Physical Illness, and the Mind-Body Connection
"The body is never ill or healthy, for it does no more than express messages from our consciousness."
~ Thorwald Dethlefsen
~ Thorwald Dethlefsen
Mind-Body Interactions
The descent from mind to body is a tricky one. When we develop physical symptoms or become ill, we naturally think the problem lies within the body itself. After all, that is where the problem manifests, and that is where we feel it. It may not occur to us that aspects of our mind could be playing a role in what is happening. But in fact, our mind does play a critical role in almost all physical symptoms and disease processes. Medical research over many years confirms this.
There is a lot of confusion in our culture regarding mind-body interactions. The term psychosomatic – as in psychosomatic illness – is often misunderstood to mean “it’s all in your head.” In fact, the word psychosomatic simply means: “Pertaining to or involving both the mind and the body.” That’s it. Psychosomatic symptoms are common; they affect everyone to some degree. Emotional states are eminently capable of inducing actual changes in the physical body, which are in turn felt and experienced by the person having them. The symptoms are not “all in your head,” they are in fact in your body. They are real, but they are often caused, or at a minimum exacerbated, by your state of mind, not by some random organic process taking place only in the body.
The concept of the mind influencing the body is not as strange as it might seem. In fact, we are all familiar with the many ways the mind interacts with the body. For example: the experience of having sweaty palms or butterflies in the stomach before giving a speech; being unable to sleep – even though you are exhausted – when worrying about finances; coming down with a cold or flu after a period of mental or physical stress. It is simply a fact that the mind has profound effects on the body and its many systems.
There is growing scientific evidence that all diseases and disorders are to some degree psychosomatic. This includes cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, migraine headaches, dementia, allergies, fatigue, autoimmune disorders, musculoskeletal pain, scoliosis, digestive disorders, insomnia, physical accidents, skin disorders, asthma, and many others. The rapidly expanding field of mind-body medicine is commonly called psychoneuroimmunology, or the study of the effect of the mind on health. There is now vast, and growing, scientific evidence that a person’s mind is capable of creating profound changes in the immune, nervous, endocrine, and other systems of the body, thereby potentially affecting every aspect of a person’s physical health.
"All physicians should be practitioners of 'holistic medicine' in the sense that
they recognize the interaction between mind and body."
~ John Sarno, M.D.
they recognize the interaction between mind and body."
~ John Sarno, M.D.
Let’s look at a small sampling of this scientific evidence:
Multiple Sclerosis. A 1958 study found that in nearly 90 percent of cases, before the onset of symptoms, patients experienced traumatic life events that threatened their security system. Much published research confirms that emotional stress plays a large role in the genesis of MS. Common contributing psychological factors were found to include: excessive emotional involvement with a parent; a lack of psychological independence; the inability to feel or express anger; and the inability to cope with difficult situations.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). A 1970 research article from Yale University reported that people with ALS shared two lifelong patterns: rigidly competent behavior including the inability to ask for or receive help; and the chronic avoidance of so-called negative feelings such as fear, anger, and sadness. The common pattern involves hard, steady work without a break and without any help from others. The life histories of people with ALS invariably involve emotional deprivation or loss in childhood. Self-denial, emotional repression, and a strong desire to be “nice” is nearly universal among this population.
Breast Cancer. A growing body of evidence supports that emotional stress is a major contributing cause of breast cancer. The evidence indicates that psychological stress profoundly impacts the hormones of the body, and hormones can have a significant impact on tumor growth and the immune system’s ability to destroy malignant cells. Research has suggested for decades that women are more prone to develop breast cancer if they were emotionally deprived in their childhoods, if they tend to repress emotions (especially anger), if they lack nurturing social relationships, and if they are the compulsively caregiving types. In a 1982 study, researchers interviewed 200 patients admitted to the hospital for a breast biopsy, before the pathology results were obtained. Researchers were able to predict the presence of cancer with 94 percent accuracy, judging by psychosocial factors alone.
All Cancers. A 1985 longitudinal study found that people who strongly repressed anger were 40 times more likely to die of cancer than those who did not. Emotional repression was also found to be the single greatest risk factor for death by any cause, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, and others.
Alzheimer’s Disease. The Nun Study, begun in 1986 at the University of Minnesota, is an ongoing longitudinal study to examine the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. The study has focused on 678 nuns, ranging from 75 to 103 years old when the study began. The retrospective research included the study of autobiographies hand-written by each nun upon entering the convent many years before when they were, on average, 23 years old. The research clearly showed that those nuns who wrote in simple, list-like sentences devoid of emotion were much more likely to end up with Alzheimer’s in later life than those who used lush, idea-dense, richly emotional language. Richness or poverty of language can be influenced by many factors, but chief among them is the quality of early emotional relationships. Children deprived of emotional nurturing commonly exhibit defensive responses including avoiding intimacy, fear of emotions, and dissociation from body sensations. Such repression of emotions is stressful, which may manifest as chronic hormonal and immune changes that could lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s. Much new research indicates that Alzheimer’s is an autoimmune disease, and unique anti-brain antibodies - the product of a confused immune system - have been identified.
