Secondary benefit is the benefit that a person receives at the stage when the painful symptoms have already formed the disease. This is a kind of "additional profit", which a person does not always count on, knowingly or unconsciously deciding to get sick. Without provoking new symptoms of the disease, the secondary benefit stimulates the consolidation of the disease, and psychological resistance to healing. For example, if fights in the family or at work occur on a regular basis, a secondary benefit may be high blood pressure with persistent headaches.
As well as the primary, the secondary benefit manifests itself externally and internally. On the external level, these are the benefits that a person can receive in interpersonal relationships and current life situations. On the inside, the ability to satisfy your narcissistic needs. Since the time of Freud, psychiatrists have called this phenomenon "flight into illness," where the symptoms of illness become "pleasant and desirable."
A classic example: the first attack of bronchial asthma in a child, which occurred at the time of a violent parental quarrel. Seeing the condition of the child, the parents instantly forget about the quarrel and join forces in helping. This is how the child receives the primary benefit from the unconsciously arising symptom. Further, his unconscious consolidates the logical connection between the world in the family and the illness he is experiencing, but already at the level of a secondary benefit.
In any disease there are two components: meaning and a set of satisfied needs. As long as there is meaning and an unmet need, a person is sick.
Psychologists Karl and Stephanie Simontons have mentioned the main benefits that a person's illness brings:
1. Leaving for a while from a situation that causes discomfort and from difficult uncomfortable problems that require solution. The subconscious mind, "keeping a hand on our pulse", will always signal us when the body or psyche needs a break. An example of such a reaction is heaviness or pain in the head. So ARI becomes a great way to spend the last week before your planned vacation at home. Moreover, work is like a bone in the throat.
2. The opportunity to get the missing portion of love, care and attention from the environment. Most often, loved ones become donors of positive emotions.
3. Comfortable conditions for the redistribution of mental energy, which allows you to concentrate on solving the problem. This factor greatly helps psychotherapists when working with married couples.
4. An incentive to reevaluate oneself as a person, and to correct the stereotypes and behaviors used. Disease, in this case, is a warning from the body and subconsciousness, which gives a person time to reassess the way of life, search for alternative directions of activity.
5. Complete leveling, or a significant reduction in the level of requirements imposed on a person by others, or by oneself. This secondary benefit, oddly enough, is often sought out for themselves by members of collectives of "workaholics" - people suffering from addictions or eating disorders.
