Sixth Anniversary of Healing and a Medical Whirlwind
Every year my mind-body healing anniversary comes up in April, I am again filled with gratitude at the miraculous gift that mind-body healing has been in my life. But this year when I passed my sixth anniversary, I forgot to notice. I have been dealing with some extreme symptoms that I’ve since discovered are due to perimenopause. These months of heavy bleeding and pain, with the fears and unknowns to why it was happening, has reminded me a little too much of my years of struggle with chronic symptoms before discovering the mind-body connection link.
These last three months have been filled with doctor’s visits, bloodwork, ultrasounds, new medication, a medical procedure and waiting–so much waiting. As my doctor and I tried to understand what was really going on, old fears rose up in me, as if they’d been just under the surface, in case I needed them. I’ve dealt with days of anxiety where I feared there might be a life-threatening cause to my symptoms.
Thankfully the scary diagnosis has been ruled out, the symptoms are now under control and I’m gaining my energy back. But being thrust into such a medical whirlwind has been eerily similar to what life was like for me before the spring of 2017. Though there’s a medical cause to what I’ve been going through recently, this experience has still been difficult for me emotionally. My brain remembers the decades I spent in constant search of a cause and cure, not finding answers, fearing there must be a hidden medical issue under all of my chronic symptoms. In short, I’ve been majorly triggered by these last few months.
Because of these distractions, I didn’t remember until mid-April that I’d missed celebrating my sixth anniversary of mind-body healing. When I checked my calendar, I realized for the first time that I began learning about mind-body science and recovery on April 1, 2017. How appropriately strange that the day I started this journey is one often celebrated as “April Fool’s Day,” a day to play tricks and jokes on others.
How I Wrestled with Accepting the Mind-Body Cause
There were quite a number of reasons to feel foolish six years ago, while I wrestled with believing that my chronic symptoms could be due to the mind-body connection. I knew that my symptoms were very real, but hadn’t understood that physically real symptoms can have a psychological root cause. As I moved towards accepting this new mind-body diagnosis, I began to hope that I might be able to recover. But I also felt a little embarrassed, or that somehow I had done this to myself. I felt tricked by my mind and body, and wanted to instantly get over this nasty prank my subconscious had played on me.
“How could this have happened?” I wondered. I’d gone through years of therapy, met with a spiritual director, and had a strong support network in family and friends. I couldn’t believe that my symptoms could be due to unprocessed trauma, repressed emotions, and life stress. “Haven’t I worked hard on emotional healing already?” I’d asked myself. I felt emotionally aware and healthy when I discovered mind-body healing, so I thought surely this couldn’t apply to me.
But it did. I had worked hard to heal emotionally, but no one had told me how raw and incredibly strong emotions, like anger, can be hard to access or be present to, and that these emotions get repressed and stuck in our bodies. All of the talk therapy work I’d done had stayed on the conscious level, and it did help me process difficult experiences. But my therapists didn’t know how to assist me in accessing and releasing the deeply held rage, shame, and fear I’d repressed because of childhood wounds. I’m not sure either of us knew those repressed emotions were there because they were safely tucked away in my chronic symptoms. Though I quickly learned that repressed emotions can cause symptoms, and then I had to let go of blaming myself for not getting therapy “right” and instead recognize I lacked the correct information, and so did my therapists.
How Chronic Symptoms, Medical Diagnoses and Emotions Relate to Mind-Body Healing
Perpetually repressing strong emotions created such an inner conflict within my mind and body, that my brain produced many different chronic symptoms over the years, such as: nausea, constipation and loose stools, back pain, fatigue, brain fog, shooting pain down my leg and up my back, wrist and hand pain, neck pain, jaw pain with headaches, foot pain and swelling, dizziness and shortness of breath, among others.
