Dr. Wendie Trubow explains why people often feel better after getting a diagnosis, especially for autoimmune conditions. Once a disease has a name, you can shift from seeing it as a limit to using it as a starting point to notice what's still healthy and make small changes that build real agency.
Chapters
Why do you say that people get healthier after a diagnosis than before? What's— that sounds sort of counterintuitive. It is. And it really comes back to mindset, which is so crucial in life, but also in life with a disease. And so we tend to go towards the direction of our strongest thoughts and our strongest beliefs. And so for me, I was no exception. And almost every single person that I work with, they find me, because we've been diagnosed with a disease. And so it takes the spotlight and it gets all the credit for everything going on. I was going to say good and bad, but usually the things that feel like a struggle and a slight shift, you know, tiny bits at a time really can change the direction of our life and our health. And so again, if we allow room for the parts of us that are still healthy, even with the disease, they're there if we go looking. And if we allow the curiosity of what kind of health we can create because of this autoimmune diagnosis that we may have, it really can stack on top of each other and build and build. And all of a sudden we're left with, um, filling in the blank with autoimmune blank. You know, everyone says autoimmune disease, but it's like, what if we could, uh, instead focus on the health that still exists and that we get to create?
