Psychologically Speaking

with Stewart Hase

A Change of Heart

It is an interesting paradox that a life-threatening event can make you more aware of life. Suddenly the attention becomes focused, either positively or negatively.

I can assure you that my attention was seriously engaged recently while laying in a hospital bed with a potentially catastrophic problem. Being diagnosed with a serious illness was bad enough, the intervention was frightening. Although as an ex nurse and now psychologist I have to admit that I have a high level of neuroticism when it comes to sickness and hospitals. This confrontation with our mortality also occurs when someone close to us dies. But it is a bit more close-up and personal when it is happening to you. The thought that most galvanised my attention was that one day it would be the end, that rescue would not be possible. At the same time you hope that this event is a long time in the future. What this experience reinforced (a scare with cancer in my twenties first taught me this important fact) for me at a deeply emotional level rather than simply intellectual, is that life is open to change at a moment's notice. That everything can be turned upside down, never to be the same again. Many hundreds of patients I've seen in my life as a therapist have experienced this phenomenon and its effects, which are closely aligned with loss and bereavement.

Research shows that there are three main ways in which people react to this type of situation. One is to go into denial. This is a psychological phenomenon that some people use to deal with extreme anxiety by denying (quite unconsciously) that whatever is threatening us is not happening. For example, people keep on smoking after being diagnosed with heart disease or emphysema. A second response is to become anxious and/or depressed, which leads to all sorts of psychological problems that interfere with being able to live effectively.

A third response is a sudden awareness, an increased mindfulness, of what is important in life. You notice with greater clarity the colour of the sky, the contours of the distance hills, and the sing-song of the birds in the garden. The attention shifts to relationships, which are fundamentally important to us all, and away from the mundane, trivial issues and anxieties. Choices seem clearer all of a sudden and shift in favour of engaging more fully with life. I frequently ask workshop groups to identify those things that they would miss most were they to be looking back on their life from their deathbed. Almost 100% of people identify their family as the most important thing in their life. Relationships. Yet when you examine how these people spend their time other things take priority. It takes something dramatic to shift the attention to those things that are important.

Carpe diem.