When we’ve been facing a physical or mental challenge, we may feel as if the ailment has become our identity. But we need to realize this is not who we are. 

Increasingly, public thought is recognizing that any illness we may face does not define us. “I am not my disease,” Patrick McNamara, Ph.D, posted at one time. He continued, “. . . perhaps one of the best things we can do for one another [is] to remind one another that we are not reducible to a disease . . . .” 

We do not need to accept that any disease or problem defines us. But this is more than just disassociating a material problem from a material view of ourselves. Instead, it’s letting our thought be consistently oriented to fully accepting that we are so much more than what a physical body—a sick body or even a healthy one—presents. It’s starting from a completely different basis—that we are actually wholly spiritual, complete children of God, here and now.