Understanding Resistance, Responsibility, and the Feeling of Unfairness in Chronic Illness

10 Nov Understanding Resistance, Responsibility, and the Feeling of Unfairness in Chronic Illness

When living with chronic illness, it’s natural to long for someone — a doctor, a specialist, a system — to finally have the answer. Many of us carry deep fatigue from years of searching, advocating, and trying to “fix” what feels broken. The medical model teaches us to look outward for solutions, yet genuine healing often calls us inward — into a relationship with our own body, our own felt experience.

But even with the best intentions, something inside can resist. We might feel defensive, unmotivated, or even angry at being told that healing is “up to us.” Beneath that resistance often lies something tender and deeply human: a sense of unfairness.

“Why Me?” — The Body’s Cry for Acknowledgment

There’s a moment many of us reach in our healing journey when grief turns into protest: Why me? Why do I have to change my diet, manage my stress, go to therapy — when others can live carelessly and seem fine?

This isn’t just a thought; it’s a felt experience. The body tightens, the chest hardens, the breath becomes shallow. Beneath the anger is heartbreak — the pain of realizing that life hasn’t been fair, that the body we inhabit asks more of us than we wish it did.

From a somatic perspective, this sense of unfairness is the nervous system’s way of expressing overwhelm and loss. It’s the body saying, “I didn’t choose this. I’ve already endured so much.” Meeting this feeling somatically doesn’t mean reasoning with it — it means feeling it: noticing the ache, the contraction, the heat. These sensations are the body’s language for unacknowledged grief and longing.

The Nervous System’s Logic

For many with chronic illness, the body has become a landscape of uncertainty and betrayal. Medical trauma, invalidation, and years of disappointment can condition the nervous system to equate “trying something new” with danger or futility. Even supportive advice — move more, eat differently, rest deeply — can trigger protective responses.

Resistance, then, isn’t opposition to healing; it’s protection. It’s the nervous system remembering how unsafe it once felt to hope. When we understand this, we can meet resistance not with self-blame but with compassion. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I just do what’s good for me?” we might ask, “What part of me doesn’t yet feel safe enough to trust this change?”

The Illusion of Control and the Longing for Fairness

Chronic illness often shatters our sense of control. The body stops responding predictably, and the systems we turn to for help don’t always provide relief. It’s deeply human to want someone else to take over — to wish for a doctor, treatment, or miracle that makes things right again.

From an embodied awareness perspective, that longing for fairness and external rescue is a form of nervous system yearning. It’s the part of us that wants to rest, to not have to fight or be vigilant anymore. It’s the body remembering what it feels like to be cared for — and mourning the lack of it.

The key is not to shame this longing, but to honor it. To say to the body, “Yes, it’s unfair. You shouldn’t have had to carry all this.” Paradoxically, when we allow this truth to be felt rather than resisted, something begins to soften. The energy that was bound up in protest can flow toward presence.

Meeting Resistance with Tenderness

Taking responsibility for our health, then, is not about forcing change or suppressing emotion. It’s about creating safety within — enough safety to feel the grief, anger, and longing that live beneath the surface.

When we meet these sensations with gentle curiosity — the clenching jaw, the collapsing chest, the tears that come unexpectedly — the nervous system begins to trust that it will not be forced, fixed, or ignored.

Healing becomes less about control and more about connection. Responsibility becomes less a burden and more a choice made from self-compassion: I care for this body not because it’s fair, but because it’s mine.

And over time, what was once resistance transforms into wisdom — a quiet knowing that the body’s “no” was never against us, but for us.