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Welcome back, my friends, to another episode of Authentically Connected with Dr.
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Rachel Faust.
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I cannot thank you enough for choosing to spend your precious time and energy here with me.
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I have no doubt that you will take away interesting and perhaps helpful pieces of information.
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And as always, I wanna remind you that what I share here is for informational purposes only and is not meant to replace advice or direction given by your own doctor or personal therapist.
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Let me start by saying that I believe wholeheartedly that every single human being brings with them into this life, a unique light, a spark, a contribution that has the potential to make the world better.
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Whether it's a contribution made to the world as a whole, or an interaction with another human being that sparks something.
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That's what we're capable of when we arrive here.
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Like an entire oak tree is contained within a single acorn.
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The potential is there within each and every one of us.
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I truly believe that.
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And I don't believe that we can do anything to lose that potential.
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It's always there.
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Even as we encounter struggles in life and pain and hardship and trauma, the potential remains.
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Even when our habitual coping strategies, the ways we learn to cope with this life when we were young, that we continue to do in adulthood, get in the way sometimes.
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It doesn't change the fact that the potential is there, that our uniqueness is underlying that.
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I've been sitting with why I wanted to share the information contained in this episode today.
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It's not inherently uplifting, which is what I tend toward these days.
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Even when I'm talking about hard things, I move toward the uplifting and I have a feeling that's what I'm gonna end up doing in this episode as well.
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But I do think the information that I wanna share today should be something that we all have a chance to consider.
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It's what I believe to be a vital perspective about the mind body connection and the role that emotions play with helping us to live in a way that is aligned with our potential and whatever our unique purpose is here in life.
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In recent years, I've cultivated within myself an instinct to turn inward with curiosity.
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I think that's probably pretty evident from the episodes I've made so far.
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I like to get to know all the different nooks and crannies within myself because that's how I'm made.
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I've been this way always.
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I just didn't use to have the tools to do it.
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And even though I had an innate curiosity about the human condition, I used to turn inward with judgment and shame.
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And so I'm really pleased that I don't treat myself that way anymore.
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But I also recognize that not everyone has this innate curiosity.
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Some of us are just trying to get by in life and we have other things that interest us, but some of us don't feel like we're living fully.
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Like we're embracing our whole human condition or living in a way that allows our potential to unfold.
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Just like that Acorn needs the right conditions in order to turn into an oak tree.
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So do we as human beings.
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What happens when we turn away from the parts of that human condition that are really painful, that are uncomfortable, that unsettle us, or that we have learned early in our life to turn away from, or repress or deny because we were taught at a young age that they were not acceptable and we had to survive.
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That's why I wanna talk about the book When the Body says No by Dr.
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Gabor.
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Mate.
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What happens when we turn away from who we truly are? It may not be a conscious choice.
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It may be a survival strategy.
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And that's what I'm going to get into as I talk about this book.
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I read it a number of years ago, and it really struck me.
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I thought about revisiting it recently as I was thinking about different potential topics for podcast episodes, and my energy went there right away.
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Explaining what is contained in this book and why it is so important to not repress our emotions, but to allow them to flow through us, to guide us towards whatever feels true and right for us, to whatever our potential is that is uniquely ours.
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That is why I wanted to share about this book today.
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Before I jump into explaining about the book, I wanna mention a little more about Dr.
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Gabor Mate.
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He is a psychiatrist and author who is well known in the field of trauma treatment.
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He focuses a lot of his work on how early life experiences with our primary caregivers impact brain development and physical health for the duration of our life.
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A little more about Dr.
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Mate personally.
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He was born to Jewish parents in Hungary in the early 1940s.
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When he was born.
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His father was in a Nazi camp, and his mother was extremely distraught, as you can imagine.
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He often references this time in his life during which attachment was so incredibly important, but also entirely missing because of circumstances that he was experiencing.
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And he has since in his life and work connected some of the struggles that he's had to those early life experiences where the nurturing was missing and he learned to cope in certain ways.
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There's a lot of value in the work because it does such a good job of tying early life experiences to later life outcomes.
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And, it's also nice to know that there are things that we can do about it, which I will get to later on.
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Let's start by talking about the different ways that we can experience emotions.
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There are the physiological changes that happen inside our body with emotions.
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This could be our nervous system activating.
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It could be muscle tension, it could be hormone changes or activation of the immune system.
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It's not under our conscious control, and often we're not even aware that it's happening.
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We perceive a threat, our body reacts.
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And when this happens in the short term, it can be really useful to help us cope or manage a stressor.
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When it happens chronically over time and we're not even aware of it.
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That's what leads to chronic illness.
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And I will get more into that in a little bit.
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Another aspect of emotional experience is our emotional display as seen by others, which we may or may not be aware of.
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This is where our body language comes in.
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Nonverbal signals like our mannerisms and gestures and facial expressions.
