The body-mind team
October 22, 2005 | 12:00am
Do medical doctors have all the answers? When they say you have had a stroke, can any one of them ever really tell you why? No. They just say you had one. When they say you have cancer, they cannot tell you why. Yet for some people they have a sense that they had a stroke because they were under tremendous pressure – running short on resources, did not know how to collect on debts, repressed too much anger. There are many emotional reasons that prepare the ground for a heart attack, a stroke, cancer or even Alzheimer’s Disease. Medical doctors don’t know everything about it yet. They belong still to the school of thought that separates the emotions from the body. They have only studied the human body thoroughly but that’s not all there is.
I bought myself a recent issue of Newsweek, which featured stress and the human heart. I am a stroke survivor. The article itself is titled "The Good Heart." It has a subtitle: "Diet and exercise are not the whole secret to cardiovascular health. Mounting evidence suggests that your psychological outlook is just as important." If you do not read beyond this, I think you have read enough. Psychological outlook is very important in our entire lives. That’s why I keep going to the workshops of the Friends of Jung Society, because I believe that and need to throw clarity on my personality all the time.
When my mother arrived with Alzheimer’s Disease, one of my friends volunteered her geriatrics doctor from St. Luke’s who would make a house call with a nurse and a psychiatrist. Immediately I thought he had it right. There would be a team present. The doctor would look at the state of her body; the psychiatrist the state of her mind (or of my mind) and the nurse to assist and document. They were a team, a body-mind team.
More and more I realize this is what we need today. Doctors must face their patients with a body-mind team. Now, I don’t know about psychiatrists because I haven’t met one who made a really good psychologist. Psychiatrists are medical doctors too and they can prescribe medicine. They will give you Prozac or lithium when you have a chemical imbalance, but they will not know the cause of the imbalance. They tell you it just happens. To me, they are not very convincing, either.
I ran into a mother whose daughter once was depressed, diagnosed as a manic-depressive, who, like me, felt strongly about finding out what made her daughter’s chemicals trip. Her daughter was then living with her boyfriend who had just asked her to marry him. She was 28, not that young, and suddenly she slipped into a very heavy depression. A psychiatrist tried to correct the imbalance with very slow success. Then she got pregnant, ran awash with hormones, snapped out of her depression, left her boyfriend, had her baby by herself, raised him all by herself. Then about eight years later she fell in love with a foreigner. He asked her to come over and live with him. She slipped into a deep depression again.
"I told her," the mother said, "I think you have a deep fear of commitment that you are not aware of. Your father and I separated when you were only three. That must have hurt you profoundly. That’s what must cause your depressions. This is the second time. Each depression came after a request for commitment."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"Nothing," she said, "she was depressed when I told her. I don’t know if she was listening. I am her mother but she is an adult and you know how useless mothers are to adults. I am convinced that is the trigger. Anyway, she is better now."
Maybe the mother was right. There is a trigger, a reason that sets off the disease. The mind, that’s your personality and your soul, seems to create a mood in the body. This Newsweek piece says to save yourself. Dr. Dean Ornish recommends that you love somebody, a child, another person, a hobby, and you will feel better. Otherwise I think your mind will create a mood in your body. If it is a particular quiet negative mood, it sets the grounds for cancer to settle in and grow. If you are a Type D personality, which I am, then you will have a heart attack or stroke.
As I grow older and wiser I realize many things. One of the things I have realized is that answers are so hard to come by. You ask someone, "Will you make me happy?" If he says yes, dump him on the spot because the truth is both of you don’t know, will not know until you try it out and work it out together over time. You don’t know if your personalities match, and matching once, twice, thrice, will you match forever? No, because the two of you are both growing, not always in the same direction. To understand each other better we have to know psychology, how his mind or soul works, how our mind or soul works. That takes an awful lot of study and an awful lot of time.
Nevertheless I am happy to read "The Good Heart" article. It shows that in the USA the doctors are becoming aware of the role psychologists play in the diagnosis of disease. Very slowly but fairly surely, one day we will have the medical body-mind team to meet us and diagnose us. I really look forward to that day because then we can have some real medical answers with less useless medicines.
Please send your comments to lilypad@skyinet.net or visit www.lilypadlectures.com.
I bought myself a recent issue of Newsweek, which featured stress and the human heart. I am a stroke survivor. The article itself is titled "The Good Heart." It has a subtitle: "Diet and exercise are not the whole secret to cardiovascular health. Mounting evidence suggests that your psychological outlook is just as important." If you do not read beyond this, I think you have read enough. Psychological outlook is very important in our entire lives. That’s why I keep going to the workshops of the Friends of Jung Society, because I believe that and need to throw clarity on my personality all the time.
When my mother arrived with Alzheimer’s Disease, one of my friends volunteered her geriatrics doctor from St. Luke’s who would make a house call with a nurse and a psychiatrist. Immediately I thought he had it right. There would be a team present. The doctor would look at the state of her body; the psychiatrist the state of her mind (or of my mind) and the nurse to assist and document. They were a team, a body-mind team.
More and more I realize this is what we need today. Doctors must face their patients with a body-mind team. Now, I don’t know about psychiatrists because I haven’t met one who made a really good psychologist. Psychiatrists are medical doctors too and they can prescribe medicine. They will give you Prozac or lithium when you have a chemical imbalance, but they will not know the cause of the imbalance. They tell you it just happens. To me, they are not very convincing, either.
I ran into a mother whose daughter once was depressed, diagnosed as a manic-depressive, who, like me, felt strongly about finding out what made her daughter’s chemicals trip. Her daughter was then living with her boyfriend who had just asked her to marry him. She was 28, not that young, and suddenly she slipped into a very heavy depression. A psychiatrist tried to correct the imbalance with very slow success. Then she got pregnant, ran awash with hormones, snapped out of her depression, left her boyfriend, had her baby by herself, raised him all by herself. Then about eight years later she fell in love with a foreigner. He asked her to come over and live with him. She slipped into a deep depression again.
"I told her," the mother said, "I think you have a deep fear of commitment that you are not aware of. Your father and I separated when you were only three. That must have hurt you profoundly. That’s what must cause your depressions. This is the second time. Each depression came after a request for commitment."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"Nothing," she said, "she was depressed when I told her. I don’t know if she was listening. I am her mother but she is an adult and you know how useless mothers are to adults. I am convinced that is the trigger. Anyway, she is better now."
Maybe the mother was right. There is a trigger, a reason that sets off the disease. The mind, that’s your personality and your soul, seems to create a mood in the body. This Newsweek piece says to save yourself. Dr. Dean Ornish recommends that you love somebody, a child, another person, a hobby, and you will feel better. Otherwise I think your mind will create a mood in your body. If it is a particular quiet negative mood, it sets the grounds for cancer to settle in and grow. If you are a Type D personality, which I am, then you will have a heart attack or stroke.
As I grow older and wiser I realize many things. One of the things I have realized is that answers are so hard to come by. You ask someone, "Will you make me happy?" If he says yes, dump him on the spot because the truth is both of you don’t know, will not know until you try it out and work it out together over time. You don’t know if your personalities match, and matching once, twice, thrice, will you match forever? No, because the two of you are both growing, not always in the same direction. To understand each other better we have to know psychology, how his mind or soul works, how our mind or soul works. That takes an awful lot of study and an awful lot of time.
Nevertheless I am happy to read "The Good Heart" article. It shows that in the USA the doctors are becoming aware of the role psychologists play in the diagnosis of disease. Very slowly but fairly surely, one day we will have the medical body-mind team to meet us and diagnose us. I really look forward to that day because then we can have some real medical answers with less useless medicines.
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