QA139 QUESTION: When I was a child, I was very outgoing and very gay and very warm and had no fears. And I had continuously colds. Now, I never catch a cold anymore. How do you explain that?
ANSWER: The mechanism at work with different individuals is a very complicated one to explain. But the best explanation I can give in this respect is that, as a child, where you felt rejected and unhappy manifested through, for instance – I do not say exclusively – producing such colds. Later on, you channeled these feelings into other areas and freed this area.
Why you did this is impossible to say at this point. There are many reasons. Something in your psyche found it more expedient. You see, there is always a mechanism at work inwardly. If the psyche can, to use the saying, “kill two birds with one stone,” it does that. And if it can do that with three or four birds, it prefers that. So that sometimes a neurotic mechanism serves several neurotic ends at the same time.
When it is expedient from a neurotic point of view to produce colds or any other illness, then it is surely not one reason at stake but several. Now, other things may have been preferable for the neurotic part of your psyche, so you allowed the freedom and health in this area and shifted it to others.