And because of these many symptoms I experienced for nearly three decades, I saw more medical practitioners than I can count. They ordered medical tests that usually came back finding there was nothing wrong with me. Then they proceeded to diagnose me with TMJ, whiplash injury, fibromyalgia, CFS, sciatica, IBS, POTS, and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). EDS is a genetic connective tissue disorder that causes hypermobility and other medical issues in the body. When I received this diagnosis my practitioner thought it was causing my sciatica and chronic pain. But now that I no longer experience either, I know my EDS diagnosis and my hypermobility, was not causing my pain, but that the mind-body connection was to blame.
I initially used my long list of diagnoses as a way to argue against the mind-body cause. I had very real symptoms and the diagnoses to explain them, so how could my symptoms be due to the mind-body connection? And I knew I wasn’t making up these symptoms, they were real, and my diagnoses were proof.
What I didn’t understand at first was the difference between psychosomatic and psychophysiologic symptoms. Mind-body symptoms are not psychosomatic, they are not made up or imagined. They are not just in our heads, despite what many medical practitioners have often told us. As we learn from the mind-body practitioner guide, Hidden From View, by Dr. Howard Schubiner and Dr. Alan Abbass, mind-body symptoms are psychophysiologic, meaning they are physically real symptoms, like back pain, headaches, nausea, dizziness or fatigue, but they are caused by the danger response in the subconscious. In his Ted Talk, “Why Things Hurt,” Professor Lorimer Mosely tells us the brain is the source of all pain in the body, and it creates chronic symptoms due to psychological stressors. One simple example is blushing, which causes a physical change in our cheeks due to adrenaline activated by an emotion. We feel embarrassed, we experience a physical reaction. Mind-body symptoms are the same, they are physically real but have a psychological root cause.
When I was first learning about this healing approach, I wondered how I could have been deceived by my brain as I struggled through decades of symptoms. Why didn’t I find out the true cause sooner? I could have saved myself, my husband and my kids from years of struggle and so much money we invested in trying to get better. I felt like my mind had betrayed me, that I had let myself be a fool, duped by my own nervous system.
But the truth is that when the brain creates pain and other chronic symptoms, the subconscious is protecting us from what feels dangerous: difficult memories, past trauma, current life stressors and strong emotions. So instead of feeling grief, sadness, regret, or even deep anger or rage, our subconscious decides we must avoid these emotions. They feel threatening based on our past experiences, so we push them down inside our bodies.
We can’t hold in the powerful force of emotions without consequences. In a way, the brain decides it is safer to have back pain, migraines, dizziness, anxiety, insomnia, depression or other mind-body symptoms, than it is to feel and process difficult emotions. So in a sense, our deeper selves are perpetuating our symptoms, but with the best of intentions.
And when we experience these difficult symptoms over time, we learn to expect them to come, solidifying the neural pathway links between our minds and bodies. We fear, worry and sometimes excessively focus on our symptoms, which creates a powerful fear spiral that keeps us locked in symptoms that are often fluctuating and increasing. The hope we have in mind-body healing is that we have the power to break this fear cycle and take our lives back.
How We Heal
But how do we heal from mind-body symptoms?
- We rule out major medical causes, and learn how to rule in the mind-body cause.
- We learn that Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), or Mind-Body Syndrome (MBS), (discovered by Dr. John Sarno, and continued by Dr. Howard Schubiner, Alan Gordon, and others) creates very real symptoms that we can recover from. Mind-body knowledge and education is the foundation to recovering from chronic symptoms.
- We take steps to change our relationship to symptoms by understanding we are medically safe. Then we incorporate mind-body practices and pain reprocessing therapy to reduce fear, increase safety, restore a sense of calm, and express our emotions. This includes somatic meditations, writing practices, reflection exercises, utilizing embodied affirmations, listening to healing stories, returning to body movement and so much more, depending on each individual’s needs.
- We also look at our stories, when symptoms started, what was happening in our lives, which helps us understand what we’re holding onto that might need to be processed and released in order to recover. This is often where I start with my clients, which helps them see the links between their lives, minds and symptoms, often uncovering an emotional root cause. These links can sometimes be hard to find on our own.
