Why Do We Like Talking About Diseases So Much?
When we talk about diseases, it is actually about something completely different. We explain to you what is really behind it when we complain about our suffering to each other.
Diseases as a topic of conversation
It’s a bit like an addiction, it’s a guilty pleasure, once you start, you can’t stop so easily. And it sounds something like this, a table talk with three or four rolls spread out:
“What’s that on your arm?” “That’s where I taped myself. Tennis elbow.” “I’ve heard that even tap-taping is useless. Well, it didn’t work for me. “Simone recommended it. I think it helps. “The only thing that worked for me was cortisone. “It was the same with my knee. Nothing else worked except Rhus Tox. “You have to see that physical therapist, what’s-his-name, that’s where all the theatre actors go.” “I’m not allowed to take cortisone any more. Two shots at most, says the doctor.” “And how long does the tape last?” ”Matthias, his name is. Something about Matthias. And so on, until someone says: “Enough talk about diseases!”
Then everyone laughs a little guiltily and talks about… something else. But for many, talking about illness is irresistible at first.
What is it about when we talk about diseases?
It is not about cancer and AIDS, not about the really terrible diseases, the last things. We do not talk about them in this tone, not in this detail, not so regularly. Not with so much passion and devotion. It’s funny: the adults talking about their diseases, that’s actually a childhood picture, a memory – aunt Ilse has it in her knee now, too. The grandparents reported at the coffee table in agonizing detail about their head physician consultations in the health clinic, about mud packs and light food, everyone had backs, everyone had it in the back, on the hip, in the intervertebral disc.
To become so old to talk about such banal things for so long: At that time it was unimaginable. But suddenly it starts, from the middle, end of 40, when the signs of wear and tear become more and more and with them the new ailments: heel spurs, tennis elbows, lumbar blockages, headaches and ear whistling. Nothing life-threatening, that is another matter. Preferably diseases from which one suffers for a long time at a medium level, against which one can try many things and about which one can talk as much as possible. Are we really that old? Can we think of nothing better? Why do we do this, and is it good or does it harm us?
Topic of conversation no. 1: Everyday diseases
One thing can be stated quite clearly: There’s nothing people like to talk about more than themselves. Depending on the survey, they spend about 60 to 80 percent of their speaking time talking about themselves (regardless of gender, by the way). And a few years ago, brain researchers at Harvard University used so-called imaging techniques to prove what everyone has always suspected or felt: People like to talk about themselves because nothing feels better. Because then the same regions in the brain are stimulated that become active when people eat well, take drugs or have sex. And to a similar extent.
Why do we talk so much about our ailments?
A possible explanation is therefore: With advancing age, one would like to talk about oneself just as much as before, but one has less to tell about one’s job, love or leisure time and more to tell about diseases. Around the age of 50, the topic offers ample opportunity to talk about oneself in detail. By the way, it is not bad to talk about yourself.
The communication scientist Adrian F. Ward from the University of Texas writes in “Scientific American” that talking about ourselves also has a social function: “Revealing personal details can strengthen interpersonal affection and help to forge new social bonds. So the two heel spurs in the circle of friends are getting closer through the exchange of experiences with semi-elastic plastic insoles. Furthermore, according to Ward, talking about ourselves “leads to personal growth through external feedback”.
So for instance: You complain in your circle of friends that you can no longer see anything because you are presbyopia, but that you don’t want to wear reading glasses because of vanity, and then everyone says that that is completely normal, glasses suit you, and nothing is more practical than being able to see things. Acknowledging this would be personal growth through feedback on the description of one’s ailments.
We get stuck on the worry level
The only problem is that when talking about illnesses in the circle of friends and relatives, at the pub table or at family gatherings, at best a kind of pseudo-processing takes place, says Gaby Bleichhardt from the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Working Group at the Philipps University of Marburg. She attaches great importance to the fact that she does not refer to specific research or studies, but to her clinical experience as a psychotherapist. There are no studies on this topic. She says: “The phenomenon that people like to talk about their illnesses among friends is related to the fact that they like to get stuck on the so-called worry level. In contrast to fears, worries have a rather moderate depth of processing, where one is less emotionally affected.
Talking about worries gives you the feeling that you are dealing constructively with a problem, but this is usually not the case, said Bleichhardt. This kind of talking only leads to a momentary relief or “small liberation” for the one who is talking, nothing more. “Actually, it causes you to repress your emotions.” And maybe that’s why we like to complain about a flu or a heel spur, because it’s easier than saying you feel discouraged and depressed.
Some people, however, benefit beyond that: those who are particularly afraid of illness “For them it is already very relieving to tell about their own body symptoms. This is where the person you are talking to is tested without their knowledge: If he doesn’t jump up from the table and call the emergency doctor immediately, you are probably really not life-threatened and you are reassured for the time being. “Search for reinsurance, let’s call it.”
Do we get even sicker when we talk about diseases?
Can talking about diseases also hurt? “Of course, nothing bad happens, but it doesn’t lead to anything. It’s related to brooding, where you’re always thinking back and forth and getting stuck in your own thought loop. When talking about illnesses among friends, maybe the others can help you get out of it. But most of the time, you just go round in circles together, and everyone’s waiting their turn to talk about themselves again.”
But isn’t it possibly something like an exercise, a warm-up in case we have sad reasons to talk about really serious diseases? “No,” says Bleichhardt. “As I said, there is no real processing of fear. After a certain age, it would make sense to talk to close friends about these fears, about the wishes for one’s own funeral, about the nursing home and care. But that’s not really fun at a pub crawl.”
And so one prefers to stay on the worry level. So, if you like, we sit around the campfire of our common, unexpressed fears when we talk about diseases that won’t kill us, but that keep us busy. The tips we give each other will not really cure us.
Our own tales of woe interest us most
We are not as interested in the tales of woe we tell others as we are in our own. But we are people, and we are together, and we talk. When you look around in the present, I think that’s a value in itself. And possibly also that, for once in this thoroughly organized, efficient world, we are not talking about strength, winning and being better, but about weakness and pain.
And perhaps this “getting stuck on the worry level” is not as bad as it sounds at first: Yes, it may be that talking about small and medium suffering does not bring about any improvement and that we are in reality just going round in circles. But secretly we know this, and to do it nevertheless may also mean resisting efficiency and perfectionism: We don’t want a solution, we mainly want to hear ourselves speak. This is not only liberating, but refreshingly unproductive and humane.