Placebo effect

In medicine, there is something known as the placebo effect, when doctors administer a drug that is supposed to make you feel better but in reality is just a sham drug that is actually nothing. The effect of the placebo is that is works on the idea of perception; you believe that you are given a life changing treatment that will change your condition. This belief may in fact have a subjective positive result in you feeling your condition has improved.

How many times in our lives have we faced this placebo effect? Whether we’ve been the ones to administer it or the ones who get the dose? We have all deceived ourselves, others and more at some point or the other. Was it to make ourselves feel good or was it for the good of others?  Were our motives truly honest or were we fooling ourselves into believing that we were actually doing some good.

Deception is what we do every day. We force ourselves into believing that there is a reason valid enough to support these lies. In the beginning it may be something we do just to placate ourselves but over time, the reiteration of the lie completely obscures the truth. In times of trouble we pacify ourselves into believing that this phase is just transitory; that it will change and we will feel better. “ I am much better” we say this to ourselves over and over again that even if we don’t feel any better, we force our minds to accept that things have changed, have improved.

The truth is always harder to accept when you realise that you are not among the selected few to actually receive the real cure. We cannot accept that life has decided to skip us over for someone else. We’ve been handed the placebo instead of the real thing. It surely sucks. So what are we going to do? Are we going to fight, scream and shout or are we going to the do the next best thing which is to accept? We all have our ways of making peace with ourselves—rebellion, anger, submission, indifference, pathos, acceptance and denial.

When we deceive others, there is to an extent something clever about it, but when we deceive ourselves it is simply pathetic. Yet we never desist. We know that there is nothing more that can be done for us, so we do what we do best, ignore it and hope that it goes away. Sometimes, it does. Sometimes we do effect a positive change, because we have worked around the problem and tackled it in a roundabout way. And sometimes, despite what we do, there is nothing we can change. The harm is permanent and the end is inevitable.