There are some who read a mind-body science book, like The Mind-Body Prescription by Dr. John Sarno, for example, and then they instantly recover. But for others of us, myself included, it’s a much more winding path to healing. And doesn’t it make sense that it might take longer to recover when we know the root cause of our symptoms are due to subconscious processes we aren’t aware of?
This has been true for me. I no longer live a life dominated by chronic symptoms but I do have times when symptoms pop up, and then I know I have more emotional work to do. Sometimes I simply need to name how I’m feeling, or what I need and the symptoms dissolve. Other times life is touching on old fear or shame patterns, and I need to remember what is true and not slip back into limiting beliefs. Mind-body healing has led me to emotional work I didn’t know I still needed to work on when I discovered this approach six years ago.
But I needed to learn how to set boundaries, to make space for myself and my needs. I needed to stop pressuring myself and working hard to please others and instead develop more self-compassionate ways of being. I’m learning how to fully love and accept myself, to finally allow myself to live from my center, from who I really am. I used to let fear, anger and hurt keep me on the run from my deeper self. But I’ve worked hard to heal from past hurts and to live a more authentic life, a journey I am still on!
Healing Can Take Longer Than We Expect
And as I’ve reflected on this six year anniversary, I’ve realized that this healing path and finding my way in life after chronic symptoms dominated so much of it, has been so much harder than I ever thought it might be. I lived most of my life disconnected from my deeper self and creative gifts. So it has taken time to become comfortable being fully who I am. Maybe others do not struggle as much as I have to give myself the permission and freedom to pursue what I love and feel called to as a creative writer, coach and teacher.
Because it has been a hard emotional, creative and spiritual healing path, I have gained so much more than if I’d just read a book in one weekend and had my symptoms permanently fade away. At the time, I would have wanted that, don’t get me wrong, and some of my symptoms did resolve rather quickly. But the emotional healing has taken so much longer and that’s because it had so much more to teach me.
And I’m still learning and growing, like all of us. If you’re like me, and recovering from chronic mind-body symptoms and the emotions underneath them has been hard, be encouraged, don’t give up, healing is coming. You are not the exception. You are not the one person mind-body healing can’t help. And if you feel this way, you’re not alone in thinking this might not work for you. Sometimes when healing takes longer, the journey has so much more to give to us than we could receive if we experienced a quick fix.
And if the process is taking longer than you’d like, I encourage you to get all the support and help you need. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my many helpers along the way in therapists, spiritual directors, coaches and friends helping me see what I couldn’t find alone. They’ve made such a huge impact on my healing journey and life.
Looking back, I’m so glad that I didn’t let that initial feeling of embarrassment about the true cause of my symptoms keep me from mind-body healing. I know now that this approach led me to the truth of what was going on in my mind and body. And when it comes down to it, that’s what I’d been after for most of my life. Truth, freedom and healing came in an unexpected way, with a life saving message, and I am so thankful that after 27 years of symptoms, I was finally ready to hear it.
I didn’t receive an instant physical and emotional cure, and becoming who I really am, learning to set myself free from old trauma patterns of fear, shame, and repression, has been harder and taken so much longer than I thought it might. But one step at a time, I continue to access emotional healing and freedom for myself.
And I hope you will do the same, because all the gifts we gain along the way are more than worth it. Like a recent client of mine said to me, “this work has forever changed my life, you’re literally changing people’s lives!” But I assured her that I’m not the one who changed her life, she is! And this is true for you too, you have the power to heal your symptoms and take your life back. Mind-body healing helps us recover from symptoms, heal emotionally, and live the life we’re made for. And if all of that takes six years or even more, that’s ok with me. This work has given me physical, emotional and creative healing, and has led me to the work that I love with my clients and students. Though I did begin this journey on April Fool’s Day, the truth is, the joke isn’t on me, this healing path is real. And I would have been a fool to not pursue it.
