“FEAR IS THE SICKNESS”
“Have we gotten it all wrong? When we can move beyond fear into curiosity, we find that illness is the body’s wisdom playing out in its own highly designed and incredibly personal way.”
i have long believed fear is the root of all our problems. It’s a powerful tool for manifesting what we don’t want.
This is an interesting article with many informative links. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/fear-sickness
JOY
Lost, confused, anxious, and filled with uncertainty, a common complaint or malady of these times and of simply being a human being. It would be rare to find a singular human being of moderate age who has not dealt with these feelings. It seems to be a part of life. The causes are many and the feelings are real. Feelings And everything is about uncertainty. What do you really know of the future. My dear friend’s son’s wife is recovering from a double mastectomy, a brother in law is in chemotheray for pancreatic cancer, my best friend for 22 years and a high school friend are both struggling with Rheumatoid arthritis. Many clients have serious health issues. Being ill increases stress and the irony is that most diseases are caused by stress, is stress like a virus settling into our psyche that then creates physical symptoms which birth greater stress? Now there’s a novel thought!
Here are some ideas you might find helpful. Imagine how someone else would handle the same situation. If you had a big moral question and you are a Christian you might ask how Jesus would handle it. In other words, if something in the future does happen (a negative event) how do yo deal with it, cope with it? How would somebody with the requisite skills cope with it? When you figure that out you just practice it.
Everything is uncertain, you don’t know for sure that you wake up tomorrow, the future is uncertain. I found a quote from my favorite mystic today and in reading it I recognized what is keeping me coping, I am helping others. “…how happy those should be that have been called to a purposefulness in relieving suffering… in giving hope to those who find life’s pathway in the material world beset with shadows and doubts.”
You don’t have to be a therapist to help others but only be there or help in some way you can best.
I read about this “exercise”, the exercise is to write one sentence each night, a sentence about the most important thought or event in that day. Sometimes the sentence reflects something learned. I only started recently, join me in this experiment if you wish. We can share our experiences.
Recently anxiety has overtaken depression in the realms of most popular psychological malady. As a human being I too at times become anxious. As a therapist many people come to see me due to anxiety. Because we are mind in a body, discovering the thoughts that create the anxiety and lessening or eliminating those thoughts is the path to calm.
“Many of us don’t realize that every thought, word and action we say and do in life is transmitted via the etheric and nervous system to every organ, cell and molecule of the body. In less than a second your energy system starts working towards your choices and actions. If these are not congruent with your beliefs, goals and values, the result will be a physical or chemical imbalance in the body.”
“We are all motivated at a subconscious level to stay on the path of our purpose. When we deviate or refrain from this path, for whatever reason, our inner being starts working against us, alerting us to look inside ourselves and at what we are avoiding, denying, or resisting. If we refuse to listen, we become anxious, stressed and plagued with fear and confusion. When we deny what we feel, we feel trapped and become ungrounded. Life feels chaotic.”
Here’s a simple thing to do: when you notice your mind saying something unkind about you, a word like “you idiot” (one of my past favorites when I fail at something) note that word and banish it. Forbid you to call you an idiot. In time you will stop doing that to yourself. Do this with three words and you will be happier.
It is said, and I agree, that when the conscious mind is in disagreement with our subconscious mind, the subconscious mind always wins out. This is something to consider, the implications are far reaching, everything is influenced by a level of our mind that by definition is sub or below awareness of your mind reading these words.
Subconsious patterns of thought, attitudes, dictate behaviors carried out by the “conscious” mind. Negative and positive attitudes and behaviors are constantly influencing the very processes of our most intricate, diverse, and interconnected systems of our body leading to disease or leading to great health.
My mother had rheumatoid arthritis and I knew her very well. She fit the following thought pattern for this disease quite well.
“ARTHRITIS is a dis-ease that comes from a constant pattern of criticism. First of all, criticism of the self, and then criticism of other people. Arthritic people often attract a lot of criticism because it is their pattern to criticize. They are cursed with “perfectionism,” the need to be perfect at all times in every situation. ” YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE ~ Louise Hay
Could my mother have gotten well? I will always believe it possible, possible if she changed her thinking. Most people live in world where real change of thoughts and attitudes is hard to do and harder to know to do.
