When Patients Hide the Ugly Side

What should you do if an ill loved one won’t respond to emails or texts because they want to hide their pain, sadness, debility, weakness? Forcing yourself on them will exacerbate their sense of loss of control. Leaving them alone, well, leaves them alone in their pain, sadness, debility, and weakness—not a good thing.

I’ve been on both sides of this dilemma.

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Recognizing Obstacles to Hope

In Why Don’t I Feel Hope? I talk about hopelessness as a physical problem. If changes in the brain block the proper firing of brain cells needed to experience hope, willpower and/or spiritual faith may not be enough (just as a severed spinal cord makes it impossible to move the legs)—no matter how much patients want to feel hope.

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