Having been faced with the diagnosis of a chronic illness recently, and as a therapist who frequently works with chronic conditions of all sorts, I’ve been faced with the paradox of the chronic reality of human existence.

On one hand, it’s human nature to pursue solution. We are orientated to survive by recognizing threat and resolving threat, neurologically. Yet, our conundrum persists.

To be human is to encounter one thing after the next. To be human is to exist through experiences, many of which are threatening, overwhelming and traumatizing.

There is no cure for our diagnosis’ as humans.

We may experience all forms of acute and chronic discomforts, diseases, traumas and mishaps. And we are designed to be irrevocably changed by them as we live through them.

That is surviving, as well as thriving.

The recognition that we can not solve our chronic human conditions is both a relief and torture.

Acceptance is perhaps one of the reasons, if you are one who needs a reason, why we experience a human existence.

This recognition isn’t to minimize the nature of chronic disease, or any of the chronic complexities we experience. If anything, it amplifies their significance.

If I’ve recognized anything in those I’ve worked with professionally in support of their chronic concerns, it’s that they are more sensitive, more aware and more burdened. They have often been caught by the worst of life’s experiences and perhaps are in the midst of sorting their way through the processing of that. As they navigate their relationship to themselves, they are forced to meet pain, grief, trauma and the ebbs and flows of biological sensations time and time again.

As I begin to consciously navigate this for myself, within myself, I am recognizing that I’ve had some nature of chronic complaint most of my life. Be it post traumatic syndromes, or mystery health complaints. The current diagnosis I have received is both unique and synonymous in nature to many ones I’ve received in the past.

I am facing a reckoning within myself; biologically, spiritually, energetically, mentally and emotionally.

The question I am facing from my intuitive parts is this: Is this reckoning simply an embodiment of evolution? Is my breakdown just another breakthrough? Is breakthrough just another way of framing yet another turn of the wheel of life?