50. Placebo: I will please… whom?

January 27, 2018 Health & Healing, Placebo, Sticky Thoughts No Comments

Let’s journey a bit on the well-known placebo-effect: getting better from medication until you discover it’s a sugar pill or otherwise doesn’t work in itself. You have probably heard of it. But do you think it’s far from you sickbed? Think again! There’s no medication coming on the market unless it’s been scientifically compared to a placebo… and in the action is found to have itself a placebo effect. So the last time you were under its influence was probably the last time you took medication. We’re all in the placebo boat.

◊◊◊

Fact: the placebo-effect encompasses at the average +/- 50% of the total effect of present-day medication.

◊◊◊

Consequence: this makes placebo the most powerful medication of all. This means: you yourself, the patient as cure, the inner pharmacy…You can heal yourself. This is too good to stay hidden behind a placebo, no?

◊◊◊

Give to medication what belongs to medication

but certainly give to yourself what belongs to yourself!

◊◊◊

The term ‘placebo’ comes from Latin and literally means ‘I will please’. Namely: the doctor pleases the patient with ‘something’ until the patient gets better by himself. This was/is meant to be for the good of the patient, but one can really ask whether in the end this is the case? I think not. In the end, the one who is really pleased, more than the patient, is the doctor him/herself!

◊◊◊

Placebo is a lie. The proverbial sugar pill only works if the taker doesn’t know he’s taking a sugar pill. Now, the following cannot be much of a surprise to you: a lie can never cure! It cannot go deeper than the relief of psychosomatic symptoms. This may ‘please’ in the short run, but certainly not in the long run.

◊◊◊

A lie is a lie.

Health wants truth and nothing but the truth

So help you yourself!

◊◊◊

It’s obvious to me. A placebo heightens a person’s dissociation (see other Sticky Thoughts). In doing so, it brings psychosomatic disease closer by, not further away. It brings you only temporary relief of symptoms. The price you pay is your health and well-being, certainly in the long run, and if you’re unlucky, even your very soul.

◊◊◊

‘Loss of soul.’

Nowadays known as ‘depression’.

◊◊◊

Fact: the placebo-effect encompasses 70-100% of the total effect of modern-day antidepressants.

◊◊◊

Consequence: you may fill this in yourself.

◊◊◊

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Your Symptom as ‘The Total You’

<A symptom is not just a part of you—it is the total you.> This perspective allows you to see a symptom as a gateway to self-understanding and transformation. When viewed this way, the symptom embodies all that you are. Engaging with it becomes an opportunity to connect deeply with your whole self. 12 key highlights Read the full article…

What You Can ‘Learn’ from Your Symptom

People ask me this because it regularly appears in AURELIS. Actually, it’s already present within the last two letters, standing for Inner Strength. Symptom as communication ‘from deep inside’ To the degree that your symptom is psycho-somatic – as most chronic symptoms are – it’s present because deep inside yourself, something deserves attention. Something is Read the full article…

Psychotherapy vs. Psychotherapies

Psychotherapy definitely works! Or is it the psychotherapist? Or the client? Then what about any theoretical model of psychotherapy? Still, psychotherapy definitely works. A good book, probably the best in this matter, is ‘The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work (Counseling and Psychotherapy)’ by Bruce E. Wampold and Zac E. Imel Read the full article…

Translate »