Such is life.
I recently had a client with secondary gain. Secondary gain is defined as: “any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness”.
A man goes to his doctor because he has a chicken attached to his head. This is a problem, having a chicken attached to his head. The doctor examines him and asks him to come back the next week. When he returns the doctor says he can remove the attached chicken. The man pauses and thinks for a minute and replies he doesn’t want the chicken removed. The doctor is astonished and asks “why?” The man replies, because I like the eggs.
My client has a difficult problem with migraines. When I mentioned wouldn’t it be nice to be free of the migraines and return to work instead of subsisting on disability, the reply was that that might mean going back to school to catch up to the current technology in the former job. Rather they would prefer to be well enough to engage in the volunteer work they enjoyed but not well enough to be off of the disability.
I bring this up because many of us have enough “benefits” from our problems to want those problems to continue rather than face the change or uncertainty of returning to full mental or physical health.
As a side note: Migraines affect an estimated 38 million Americans. They can strike both young and old, but a majority of sufferers are women, and/or between the ages of 35 and 55.
Worldwide, as many as 1 billion people are affected, making migraine the third most prevalent illness in the world.
It is amazing to me how the universe works sometimes. I attended a retreat seminar last weekend hosted by the local chapter of the ARE. The key presenter was Dr. C Norman Shealy. He’s a wonderfully intelligent MD and PHD with numerous patented inventions in healthcare. So, I was shocked when opened his presentation saying that the number one thing he believes anyone should do when confronting a health issue is to get a past life regression. Up until that moment I wasn’t sure this retreat was for me, and then I was enthralled.
I try not to stand out as too woo woo because I desire to help as many people as possible in my practice. Someone who comes to me with congestive heart failure and a mainstream religion needs the immediate help I can provide and I don’t need to lessen that help by talking about things they would find uncomfortable.
Now this has me thinking about how I can add this as a possibility for more clients.
One of the very next things he said also rocked my boat. He suggested that Autogenics (self-hypnosis) would cure 80% of all problems people have, but that alas, most people lack the self discipline or motivation to set aside 10 – 20 minutes twice a day to engage this.
He also said that all our troubles are the result of fear. I’ve known this for awhile but, this was so validating.
I’m now on track to implement these ideas into my practice asap.
Here’s one more wonderful synchronicity, Norman and my long time friend Dr Elmer Cranton go way back in time when they started the American Holidtic Health Association. Life some days is amazing.
I have a friend in Minneapolis, his name is Dale and he has a lot of energy. His secret is naps. Now research is beginning to show that Dale is right, naps work. Here is a video about taking naps and breaks.
I happened across this video and found it very stimulating.
Her story of disease and discovery is quite wonderful.
I hope you find it helpful. It confirms the power of the subconscious mind and the intent of our conscious mind to find an answer.
In my early thirties in the sarcophagus of the great pyramid. There is no place like this on earth. Ginger Duke and I spent 16 hours alone there in 1984.
I’ve been meditating on and off since my mid twenties. I see it as one of three things most important to our growth as souls in the space/time continuum. Now we have a Harvard study that says meditation regrows our brain. Regrowing the brain is man amazing discovery.
Study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program (as well as a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology) stated that meditation practitioners aren’t just feeling better. They are literally undergoing changes in brain structure that create the associated sustained boosts in positive and relaxed feelings.
Here is a link: http://simplecapacity.com/2015/12/harvard-mri-study-meditation-rebuilds-your-brains-gray-matter/
I was brought up in a environment based on shame. My mom, bless her, had a capacity to make you feel like you were innately bad. As Brene explains: “Shame drives two big tapes — “never good enough” — and, if you can talk it out of that one, “who do you think you are?” The thing to understand about shame is, it’s not guilt. Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.”…. Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.”
This is a very entertaining talk that deals with a common topic influencing many of us, lessening our self-esteem. For women, shame is, do it all, do it perfectly and never let them see you sweat.
Research by Mahalik at Boston College. He asked, what do women need to do to conform to female norms? The top answers in this country: nice, thin, modest and use all available resources for appearance. When he asked about men, what do men in this country need to do to conform with male norms, the answers were: always show emotional control, work is first, pursue status and violence.
I think you will really like this video.