Body And Mind

Heart and Soul

“Cancer is no more a disease of cells than a traffic jam is a disease of cars.” Sir David Smithers, Lancet. 

What if our illnesses are actually our teachers? What if we have the ability to heal ourselves by combining traditional medicine and our own internal work to address the issues causing us so much dis-ease? Our body’s last response to an unacceptable amount of stress in our lives may be a mutiny of sorts, an auto-mutiny, if you will.

I recently picked up a book by Gabor Mate, MD, written with his son, Daniel Mate, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. It’s mind-blowing, game-changing, life-saving work, and let me just say, it delivers. 

Mate is an incredible doctor, speaker, and teacher and, along with his son, has a powerful grasp of the latest research on healing our childhood (good and bad) adaptions to unprocessed experiences. We might think we’re adults, but we’re usually a combination of our past and present, unconsciously meshed together. No wonder there is no peace in the Middle East. I can’t enact peace in the damn suburbs.

Mate’s a find, but here’s the caveat, I want you to know I am focusing on my issues with autoimmune diseases and not trying to represent the entire book. As most of you know, who read my blog, I’ve been dealing with psoriasis for years. Mine comes in the form of scaly sores that plague the skin on my lower legs during periods of unusual stress, which trigger the outbreaks. It’s totally gross, so try not to imagine it. 

Traditionally, it can be treated with creams and sunlight, but that doesn’t always work. The final option is a variety of oral medications that can be toxic to the body, so I have been avoiding that scenario at all costs. 

I kept telling myself there had to be another option, and that’s when I stumbled upon Gabor Mate’s talk. He made a little too much sense to me. 

I checked him out. 

He seemed legit, so I purchased his book on healing. A few days later, it arrived in the mail, all 562 pages. I’ll try to condense it down to 1,500 words. 

You’re welcome. 

He captured my attention when he quoted Buddha’s timeless collection of sayings in the Dhammapada, which claim, and I paraphrase, the world we believe in becomes the world we live in. 

For example (which I stole from his book), if you see the world as a hostile place where only winners thrive, you might become aggressive, selfish, and grandiose to survive—not the world, but the way you see it. Late in life, you will confirm this view by gravitating towards competitive environments, reinforcing its validity. Gabor Mate says our beliefs “are not only self-fulfilling, they are world-building.” 

Or world-diminishing in some cases.

There is a strong and established relationship (this is not victim blaming, it’s simply a factor, a clue, a connection) between our unresolved childhood experiences, our adaptive way of being in the adult world, the stress we encounter, and the onset of autoimmune diseases, claims Mate. The role of trauma (not the experience of trauma, but how our life experiences shape us on the inside), psychological stress, and tension play an enormous role in the development and longevity of autoimmune diseases. 

It’s good to be Cheryl.

Historically, the role of trauma, stress, and anxiety in the onset of disease has not been fully explored, but that is changing, and according to Mate, if we want to heal our ailments completely, we have to go on an interior journey, remove ourselves from the stress and/or stressors that are causing the problem in the first place, and to bring it home, if you will, we might have to replace our outdated beliefs with something more salubrious and life-giving.

Yes, I believe that was a run-on sentence, deal. 

We have to look at this as an opportunity to actually hold our childish selves with love and understanding in order to heal instead of a follow-the-yellow-brick road sort of journey, where we end up in the Emerald City, but we’re barefoot, there’s a bitch with a broomstick flying around, and a bunch of hostile monkeys.

Isn’t that always the case.

I love the Hindhu perspective on the fourth stage of life. Yes, I’m jumping topics, it’s how my monkey brain works, try and stay with me. In the Hindhu faith, when you become a grandparent (they call this the forest dweller stage), you are supposedly no longer responsible for being a householder, and this is your time to go out into the forest (think metaphorically) and discover yourself. So, if you have the ability to pluck yourself out of life and go Eat, Pray, and Love like Julia Roberts, that’s great, but most of us don’t have the luxury.

Or do we? 

We need to find a way to separate ourselves from the normal turmoil of everyday life, even if it’s only temporary, so we can explore the viability of our current environment and the evolutions of ourselves that have developed over time. These are connected to current and historical realities that form our core. A therapist can be helpful with this process. It could be as simple as remembering a time in your childhood when you felt scared, ignored, maybe criticized, or manipulated and just sit with that younger version of yourself, feel her pain, and just try to embrace it. Bring tissues.

Sometimes, I like to think of myself as a hurricane, which, under certain conditions, can become a category all its own. What I really want is to defuse the prevailing conditions so they don’t cause any more damage to myself and others, but often, I just end up feeling disempowered. It’s a lose-lose situation.

And the psoriasis only gets worse.