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It could be our tone of voice, even pauses between words.
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This conveys tons to the people around us, whether we are aware of it or not, and whether we agree with it or not, right? So if I'm saying I'm not angry through gritted teeth, obviously I'm angry and I'm just not admitting it Those expressions of emotions that other people are picking up on are what most affect other people, including by the way, our parents when we are young children.
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And we may be triggering things in them, that have an impact on how we're treated.
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And then there's the third type, which is the subjective experience, and that's the one we usually talk about.
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Basically what we experience inside ourselves, how we feel.
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We often have conscious awareness of that emotional state and the physical sensations that go along with it.
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But there are some of us who actually learn through coping as children to distance ourselves from that, to deny it, to repress it because it's getting us into trouble or making us feel unsafe.
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When I'm consciously aware of my emotional state and the bodily sensations that go with it, then I can use that information and this is where emotional competence comes in.
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So how do I know if I have emotional competence? I have three things.
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I have the capacity to feel my emotions, be aware of them.
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So I know when I'm experiencing stress.
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I also have the ability to express my emotions effectively and maintain my integrity, maybe by setting appropriate boundaries.
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And then finally, I can distinguish between reactions that I'm having to what's happening in the present versus reactions that are happening in the present, but are about something that happened long ago.
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So, for example, if someone in my life does something and I have a big reaction that doesn't feel in proportion to the situation.
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I can say to myself, whoa, there's a mismatch here.
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What just happened doesn't seem to necessitate a reaction like that.
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Let me sit with, hmm, what else might be showing up for me? What old stuff is here now that I need to address so that my reaction now doesn't negatively impact this relationship? When I have emotional competence, I can do those things.
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And we live in a society that has historically taught us to steer away from developing emotional competence in ourselves or in our children, and that creates a lot of stress in our bodies.
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When we don't have emotional competence and stress occurs, and it always will, it leads to a disruption of homeostasis in our body.
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And when we have chronic disruption, that's when illness happens.
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We often hear about the mind body connection and how important it is to consider a person as a whole person, even as we live in a society where Western medicine has all of the different parts of our bodies and systems within our bodies siloed.
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We've got a doctor for the brain, a doctor for the feet, and everything in between.
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And oftentimes they don't communicate with one another.
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That is not how our body works.
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Through the lens of a field called psycho neuroimmunology or PNI, it's actually more aptly named Psycho neuro.
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Immuno endocrinology because all of these different systems within our body communicate constantly through the nervous system, which I've talked about in other episodes.
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But here's how it actually happens.
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And I'm not gonna get too far into the weeds in this but some of it is really useful to understand.
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The components of the PNI system are entirely interrelated.
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Their job is to recognize potential threats from outside of us or from within us, and to respond with behaviors and biochemical changes that are coordinated to maximize our safety at minimal cost.
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That's what the PNI system does.
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It uses the brain, the nervous system, immune organs and cells, and our endocrine glands, which are joined together through several pathways, and they talk directly to one another through the central nervous system.
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The PNI system is like a giant switchboard.
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It's always a light with coordinated messages going back and forth constantly, all directions at all times.
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And so it follows that whatever short term or chronic input acts on any one part of the system, it acts on the whole system at the same time.
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The hub of the PNI system is the hypothalamus.
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It's actually the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis or the HPA axis.
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When threat is perceived, the hypothalamus in the brain does two things instantaneously.
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It triggers a series of events that lead to the release of cortisol, the stress hormone, and it sends messages to the sympathetic nervous system in order to activate the fight or flight response, which then releases adrenaline, gets us ready to fight or flee and activates the cardiovascular and the nervous system.
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So these things are happening anytime a threat is perceived.
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But here's the thing, the threat doesn't have to be external.
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Any psychological factor that creates a sense that something essential is lacking is gonna trigger this.
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So uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, or lack of information activate the HPA axis.
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Unsatisfied emotional needs also activate this response.
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Even if we don't have an externally obvious stressful life, but we are constantly worrying fretting about things or feeling that things are lacking in our life, this can also activate this chronic stress reaction within our body.
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When we remove a stressor, the system calms down.
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So if we're no longer being chased by a lion, our body can shake, release and let it go.
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When we remove obvious sources of stress our body can return back to a calm state.
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But what if we are in a situation where we don't have the ability to do that? As in what if I'm a kid and I don't have the ability to control pretty much anything about my environment? That's where the idea of authenticity versus attachment comes in.
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Humans are born with two basic needs that often conflict with one another.
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The needs are authenticity versus attachment.
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We all have a need to be authentically ourselves.
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We can feel that at our core when we spend time trying not to be who we actually are.
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We also have this need for attachment that ensures our survival.
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If my primary caregivers when I am born are not willing to care for me, I will not survive.
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I will not have food, shelter, all the basic needs met and love.
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That is a basic need for human beings.
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We cannot survive without it.
