sufferer, an underlying story—a story that at its heart is about giving or receiving love—will be revealed to me. And if I as a doctor can coax the hidden meaning of the illness into the open, then healing can begin.

    As you can imagine, seeking the emotional roots of a patient’s illness is not something I picked up in medical school. On the contrary, my conventional medical training taught me that my responsibility is to relieve symptoms: Prescribe a pain reliever to subdue a headache; add an acid blocker to extinguish heartburn; sprinkle on a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor to alleviate depression.

    In this era of managed care, in which one out of four doctor visits lasts less than ten minutes, providing symptomatic relief for a person’s pain is a practical and worthy endeavor. There is indisputable value in lessening the symptoms of distress, and it is not my intention to disparage any approach that relieves

the suffering of humanity. Still, long before beginning medical school, I sensed that illness presents a deeper opportunity for healing and transformation, which we miss when we focus on symptom relief.

Hearing the Stories

    Like a young child, the body communicates its needs in a relatively simple and straightforward manner. Whether it wants nourishment, affection, new experiences, time to rest, or an opportunity to release toxins, your body generates sensations to get attention. When you listen to these signals and address the basic needs they represent, your body responds by producing chemicals of comfort. When you fail to heed your body’s message, it gets louder. If, despite its best efforts, your body is unable to get your attention, it may stop talking for a while, but when next heard from, will not be ignored.

    When a doctor “fixes” someone