I once asked my doctor about the connection between my diet and psoriasis. He said, and I quote, “As a doctor, I am trained to deal with the symptoms of your illness with medication and protocol. I am not trained to address the origins and/or dietary aspects of treating skin disease.” Then he added rather sheepishly, “If you were to ask my mother, she would agree with you a hundred percent.” Now what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

If doctors who stray from the medical orthodoxy can feel intimidated and misunderstood, what do you think patients experience when they ask for alternative methods to standard treatments? 

As in most auto-immune conditions, childhood patterning can lead people to be overconscientious, hyper-responsible, and emotionally stoic about their own needs—as well as the current stresses preceding the illness, such as interpersonal conflict, family crisis, loss of a relationship or stress at work. 

Here’s the real question Mate poses at the end of chapter 5: “What if disease is not, in fact, a fixed entity but a dynamic process expressive of real lives in concrete situations? What new (or old) pathways to healing, unthinkable within the prevailing medical view, might follow from such a paradigmatic shift in perspective?”

Now, where would that leave our flourishing pharmaceutical industry if we could all participate in our own healing?

The thing is, essential questions about our lives can not go unasked. We have an intuition about the factors contributing to our illnesses, but we lack the confidence to let this knowledge guide us in recovery. Yes, according to Mate, it is possible to recover fully from auto-immune diseases, but it is more common to just deal with the symptoms and let the source go unheeded. 

The problem with this solution is that diseases are more adaptable than we happen to be, and over time, they can become resilient to traditional medications, which can become less effective or too toxic to survive long-term. 

The only options left to us are ongoing suffering or turning towards alternative sources of healing.

Recovery often requires us to confront instead of avoid our long-buried experiences that have shaped the person we’ve become and continue to do so. Sometimes, we bury our trauma to protect ourselves and/or our children, but that’s not a solution. It’s avoidance, and it has consequences. 

I’m a people pleaser, most likely as a very tender age, I had to make the decision to belong (meaning act according to parental pressure and cultural norms of the time) instead of being my authentic self, which I imagine, as a highly active toddler, was not the easiest type of child to control. Our most important need is belonging and most children will adapt their behavior to get what they need to survivie. It shapes us. And there is a wisdom to these sorts of adaptions, it is how we survive our childhood, but it follows us into our adult lives, our relationships and way of being in the world.

Mate stresses that trauma is not what happened to us. It’s what happens inside of us because of our traumatic experiences. How we internalize our experiences shapes the person we have become, therefore simultaneously affecting our future and our predisposition for developing autoimmune diseases.

Knowing this small piece of our developmental history changes everything, because once we’re aware of our tentencies, we can alter them, and allow our authentic selves to finally emerge. And guess what? Not everyone is going to appreciate your metamorphasis. Do it anyway.

In today’s world, many of us find ourselves in situations where we have to hyperfunction to keep everything from collapsing, especially when raising children, dealing with complicated relationships, or surviving stressful work environments and loneliness. Such hyperfunctioning, on top of hidden inner distress, is a recurring theme among many autoimmune sufferers, claims Mate. 

Our bodies react before we do when we experience periods of grief, stress, and situations that defy resolution. We end up with a full-body auto-immune response that only adds to the discomfort of our lives. Then, we have to figure out our recovery because medicine might deal with the symptoms, but unless we resolve the actual source of our illness, the conditions persist.

Oh, joy. 

It’s as if our inflamed emotions rebel, manifesting inflammation in our bodies and skin. This egregious cry for relief doesn’t come in a cream but through self-reflection, maybe a good therapist or sister, and a lot of self-awareness. 

Microbiologists refer to this as “neurogenic inflammation,” stress-induced inflammation triggered by discharges of the nervous system, which we now understand to be powerfully influenced by emotions. 

I think that’s why Jesus turned water into wine, but I digress. 

According to Mate, autoimmune is closely associated with people with “an array of self-abnegating traits: a compulsive and self-sacrificing doing for others, suppression of anger, and excessive concern about social acceptability.” Unfortunately, this is often the cultural expectation for women, who are 80% more likely to develop autoimmune diseases than men (I linked a video explaining this phenomenon below).

People-pleasers is a common term for people who prioritize the needs of others over and above their own. This suppresses our ability to express healthy anger, prioritize our own needs, and either conceal our frustration or push it down. All of these tactics create toxicity in the body and result in a slew of autoimmune diseases, from rashes to arthritis, Crohn’s disease to irritated bowel syndrome, Lupus, thyroid issues, and Grave’s disease. 

Ongoing stress is only part of the equation, but it can also be the reason for the episodic reappearance of the disease when you thought you had it under control. Numerous medical studies and widely approved medical journals have documented the evidence, but obviously, the general public does not actually read them. 

Who knew? 

