In this video, we're going to look at understanding secondary gain, and what role this plays in blocking our progress. And in particular, we're going to look at how secondary gain can stop us getting well, getting better, either from a physical illness, or something that's going on more mentally or emotionally, or even blocking us making progress in our life overall. And understanding this concept of secondary gain is really useful and very, very important. So what is secondary gain? Well, it is a hidden benefit, which keeps you stuck where you are, even though you keep saying you don't want what you have, and that you want something different. So the key thing here is that it's a hidden benefit.

There's actually a positive purpose in this secondary gain. But unfortunately, This hidden positive purpose is keeping you stuck. So it's quite a paradox. But this is why we stay blocked and stuck, because there is this paradox. So it's like a tug of war rope with two people pulling on either end, and nobody winning. So really what we can say is when we have a secondary game, we need to ask ourself, what is the payoff of staying where we are?

What is the payoff of staying in this problem? Whatever it is that we don't want, whether it's the illness, or the problems at work, or the problem in our relationship, what is the payoff? Because a secondary gain always has a payoff. So let's look at some of these potential payoffs. Now a very common one is being ill. And I'm not just talking ill for a couple of days, I'm talking If you have ongoing health issues, especially ongoing chronic health issues, which are really disturbing your life, they're really inconvenient. They're uncomfortable, and they prevent you from actually living your life, you literally can't do a lot of activities that you used to be able to do, and that most healthy people do, and that you'd like to get back to doing.

You just can't do them. So what is the potential secondary gain of being ill? Well, what I've learned is that there can often be a secondary gain of getting attention or love or comfort when we're ill. Now, these patterns get set up very early on in life, they usually get set up before the age of seven. And at that time, we're very unconscious of these patterns being set up, but they're set up nevertheless. So if you grew up in a family where You weren't getting enough attention, positive, loving attention, and that made you feel bad. And by the way, these are all examples of basic human emotional needs, needing to be loved, needing to be validated, recognized, etc.

If you didn't get enough of that, and then one day, you got ill. And you were in bed, say for a week, and it was the first time that you actually got some attention. Maybe your food was brought to you. Maybe your parents talk to you more than they might have normally, and you receive this positive attention. And somewhere in your subconscious, you made an equation. And the equation was, if I get sick, I get attention. And what that equation actually is, is a belief.

It's a belief that's created. I don't get attention when I'm normal and healthy. But when I get sick, I get attention. And that creates an unconscious limiting belief. And this then continues on at a subconscious level. And if we find ourselves chronically ill, and I'm not saying this is the underlying pattern for everybody with chronic illness, I'm saying it's a pattern that can happen.

But many people when they're chronically ill, and they keep saying they want to get better. At a core level, they may find that they have an underlying secondary gain running of, well, if I stopped being ill, then I won't get the love and attention that I'm currently getting by staying ill. So for example, they may be living with a partner who is taking care of them. And unconsciously, there is a deep fear that if I get well, then my partner won't look after me. Maybe he'll he'll even or she'll even leave me Now it's really important to remember this is very unconscious. We're not consciously thinking this, we don't consciously want secondary gains.

But the need to be loved and cared for and comforted and have positive attention is so essential for us that this is how strong it becomes. And this is how the secondary gains become so strong. So obviously, if we want to get well, and we're not getting well, then it might be advisable to ask ourselves, is there a secondary gain here? What could the secondary gain be? Is there some reason I'm keeping myself stuck in this situation? Another secondary gain example, maybe for example, being alone.

Say, you keep saying to yourself, I want friends. I want a partner. I want family, whatever it is, it's like I want more people around me and yet you constantly find yourself alone. Well, there's going to be some secondary gain, otherwise you wouldn't keep creating that. So if you were to ask yourself, Well, what is the secondary gain is, is there a secondary gain there, then you might find something like, well, when I'm alone, I get to do what I want to do. And I don't have other people telling me what to do.

So I can be safe, and I can be in control. And this is just one example of a secondary gain of being alone. There may be others. But the point here is, there's a payoff. It's a positive payoff. There's a positive benefit in staying alone, even though we keep saying we don't want to be alone.

