HEALTHY FAMILY REACTIONS TO ILLNESS: COMING TO PEACE

Why do bad things happen to good people? This is the question examined in a popular book of similar title, and it is the question that is asked on a personal level by most people affected by heart disease. Patients and families who heal tend to be people who come to some form of psychological and spiritual peace about the fact that this illness has happened, and about the meaning of their lives now that they are dealing with rehabilitation.
Healthy couples often soothe many of their fears by turning to their belief in some Higher Power. This might be (and most often is) belief in a nurturing God. For some, this soothing and its accompanying motivation to recover come from the power of belief in family and the desire to improve intimate connections. Regardless of the form this Higher Power takes, I have seldom encountered a successfully recovered family who did not have some such belief system. Through such beliefs, these families are better able to make sense of their suffering. They find a higher level of meaning to their life together and a new motivation to live in more loving connection with one another. The power and maturity of these perspectives help such families strengthen their love for one another while healing together.
Finally, even though illness has become a factor in their lives, healthy families are able to continue growing and changing in all the normal ways families grow and change. Every family tends to freeze when crisis hits. Major decisions to move on in development are put on hold until the crisis passes. In dealing with chronic illness, some families never redecide this rule to freeze. Everyone's development then suffers. As in the case of the Hinson family, this decision not to go on with life might be made either consciously or unconsciously. The son in the Hinson family was not told out loud by his mother any of the following: "Lose your fiancee"; "Stop developing a life of your own outside this family"; "Freeze!"; or "Come home and live miserably ever after." The Hinson son was not told any of these messages; he just "heard" them in his natural reaction to his father's illness and to his mother's despair.
Members of the healthy couple explicitly give each other and other family members permission to go on with life, even though one of them now has heart illness. Children are encouraged to continue to grow up, leave home, establish their careers, and raise their own families. Vacations are still taken and enjoyed. A spouse's plans to return to school, take up new hobbies, make new friends—or whatever signals an ongoing living of life—all continue. Make cardiac rehabilitation an important part of, but not all of your life together.
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