How do you know?
If you have chest pain, it could be that you ate the wrong food or it could be indicative of heart disease.
Marie believed it was nothing more than ‘heartburn’. She remembered stuffing her face with spicy pasta and garlic rolls and feeling somewhat strained after her workout at the gym. “I must eat better and moderate my workout,” Marie reminded herself as she marveled at her luck in keeping her weight down despite her less than sterling eating habits.
So when coronary heart disease entered Marie’s life, it felt like a swift sucker punch. No clear warning, no time for preparation, no defense. Marie saw her once active, healthy lifestyle being replaced with a passive, alien universe she’d only heard about in tidbits from much older acquaintances.
Once the initial shock died down, Marie wondered: Did I really have no clues or did I dismiss them as inconsequential? She confessed that there were a few symptoms that could have alerted her to a medical problem but at the time she wouldn’t have recognized them as clues.
“I’m not one of those hypochondriacs who imagines that every little headache is an incipient brain tumor. No, no, no, that’s not me. So when my doctor suggested a stress test, I thought she was being overly cautious. But I went along with it. Glad I did now.”
It took Marie a good three months to absorb it all. “I kept thinking it was a mistake, a bad dream, a wrong diagnosis. I was so taken aback. I was angry that my body betrayed me and kept wondering about what else is going on inside me that I don’t know about?”
It’s absolutely true that you don’t always know what you don’t know. Even incidents that seem obvious after the fact are simply not obvious before. True, not only for medical issues but also for people issues as well.
Ellen was shaken when she found out that her husband had a hidden gambling problem that devastated their bank account. “When you realize a person you thought you knew well, you don’t know at all, it throws you completely off balance.” Ellen couldn’t stop questioning her own judgment: What else don’t I know? Who else is hiding a secret from me? How is it possible for me to know what I don’t know?
It’s true. Even those closest to you can hide important parts of their personality from you. We half expect it from kids, but from spouses? And from our own bodies? So what’s a person to do? How do you trust again after feeling betrayed?
Not easy. When fudging and crazy-making denials have accompanied the betrayal, regaining trust is even more difficult. Over time, however, if sincere changes have been made, the feeling that — ”I can’t believe anything he says” recedes while gaining confidence that “he’s telling the truth” moves to the forefront.
Two years after Ellen discovered her husband’s gambling secret, she said “I no longer obsess about whether he’s keeping secrets from me but when it comes to total trust, well that’s something I’m still working on.”
©2011 Linda Sapadin, Ph.D. Contact her at lsapadin@drsapadin.com or visit her website at www.PsychWisdom.com.
