Rethinking Symptoms: Why Your Body Might Be Trying to Heal, Not Hurt You

For centuries, we’ve been taught that symptoms are the enemy. Headaches, rashes, fevers, fatigue — these are things to “fight,” “manage,” “suppress,” or “eliminate.” But what if this perspective is not just wrong, but dangerously backwards?

What if symptoms are not the sickness, but the healing response?

What if the discomfort you’re feeling is your body doing exactly what it needs to do to clear, release, rebalance, or integrate?

🔄 From Attack to Adaptation

Mainstream healthcare perpetuates the idea that your body is under constant “attack" and that viruses, bacteria, inflammation, or pain are simply bad things happening to a passive organism. The allopathic conclusion? Any dis-ease symptoms must be stopped in their tracks.

But consider this:

• Fever is not the illness — it’s how your body heats up to destroy pathogens.

• Mucus is not the problem — it’s how your body traps and expels debris.

• Fatigue is not weakness — it’s a signal to stop, rest, and redirect energy to healing.

• And (perhaps more controversially) rashes, breakouts, or eruptions are often the surface exit point for internal detox.
  

To this extent, we’ve pathologised processes that are intelligent, adaptive, and integrative.

📜 Symptoms as the Second Phase of Healing

According to many somatic, energetic, and metaphysical models, symptoms don’t arise randomly. They emerge as the second phase of a resolution process — not the cause, but the effect.

In German New Medicine (GNM), this is explained as follows:

1. A conflict shock occurs (physical, emotional, conceptual, spiritual, relational, energetic).

2. The body adapts silently — this is the conflict-active phase (you may feel little to nothing).

3. When the conflict is resolved, the body enters the healing phase — and this is when the symptoms appear.

4. What we call “sickness” is actually the cleanup.
   

So when your nose is running or your gut is purging, it’s not a sign that something has gone wrong; in fact, may actually be a sign that something is finally going right.

🛠 The Problem With Symptom Suppression

When we interrupt the symptom process too early — through suppressive drugs or bypassing methods — we risk:

• Freezing the healing cycle mid-stream

• Driving the pathology deeper into the system

• Cutting off the body’s own wisdom
  

This doesn’t mean we avoid support or interventions — but it does mean we shift our focus from fighting the symptom to supporting the process.

This is where modalities like homeopathy, kinesiology, somatic therapies, and energetic healing excel: They honour the body’s innate timeline, rather than trying to override it.

🔍 From Philosophy to Empowerment

Symptoms, in this view, are communications, not malfunctions. They are signposts on the road of healing — urging us to pay attention, not panic.

And they are often asking us to address something deeper:

• A relationship rupture

• A suppressed truth

• A toxic environment

• An unresolved trauma

• A spiritual misalignment
  

By reframing symptoms, we move from fear to curiosity — and from victimhood to agency.

If you would like to learn more about what your specific symptoms are saying, I offer one-on-one sessions at SOULSMITHERY (Mudgee) both in-person and on-line.

Check out our booking page here.

🕯 Final Word (and Legal One)

This blog is for educational and philosophical purposes only. It is not medical advice, and it is not intended to diagnose or treat any dis-ease.

But perhaps it will help you ask new questions — the kind that restore trust in your body, and in the invisible intelligence animating it. After all, your body may not be attacking you. It may just be finally healing.