information is received and it could be just as right as
rain as they say.
   I want you to accept what your counselor has said and make every effort
to handle stress and depression which is something a person can do to help
themself.   I say this knowing that you and I cannot handle our immune
system in the same way and that we need help with that sometimes by people
know what they are doing in that field.
   I am so glad that you have brought this to the newsgroup and to me it is
a sign that you may well be on the road to not having a problem with stress
and depression in the same way.   We can not control all the things that
enter our lives and it is human to react to them.
It is also human to want help the people you care about and being a part of
this newsgroup,,,, you know you are cared for.

Harv

past my RA and Lupus will disappear. What do you think about this?<<

Rhonda-
I was told once to "give up my sin" and I would be healed of RA, OA, Sjs,
etc.  Jan O'

You would need a steam shovel to move that load! Tell the counselor to get real.
Good grief.
---
Joan

Wow. Who died and made that counselor a RD. Guess that person was glad I
was not around to 'help' him understand. Frankly, I would find a
different therapy group.
Duckie

Good to see you back Rhonda.  You're right it is BS.  I've been in
counseling for years and have confronted my past many times.  Didn't
make mine go away.  I also have a degree in Human Services and we were
never taught that.  I would look for a new counselor.

We know that emotional pain can make physical pain worse, but make it
go away?  Not likely.

debbie m.

I think that it is very unfortunate that a counselor would say
something like that to a client implying that disease is a) your fault
and b) something that can easily be fixed if you do something to
improve your life.

while I do believe that there may be a psychosomatic component to many
diseases, I do not believe that one can assume a cause-effect
relationship when you are talking about something that is immune
related. In my own case, I have been at times depressed and at others
ebullient. While I may notice my symptoms less when I am happy, they
are still there, and in the throes of depression I may be so
profoundly down that I don't experience pain in the same terms either.
Having said that though, I do recognize that stress can influence the
disease and exascerbate a flare.

I developed JRA at 15 and probably when I was much younger. I never
even knew what stress was at that time.

I had a psych professor tell me something similar to what your
counselor told you. When I was taking developmental psych I really
struggled with out of control RA. At that time in the 70s I was only
treated with entrophen (coated aspirin) and I do not remember ever
being out of a flare. I WAS depressed. I missed classes because I
could barely drag myself out of bed. At one point I fainted at the
university among strangers, and no one even came to help me, but I
could not get up by myself. I think that I missed several classes
after because I didn't really care if I ever went back. The RA caused
the stress, the stress caused the depression, the depression
exascerbated the flare. So there is the psyche- soma component. A
hopeless mind affected by out of control disease.

Fortunately better medicines came along and I did not have to stay in
that dark place. Better meds resulted in greater disease control;
greater disease control meant I could do more things and had a more
positive outlook.

Sorry to go off on a rant. I usually don't talk about myself that
way.I just get irritated when people who are supposed to know better
rationalize disease on very simplistic terms. If it were only that
easy...

    Rose   @}>->--
    Being educated means that rather than fearing the unknown, one seeks to understand it. RB

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