Autoimmune “Warrior” or “Peacemaker"

I have never associated with the phrase Autoimmune “Warrior” used by many Autoimmune “Sufferers”.  I believe that how we think about our health or lack of it is an important part of our ability to heal.    For someone to suggest that they are a warrior, implies that there is something to fight, and I do not believe that this is the correct approach when it comes to autoimmunity. The nature of autoimmune diseases is that there is a human tissue which is being destroyed by the immune system. 

 Another narrative which I find very unhelpful from a psychological perspective is for anyone to think that their body is attacking itself.  Your body is no more capable of intentionally attacking itself than you taking a cricket bat and you hitting yourself over the head with it.  We are hard-wired to survive and not to self-destruct.  For you to be alive means that your ancestors have survived for some 300,000 years before you so that you could be born and are here to tell the tale - this is all thanks to your immune system having protected you and your ancestors for all of these years.   

I tend to think of autoimmunity as an immune system which is overwhelmed.  There are various processes which can lead to autoimmune tissue destruction, but I do not believe that there is any instance where the immune system is doing this intentionally.  In some cases, it might be because a food protein penetrates the intestine, and the structure of this is similar to the structure of a human tissue.  Antibodies might be formed against the wayward morsel of food and if these resemble the structure of a human tissue, then those antibodies can mistakenly destroy the human tissue.  Under another pathway, there might be a constant immune trigger, such as a bacterial or viral infection.  The immune system might send out inflammatory chemicals or cytokines to address the infection, and occasionally live human tissue can get caught in the crossfire.  In these examples, as in other examples of autoimmune processes, there is nothing to be fought.  What needs to happen is that the cause of autoimmunity needs to be understood and resolved.

 When I was diagnosed with autoimmunity several years ago, I instinctively knew that fighting my condition was not the way to resolve it. My approach was to make peace with it.  Firstly, I thanked my immune system for all that it had done for me to keep me alive and generally well for half a century to date.  I told it that appreciated its efforts in trying to protect and look after me, but that at the current time I thought it was a little over zealous and this was making life uncomfortable for me.  I told my immune system that I trusted it fully, but if there was any way it could dial things down a little I’d be grateful. I got under the skin of my autoimmunity and sought to understand all of the causes, and I gradually removed them and got better.  Today I have no symptoms to speak of and I am fully in remission (or cured?).   Fighting a part of the immune system which is overwhelmed, overzealous or confused is not the way to address autoimmunity.  As in life, making peace rather than war, can be a lot more productive.