There are days when pulling the covers over your head and staying in bed seem well advised. Reactions to an antibiotic I was prescribed presented exactly that circumstance recently. The weather was dreary, and I felt like the loser in a prize fight, beat up, weak and dopey.

I am not a good patient. I am used to being healthy, and perhaps I take it for granted. To be clear, I do work out, eat carefully, and generally look after myself but I’ve been blessed with very few significant illnesses in my life so when something takes me down, I tend to want to fight through it rather than succumb. But you cannot hide from things that weaken, demoralize or depress; you cannot just pull the covers over your head.

There are several possible ways to deal with blows to one’s sense of well-being: acknowledge them and accept that however unpleasant they may be at the moment, they are not necessarily permanent; self-medicate with your substance of choice (an approach that almost always leads to a much worse outcome); hide from them and pretend they don’t exist-- an equally poor choice; or use them as opportunities to change your outlook.

I prefer the latter. I’m a fairly resilient person but not more than others I know who have managed to deal with far more and far more serious situations than I have encountered. The question that invariably occurs to me when I am on the wrong side of something is, what can I learn from this? So, it was interesting to read in a medical journal that positive imaging and imaginative exercises have been shown to offer chronically ill patients significant relief. To be clear, I am talking about those who suffered from both physical as well as psychological or emotional ailments.

If you doubt this could be true, spend a little time reading up on what is often referred to as the placebo effect. In brief, this is how physicians and researchers describe the palpable benefits conferred on patients who believe they have been given something that will address their ailments. It is startling that a percentage of patients improve even though all they have received is a sugar pill, metaphoric or otherwise. But even more interesting is that in many cases patients who were informed of the fact they had received a placebo continued to improve.

It would be easy to dismiss this as anomalous or trivialize it as the power of positive thinking, but I am not so quick to do either. I would suggest to you that the healing power at work here is faith. I mean, that these patients believed they would improve and so they did. If that isn’t faith than I don’t know what is.

Let’s take this from another perspective. It isn’t too hard for most of us to recall a point in our lives, perhaps one that is on-going, where stress induced by worry over things we cannot readily control made us feel unwell, mentally and even physically. It is all too common. Frankly, just reading the news—if anyone still does that these days, is cause for depression. Regardless of your political persuasion we live in unsettling times with—as the scripture put it, wars and rumors of wars, financial adversity, a retrograde movement in social reform, challenges to our environment that are more than speculative, manifesting as storms, fires and floods of unprecedented proportion. I could go on, but you get my point.

Coping with this seemingly endless barrage of bad news requires faith. Faith that we will prevail in the end, faith that we are not simply victims of life’s vicissitudes, and faith in the human proposition. But do not mistake me, it also requires that we acknowledge our limitations and seek help. None of us is so strong as to carry the burdens of life alone. Well maybe there are some who can and I have just not met them, but for most of us, help, be it personal, professional or spiritual is the one thing that can get us through the hard stuff. You may be surprised that I did not mention faith in God. That’s because I know how complicated we humans can be when it comes to the subject of a personal relationship with that higher power.

Instead I want to substitute the word Universe here. Not because I am trying to confuse or be indirect, but simply to suggest a power that many more people can readily accept as a force that is at work in their lives. The funny thing is that those who believe that the Universe is benign and not malevolent are equipped to handle the setbacks and challenges all of us encounter. Their faith is built on two things, the recognition that they alone are not able to overcome all the challenges they encounter, and that the outcome –whatever it may be in the near term, will lead to something positive in the end.

That faith leads to a tangible well-being, a sense of thankfulness for the blessings already received, and an awareness that seeking help in contending with disease, depression, dismay or any other ailment is positive, even if the help is nothing more than knowing you are not alone. It’s not sleight of hand that you could substitute God for Universe, I was transparent about that. But I hope the point is not missed—that whether we believe in a Universe that wishes us good, or in a God that does so, it is through this faith that we prevail. To be sure, these are not sugar pills, or placebos for overcoming adversity. It’s not a game in which we can pretend to have such faith, it is very real, and when we practice it, we have taken the most important step toward the outcomes we desire.