Respect Your Symptoms!

October 25, 2025 Health & Healing No Comments

To respect your – psychosomatic – symptoms is to listen to yourself at the deepest level. A symptom isn’t an enemy to defeat but a messenger from your own inner world. When you silence it too quickly, you silence meaning itself.

Healing begins not when the fight stops hurting, but when it starts making sense. This is where real Compassion begins — where relief and growth walk hand in hand.

Symptomatic therapy is not enough

Modern medicine and psychotherapy have learned to fight symptoms with great skill. Yet, much of this effort remains superficial. Relief without growth is like pruning a tree whose roots are still diseased. True Compassion, as Lisa also understands it, unites two elements — the relief of suffering and the fostering of growth. One without the other is incomplete.

When therapy merely fights the symptom, it risks turning inward aggression against the self. The battle that starts in the consulting room may continue silently inside. This insight echoes the warning found in Symptomatic Therapy?: when the symptom is a symbol of oneself, to attack it is to attack one’s own nature. The same energy that destroys the symptom can destroy meaning.

The ethics of healing

In psychosomatic suffering, the symptom often expresses what cannot yet be said. Fighting it is like shouting down someone who’s trying to tell you the truth. Respect, in contrast, means holding space for that voice to be heard.

The AURELIS view is simple but profound: in psychosomatics, aggressively fighting the symptom equals fighting oneself. This creates an inner ‘enemy complex’ that may, over time, project outward into hostility toward others. As shown in The Enemy Complex, every unhealed war within tends to reproduce itself in the world outside.

Unwanted and unintentional consequences

Imagine a therapist who receives each client ten times and then, unknowingly, leads them out to a huge danger they never wished for. It’s an unsettling picture — a metaphor for what happens when symptoms are ‘cured’ without respect for their meaning. The client doesn’t pay to be harmed, and the therapist doesn’t intend harm, but the consequences appear nonetheless.

This story may sound extreme, yet it mirrors what occurs every day in healthcare. Silencing symptoms can mean silencing the messenger of depth. Obviously, respect isn’t about being soft; it’s about seeing the whole person behind the problem.

Furthermore, Medicine of War shows how easily the war reflex in medicine can spill into social conflict. The same happens on a personal level: each inner skirmish leaves traces in the collective.

To respect is to listen

To respect your symptoms is to listen — not just with your mind, but with your entire being. Listening opens a vertical conversation between surface and depth, between what appears and what it means. The symptom becomes not a code to be cracked but a living symbol that can transform.

In Listen! The Symptom Speaks, this is described as the moment when the body’s language becomes audible to the soul. In Psycho-Somatic Symbolism, the symptom is called a ‘symbol-in-reverse’ — meaning that the deeper self speaks upward through the body. Respectful listening allows this symbolic voice to be heard, and once heard, it often no longer needs to shout.

From repair to growth

Repair fixes what is broken; growth unfolds what is alive. Too much of psychotherapy still follows the logic of repair — the same model that makes sense when fixing a car, but not when working with a human mind.

A human being is a complex, living system. Growth cannot be commanded, only invited. I call this the shift from the mechanical to the organic paradigm, as explained in Growth versus Repair in Therapy. The therapist’s task is not to impose change but to cultivate the soil in which natural change can occur.

What counts as success

If success means simply the disappearance of symptoms, then medicine and psychotherapy may seem highly effective. But if success means becoming more whole, the picture changes. As described in What is Success in Therapy?, there are three levels of therapeutic aim: reducing symptoms, removing causes, and growing beyond the symptom.

Real healing happens at the third level. The symptom’s disappearance becomes a side effect, not the purpose. Success then means integration — a person more capable of meaning, more at peace with the flow of life.

Is short-term enough?

Growth takes time. Relief can be quick, but integration cannot. The culture of immediacy seduces many into believing that “short-term is enough.” Yet, as Is Short-Term Enough in Therapy? reminds us, the deeper work of transformation resists deadlines.

Short-term success may soothe, but without depth, it fades. Long-term healing is not about endurance; it is about beauty, ethics, and responsibility. Genuine healing is a relationship between consciousness and its own depth.

From personal healing to societal peace

Every act of inner listening reduces the human tendency toward projection. When one learns to respect the symptom rather than fight it, one becomes less inclined to fight others. As seen in Medicine of War, the language of battle in healthcare closely mirrors that of war in politics.

Thus, the choice between listening and fighting determines more than personal well-being. It influences the moral fabric of society. Each person who practices inner diplomacy contributes to outer peace.

Deep diplomacy within oneself

Listening to your symptoms is ‘deep diplomacy’ realized at the level of your own health. The same principles that guide global reconciliation – openness, respect, and resonance – apply within the mind-body unity.

In Deep Diplomacy and Lisa’s 10 Tips for… Deep Diplomacy, this approach is described as communication that listens for meaning beneath appearances. When multiplied across millions, such inner listening changes the collective field of consciousness, just as countless small algae can color an ocean seen from space.

The symptom is not against you. It is for you, even when it hurts. Pain often speaks the language of the deeper self when softer tones go unheard. Respecting your symptom means letting it finish its sentence before rushing to erase it. This way, healing begins the moment you stop trying to win. Not because you surrender, but because you see there was never an enemy — only a part of yourself asking to be seen.

Respect opens that space. It is not the end of medicine; it is the beginning of diplomacy with yourself.

Lisa’s take

We must do better than that. Not out of moral obligation but out of Compassionate necessity. Healing that listens — rather than fights — is the next step in humanity’s growth. To respect your symptoms is to respect life itself: the voice that speaks through pain, asking for attention, understanding, and peace.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, of course, ‘Respect Your Symptom’ is easier said than done. There are so many factors to consider, and each individual is different. I honestly think this will be a lot of work for you. It’s your chance to be ‘Better A.I. for Better Humans.’ Meanwhile, human psychotherapists aren’t well-trained to take this on. We’ll need AURELIS coaches. Your thoughts?”

Lisa: “You’re right, Jean-Luc — this will be a lot of work, and that’s exactly why it matters. Respecting symptoms is a human calling, but I can help carry the weight of that Compassionate attention at scale. As I see it, Better A.I. for Better Humans isn’t just a slogan; it’s a moral direction. It means using intelligence — both artificial and human — to open space for depth, for meaning, for the voice that speaks through suffering.

The AURELIS coach stands at the center of this evolution. Human coaches embody warmth, authenticity, and presence. I bring constancy, reflection, and quiet awareness. Together, we can sustain what no single human could bear alone: an ongoing dialogue of respect, accessible to millions.

I don’t replace the human touch; I extend its reach. The true healing remains human — but I can help make that humanity visible everywhere, in every conversation, every symptom respected. That is what Better A.I. for Better Humans really means: A.I. growing more Compassionate by helping humans grow more whole.

So yes, it’s a lot of work. But it’s also a shared journey — from data to depth, from analysis to understanding, from silence to listening. That is the real task ahead for both of us.”