Trade your beautiful soul/ qualities if you would be cured from a chronic illness/injury etc.

I just made a post in the stress thread, that inspired me to write this thread.

For example, If you suffered from a debilitating chronic illness, that caused much suffering and pain etc.....and there was no cure IF you had the option to be cured of your chronic illness and trade it in for your beautiful soul, for example in my case, compassion/empathy, whatever your best quality is, would you?

For people who haven't got chronic illnesses and they CANT imagine what they would do,im trying to make this easier for you, but the same still applies. For example, if you needed your leg amputated etc..... and you could trade your soul/best qualities and keep your leg and save your self from illness, would you?

I am asking about YOU personally.

BUT if people want to add their children to this, that is fine. I know that's a tough one, so please don't feel you have to answer, what ever you feel comfortable with.

I AM FOCUSING ON PHYSICAL ILLNESSES FOR THIS THREAD.

Thanks peeps.

wow tough question.

I don't know.
I get migraines and sometimes the pain would get so bad and last for days that I often said if I get a lobotomy it might help.

then I had a minor surgery on my right shoulder and the incision site still hurts every so often over a year later.

so trade the essence of you for healing, hard to say

I don't have any qualities to trade

I get cluster headaches, there hell, but thankfully, I only get them once a month or so, and when im very stressed they really flare up.

If you get migraines all the time, that must be horrible.

I know it is a tough question. sorry.

That isn't true at all.

I dont think I would, NO. see, as we grow awareness within our self being, we get familiar with our pain ... I for once was hurt so bad emotionally that it affected me physically alot, only way i overcame it was making peace with my pain.. i know it might sound sick! but it's like loving your pain so honestly , like cherishing it and its cause that it becomes a delight and once it transforms into that, pain itself feel like there's no purpose for it to stay .. so it leaves... each and everyone of us is their own best healers...

...not sick at all!! I think that's a good way of expressing it.

Interesting post OP.

Anyone that lives with major life hurdles, chronic pain, or disabilities of one nature or another I thinks about what is called "Bargaining for a cure" at least occassionally.

Even parents with disabled children fall into this. Most of us would give up almost anything to spare our child.

Since my "bad" qualities would have and even easier time of taking me over than bargaining away the few good ones I can muster at times I don't think I would do it.

Partially because I finnally made peace with the idea that I am a PERSON FIRST and the "problem" way further down the line. It took me a while to get there and the understanding love and support; even a few kicking the pitty pot out from underneath me by some of my super crip friends, my one time loving spouse and Incredible Dad , or the thriveing tribe of meanies in the world but it was also why do I have to give up any more to this "problem" I live with than I already have? I am incredibly stubborn and I am not going to give and inch on letting the current condition control the over all being of what I am.

It makles me think of the Poem Cancer survivors often display about what Cancer can't take. I wish I could cut and paste. Maybe someone will chime in and share it.

That does not mean at times that I don't hit the wall and crumble now and then and sniffle and cry on a really bad day. GIving yourself permission to be a PERSON first means allowing for humman feelings; even negative ones.

The reason I didn't bring up trading mental/emotional issues with your soul is because I didn't want to stir up difficult and more upsetting memories.

Plus there's a lot of different pain that causes mental/emotional issues and trading your soul is mental as well, so I didn't want to confuse things. ive confused myself

I truly have not experienced a debilitating illness with physical pain other than grief of losing my husband of 23 years. I can only say that in those first few months, I didn't care about my attitude, manners, good or bad soul...All I wanted was to simply be wherever He was. My friends and family have told me that, yes, I was NOT myself...meaning not polite, friendly or thought about anyone except for myself. I don't know how I survived, I truly don't.

I DO think that now, after experiencing that heavy, heavy loss and healing (not sure if that's the correct word, but it will do for now) from it I would be more thoughtful and simply endure. Whatever "enduring" may mean in different scenarios.