Autoimmune Disorders. Research performed over that last 100 years has established a firm connection between stress and autoimmune disease, including rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, lupus, and dozens of others. In these disorders, a disturbed immune system reacts against the body’s own tissues. A 1969 study of people with rheumatoid arthritis in Maryland concluded that “despite the diversity in the group, the patients’ psychological characteristics, vulnerabilities, and life conflicts were remarkably similar.” One common characteristic noted was extreme stoicism – a deeply ingrained reluctance to seek help from others, usually a compensation for emotional needs ignored in childhood. Other qualities commonly present included perfectionism, repression of anger, and self-criticism.
A 1967 Australian study found that people with lupus were more likely to have experienced emotional deprivation in childhood associated with a dysfunctional parent-child relationship than were normal controls.
A 1987 study reviewing the medical literature concluded that “the weight of evidence from a variety of studies strongly suggests a role for psychologic stress in inducing, exacerbating, and effecting the ultimate outcome in rheumatoid disease.”
Musculoskeletal Pain. Dr. John Sarno has performed extensive research into the causes of chronic musculoskeletal pain for close to 40 years. He has concluded that the primary cause of most pain is not mechanical, such as a bulging disc, but rather the subconscious repression of painful emotions, primarily anger, as well as sadness, fear, shame, and other feelings. Repression of painful emotions results in the physiologic alteration of certain muscles, nerves, tendons and ligaments he calls the Tension Myositis Syndrome. This involves the action of the autonomic nervous system to “squeeze down” and reduce blood flow to specific tissues of the body, resulting in localized oxygen deprivation, irritation, inflammation and pain. His treatment program involves no physical intervention of any kind, and achieves around a 90% success rate in alleviating pain.
The Placebo Effect. Strong evidence for the impact the mind has on the body and our physical experiences is the well-known placebo effect. For many years and many hundreds of studies, people have reported improvement in a wide range of symptoms after taking an inert substance or undergoing a meaningless procedure. For example, a study published in the journal Science in 2001 reported that PET scans of Parkinson’s patients showed substantial increase in dopamine occupancy of D2 receptors in the brain after an injection of saline solution, presented as the patients’ standard medication. A 2002 study published in the journal Prevention and Treatment looked at the data used by the FDA in approving the use of SSRI drugs for treating depression. Analyzing data on six drugs from 38 studies, researchers found that nearly 80% of the improvement in depressive symptoms from the drug was replicated by the placebo treatment. Apparently, what people believe, what results they expect, and the meaning they may ascribe to a particular treatment, can profoundly impact their physical reality.
These studies – and many more could have been included here – all tell us the same thing: physical dis-ease is in many cases profoundly influenced by psychological factors, especially repression of emotions and the avoidance of painful feelings. Crucial survival strategies developed in our youth – such as denying our own needs, suppressing emotions, chronic distracting or staying busy, being good or perfect, and pleasing others – which served us well at one time, are now contributing to making us sick. And yet, in our culture, when we see a doctor for any sort of ailment, we are almost never asked about the stresses we are under, the quality of our relationships, our family and emotional history, or any other intimate details of our inner life. Rather, the physical symptom is commonly treated in a stand-alone fashion, as if the body and mind were unrelated. This is often a mistake, considering the immense impact that psychological factors can have on the systems of the body.
"Much disease could be prevented and healed if we fully understood the
scientific evidence verifying the mind-body unity."
~ Gabor Maté, M.D.
scientific evidence verifying the mind-body unity."
~ Gabor Maté, M.D.
Another Approach - Holistic Medicine
Although the clinical and experimental study of the mind-body relationship is a comparatively recent development in modern medicine, the concept is one that dates back to the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates wrote: “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” It finds a place in Galen’s system as “diseases of passion,” a concept that held sway from the second century until the mid-1800’s. The great French and German clinicians of the nineteenth century were all familiar with the principles of psychosomatic disease. During the twentieth century the field was for a while monopolized by psychoanalysts. The term “psychosomatic” was first used by Johann Heinroth in 1818, who regarded the body and soul as one.
The holistic approach primarily assumes that illness is simply part of our inherent nature. Anything we are unable or unwilling to face at the level of our consciousness will eventually descend into the body and manifest there. Illness is simply nature’s way of alerting us to the fact that something within our being is amiss. Something within our consciousness is unresolved, out of balance, and wants our attention. The symptom or disease is simply a messenger, a teacher, guiding us in the direction of healing and wholeness. We start with the physical symptoms, and follow them inward to the level of conscious awareness. And there, we work.
The process of healing often resembles the unraveling of a mystery, at least in the beginning. Physical and emotional symptoms and sensations serve as the starting point for the inquiry – they are our initial clues. Through guided inner exploration of the body and the felt-sense, the story starts to take shape. We assume the symptom contains the seed of healing within it. By working with the symptoms rather than against them, by accepting the pain or dysfunction or disease as it is, and seeking to understand it, interpret it, we gradually uncover the motivations of the symptoms. The reason for the illness, and the wisdom contained within it, starts to become apparent.
Along the way, events of the past often enter the picture, such as insults or wounds we experienced, ways we had to be in order to survive, as well as parts of us we had to suppress. Unfinished business is resolved. Unfelt feelings are felt. Abandoned parts of ourselves are reclaimed. Inauthentic parts of ourselves are released. We begin to recognize and connect with our own hearts, our own soul, our true destiny.
We often develop an understanding of what happened to us, and why the disease was necessary to bring us back onto our authentic life’s path. The overall purpose of doing this type of inner work is nothing less than becoming the person we were meant to be, and to live the life that we were meant to live.