So this is this push pull tug of war situation that keeps us stuck in the aloneness. So we have to be able to identify what the secondary gain is what the payoff is. And then we have to decide well, do I want to keep that payoff? Is that or is there some sort of compromise I can make? So that I can have some alone time, so that I can be in control, but also I have more time with other people. And another secondary gain, for example might be, well, why am I depressed?

Why can't I get rid of this depression? Now, if we understand that a lot of depression is actually the D pressing of emotions, so depression isn't an emotion per se, it's actually a symptom. And underneath the symptom of depression are the emotions which are being depressed, then what we may find is that a secondary gain is well, if I depress my emotions, then I don't have to deal with my feelings. I don't have to face my feelings and I also don't have to face the situations or the events, which are either currently creating those feelings or created those feelings from the past. I just don't have to deal with it. I'll just numb myself out.

So that would be a secondary gain that A positive payoff a positive benefit, then I don't have to go into feeling lots of negative emotions and feeling bad. And what about the secondary gain of staying in an unhappy or unhealthy relationship? Often we can be in a relationship where we're just arguing all the time, conflict on happiness, stress, frustration, anger, hurt, disappointment, betrayal, lots and lots of different emotions and unhappiness. But we keep going, we keep putting up with it. And often if we ask ourselves, well, what is the secondary gain here? What is the payoff in me staying in the situation?

And this is particularly so if there is a part of us that just knows it's not right to continue the relationship. Sometimes it may absolutely be right to continue and work things through. But sometimes we just know that it's not right that we should leave the room. But we just can't do so. Or usually there's a secondary gain in play. And it will be something along the lines of, well, at least I get some love and attention.

If I'm in a relationship, it may only be occasional, because sometimes my partner is loving, and sometimes they're not. But at least there's a modicum of love and attention that I'm getting. And I so need love and attention, that I'm going to stay in this relationship, even though 90% of the time, it's not healthy, and it's not enjoyable. And actually, it's even creating a huge amount of stress. So this would be an example of a secondary gain of staying in an unhealthy relationship. And if it's a really unhealthy relationship, then this is what we would call a dysfunctional relationship.

It's not functional, it's dysfunctional, but we stay in it because we so want to be loved. And what about staying In a satisfactory job, or career, well, our career brings us money and money equals survival in our world. So the positive secondary gain is that we get to survive, we get to have money in our bank account so that we can actually pay to live. So, when we look at all these secondary gains, we can see that there are some common underlying themes. And the main underlying theme is to meet our unmet or under met emotional needs. So by the age of seven, as a child, we have certain emotional needs that need to be met.

And these are things like feeling loved, supported, validated, cherished, and other emotional needs. And I go into these needs in detail in the emotional alchemy level one training, and I take you to an assessment to assess How much of your emotional needs were met? These emotional needs are so important that they run our lives at an unconscious level. And the most fundamental, emotional need for a human being is to feel loved unconditionally, so to feel unconditionally loved. And what that means is, we're loved without condition. There are no conditions on that love.

Now, if we don't have these emotional needs met, as we're growing up in the first few years of life, we'll spend the rest of our life trying to get those needs met. And we will do that in whatever way possible, because being loved is so important for us. Obviously, staying alive is really important and that's a physical need, but emotionally, we need to be loved. So what happens is unconsciously we set up these secondary gains in order to ensure that We have these emotional needs met. So really what we're saying here is that when we have secondary gain, or these payoffs, what we're trying to do in an unconscious way is to keep ourselves either physically and or emotionally safe, which equals staying alive. But the problem is, often these secondary gains, they'll stop us getting where we want to go.

In other words, they may stop us getting well, or they may stop us leaving a relationship or changing a job. They block us. So as you can see, it's therefore really important to be able to identify, do I have a secondary gain? So what I would recommend to you is that if you do find yourself in a situation where you're not making progress, although there will be many other reasons apart from secondary gain as to why you're not making progress, one of the reasons may be because of this Hidden benefit. So it's always worth asking yourself, is there a secondary gain at play here? Or what is the secondary gain?

And when you do this, you may find yourself getting some valuable insights and information, which will help you to move forward. So thank you for joining me in this video. And remember, we heal a person, not a health condition, we heal a whole person's life, not an illness.