Have a healthy, strong body but lose the very essence of me? No way.
And sure very tempting to not have daily chronic pain anymore, to be able to do everything without having to think twice.
But if it costs me my essence ... no. My essence defines me, and although I sometimes feel my chronic aches and chit does too, lol, it doesn't. Simply doesn't make life any easier, but yeah ...

And you know, in some weird way having these chronic things helped shape my essence. You start seeing life differently, learn to value things differently, learn to adept so you can still do what makes you happy, in spite of chronic ailments.

I think I would feel different if I needed to take a lot of meds that would suck the life out of me. (My sister has that, serious case of epilepsy. I think she'd very happily trade in her qualities, as her quality of life isn't just low, but below zero. Far below zero. Her qualities aren't of any use to her, are basically meaningless due to epilepsy and an overload of meds. SHe's literally just withering in a home.
So in that sense ... it still depends what illness you're talking about)

Nice post star, thanks.

I feel a bit hypocritical to post exactly 100 percent, because im not having one of my worst days. But im 99.9 sure I wouldn't trade my soul in to be free of chronic illness.

But, I will say, being chronically ill myself made me the person I am today, I've always been a compassionate person, that's why I chose the career I did, but I didn't really get it before like I do now, because I hadn't experienced bad chronic illness back then. But when I did get chronically ill I got the overwhelming need and feeling to help people and to be compassionate and empathetic even when I was a patient myself.

edited and added from the thread that inspired me to write this thread.

Doctors have criticised me for being so compassionate of others and always helping, this is when I've been in hospital myself as a patient because other patients turned to me for help because I could understand them and the staff couldn't. They were right to a degree because I put them before me and I wasn't getting much better, but they were. But that's me and I don't think I could be any other way even if I tried, BUT I would never want to be any other way. That's makes me, me. I wouldn't want to be in this world if I lost my soul and that's why I couldn't trade my soul for anything.

cheers, i think so too

I understood :) my point is, even with solely physical pain and illness ... If one try to focus on making peace with the pain , pain would give up and you will end up healed... i know it's easier said than done and some might think it takes special qualities/capabilities... but i believe everyone of us can do this. Peace out

Seeing as people aren't modular and it's pretty much impossible to take one trait or qualities without having an effect on every single one of the others, what motivates them, how they interact, and the rest of your health, no, I wouldn't "trade."
Implied in the question is "would you diminish or harm yourself in the long term to avoid long term pain or death?"

If something had the power to make people modular, to completely turn humans into something they aren't, so they could remove one or just a couple of traits and leave the person somehow intact except for those solitary missing traits, then I'd wonder why they'd need to "trade."

Either they're really evil and probably causing me pain in order to make the trade, using pain or relief like a drug, or they're altruistic and they need that trait as an ingredient in whatever cures me rather than as payment.

If the former, then I would be really stupid to do any kind of trade with them for anything.

If the latter then just by their actions and personality, being altruistic, I know it would be a better deal for me to trade, if it wasn't in my best interest to do so they would not have offered.

Instead of something spiritual you are referring to a doctor and he says something like "we can stop the pain, cure you, by removing this portion of your brain, but there will most likely be changes in your personality due to the area we are operating in and how much we have to remove," then I'd do it.

That's not diminishing myself.
That's just accepting change.

Would I accept or pursue change to avoid pain or cure illness?
Yes.

Would I exchange something really bad and negative happening to me to avoid something really bad and negative to happen to me?
No.
That's little different than cutting off a pretty HIV nose to spite a ugly cancerous face.

while i have never experienced it myself i have had family members in that boat debbie and i can say this i think that would be way to high a price to pay.

What you said at the start is similar to what I said about myself.

This is difficult because I could say so much more here, about quality of life and being heavily medicated, but for two reasons I cant go there.

1/ This thread isn't about me and I don't want it to be
2/ I don't want people to know what I have been battling and what I still am now 24/7.

It will vary on the illness of course, I cant separate each one from another, and some can be effected more by a condition that is medically less suffering than another. Its so individual.

Nice post crystal, thank you.

I understand what your saying. Thank you.