Also noted, unpredictable stressors of variable duration that are difficult to adapt to are the worst kind of environment for autoimmune sufferers. 

Mate says, “Disease is an outcome of generations of suffering, of social conditions, of cultural conditioning, of childhood trauma, of physiology bearing the brunt of other people’s stresses and emotional histories, all interacting with the physical and psychological environment…”

What if disease is not, in fact, a fixed entity but a dynamic process expressive of real lives in concrete situations—situations that are changeable, avoidable, and resolvable? 

This would create the possibility of new pathways to healing, which are unthinkable within the prevailing medical view. Imagine the possible paradigmatic shift. 

How do we make that shift? How do we go deep enough into processing our own trauma to heal our afflictions? 

Mate suggests that perhaps we need to think about disease as not so much a thing but an energy flow. It’s a current. Disease is evolution or devolution that occurs when you are not awake and connected, and your trauma is essentially ruling your life. 

When we think of it as a random ailment and not a psychological, spiritual, or emotional condition, we limit our recovery to medicines, creams, and pharmaceutical solutions instead of the real reason—a physiological response to the stressors currently triggering our stored trauma. 

What if the question is not about what type of autoimmune disease we have but what process needs to be addressed? 

Mate suggests we start looking at disease as a teacher, one that can be addressed by combining modern medicine and deep reflection, along with reducing or eliminating (to the degree that is possible) the source of our stress. We then become active participants in our own recovery instead of helpless victims of our own devolution, if you will.

When the shackles of trauma begin to loosen, we reunite with the severed parts of ourselves. Such a great topic for Halloween. Right?

It ends up that inflammation, caused by stress (trauma), acts as a kind of fertilizer for the development of illnesses, especially when experienced over an extended period of time. Oh, and as a bonus, asthma and allergies are inflammations cousins, they’re interrelated, and the bully is stress. 

My traditional way of coping with illnesses, frustrations, and situations that defy resolution is to avoid, ignore, and, like Elsa, I simply “let it go.” Well, guess how that’s working for me. 

Just do the work, damn it, and it might just go away on its own. 

We have to ask ourselves, what must we believe to deny our own needs, suppress our voices, our anger, and our gut response to disrespect and oppression? The thing is, there are features in and of our personalities that contribute to the onset of illness. They are not the cause. We can connect traits, emotions, and developmental histories with disease, but this is not to lay blame on those already suffering. It is to drive us towards a solution for prevention and healing. 

What does healing look like, you might ask?

Mate says it is a natural movement toward wholeness. He does not define it as the end state of being completely whole or enlightened. It is a direction, not a destination (haven’t we heard that a million times). He says it’s a line on a map, not a dot. 

Healing is the process of reuniting ourselves with the inner qualities that still live within us as inherent possibilities that make life worth living. 

We have to return to the core premise I spoke about at the beginning, “with our minds we construct the world we live in, but the world into which we were born, of course, was partly the product of other people’s minds, a causal daisy chain dating back forever,” says Mate. This is not about “positive” thinking, it’s about having the courage and willingness to reconsider all of our previously held beliefs. The shit we cling to, like dryer sheets to the new bath towels, sometimes we have to pluck them off with our fingers and throw them out. 

Okay, I’ll admit I haven’t finished the entire book—yet. This is from the first eight chapters and then madly skipping around to find the good parts. I’ll let you know in the next blog if he has anything else important to say. 

I like to look at it this way with respect to October. 

The same force that produces a gigantic orange pumpkin from a tiny seed invigorates our own lives because we’re designed to grow. You can tweet that if you want. I suppose one thing we can do to fertilize our lives is to increase our gratitude and awareness, and in the process, our confidence. Here’s the good news—I’m not asking you to eat kale, exercise, or take a bunch of vitamins—I’m asking you to think about the things for which you are grateful and feast on that while keeping an eye on the child within who really just wants the biggest pumpkin available.  

Maybe we have to detach ourselves from the vine, so to speak, empty ourselves out, light a candle, and illuminate the source of our goodwill from within, even if we have to smile through a “carved” mouth. We have a tendency to source our energy from our woundedness instead of our strength because it is easier and sometimes safer to believe only in what has happened and not what might be. I say screw that. Focus on your best imaginable future because every life has a purpose, and you get to carve it just the way you want.

Happy Halloween Month, and here’s to severed parts and a new life by design. Looking forward to engaging with you in the comments. 

I realize this post is very late. My apologies for the confusion. I’m hoping to get back on schedule; I make no promises; I’m busy carving out a life and dealing with psoriasis.

It’s October, but there is still time to Grow, Damn It. Two clicks, a small payment, and they’ll send you a copy. Free shipping, by the way, be kind to the environment, buy in bulk.