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When that is threatened in any way, a child is faced with the choice.
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I can either stay true to myself and risk losing that vital care, or I can prioritize making my primary caregiver happy and distract myself or ignore or repress or judge out of being whatever my authentic personal needs are.
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So, for example, if a 2-year-old has a tantrum, which is what two year olds do.
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If that triggers something in their caregiver and then the caregiver stops offering that care, that teaches that little one, that it's not okay to express that need because it could put their survival in jeopardy.
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And so very often when we're young, we make those hard choices without even realizing it.
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I know if I express my anger, I get punished, or I have important things withheld from me.
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Okay? Now I know I can't express that anger, which means I am choosing attachment over authenticity, being authentically myself.
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This happens time and again when we're little and in prioritizing the efforts to please or placate our caregiver, a coping style is born.
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It's not an inborn trait, it's a coping style.
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So if I learn that certain parts of me are not acceptable, that I can't express anger, or if I'm needy, I don't get my needs met.
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But if I offer care as a little one, if I show up for my parent, if I take care of them, for example, then I learn that's how to make sure that people stick around.
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That's how to make sure I get my needs met.
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Little ones learned from a young age what works with their caregivers and what does not, and they do more of what works in order to ensure their survival.
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It's not a conscious choice.
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It's a survival strategy.
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The things that helped us survive when we were young are the things that we keep doing as we age and grow into adulthood.
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And what we call personality- some of it is temperament that we brought into the world with us, and some of it is, this is how I survived my childhood, and now I'm gonna keep on doing it.
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I should be clear, many children are conditioned in this way not because their parents intended harm or abused them, and in fact, many of the parents were very well-meaning and loving and did the absolute best they could.
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But it is also possible that those same parents were threatened by their children's big emotions or things that they sensed in their child that brought up their own feelings.
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Or they were simply too busy or stressed out to pay attention.
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But regardless, this is pretty common, right? I hear people say all the time, I'm just a perfectionist.
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That's just who I am.
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Or I'm just really controlling.
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That's how I've always been.
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What is often not acknowledged in that statement is that this helped me survive in childhood, or I came into the world with this because this was a legacy that was passed down in my family.
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Regardless what happens is we adopt these coping styles in childhood, we carry them into adulthood and they just feel like they're who we are.
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Here's the problem.
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A child whose parents punished or inhibited acting out of emotion will be conditioned to respond in the future with repression of any emotions that weren't tolerated by their parents.
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That self shut down serves to prevent shame and rejection.
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This ends up compromising emotional competence.
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In the future a person doesn't know how to effectively handle those natural feelings, those messages that are coming from parts of them that are trying to help them be authentic.
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Because they were taught that they were not okay when they were young.
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The result turns out to be a kind of helplessness.
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I feel things, but I shouldn't, or I don't even let myself have access to those feelings anymore.
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Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which we don't extricate ourselves from stressful situations, even when we have the physical opportunity to do so, because we don't think we have the choice or we don't think we deserve it.
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So then we end up stuck in situations that are dysfunctional or even abusive, a lifestyle that robs us of true freedom, because we feel like we don't have any recourse.
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That's what happens when we learn to repress or distance ourselves from emotions and internal experiences that are trying to help us navigate our way through the world, but they feel dangerous to us because of how they were responded to, or the perception that we had as children, that it was not okay.
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Before I share research looking at patterns of personality styles that are often found in people who are diagnosed with certain major illnesses.
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And I should say that they say personality styles, but really truly, I think those can be more aptly called coping styles.
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I wanna share a caveat with you.
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The patterns are striking, that's why I wanna share the information.
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But I've had some concern about how best to share this without, in any way coming across as though these generalizations are true for everybody.
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I really wanna be considerate of my listeners who are either currently or in the past have dealt with these illnesses or have a loved one, someone they care about who is dealing with these illnesses.
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You're not to blame in any way for what you are experiencing or have experienced.
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Please take what I'm about to share as information about the mind body connection, and I will eventually be sharing steps that we can all take to connect with and express our emotions in healthy ways.
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The overarching theme among every illness that was talked about in the book, among every personal story that the author included, always came back to a chronic tendency to repress anger.
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That was the common pattern among all the illnesses.
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For ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
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Patients with a LS were often described by their care teams as the most pleasant people.
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People who were just kind and thoughtful, positive, and never really asked for much.
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But what research found is that that actually veered into a space of being rigidly competent.
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So people with a LS, according to this research, refused to ask for help, refused to acknowledge that they had needs or discomfort or emotional pain, and then to ask for support for it.
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That was a consistent finding in a LS patients.
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There was also information about patients who have breast cancer.
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In addition to the repression of anger, they were often described as the altruistic caregiving type.
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Individuals with lung cancer had a tendency to bottle up their emotions.
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And actually with the lung cancer studies that they found was that the single greatest risk factor for death was a trait researchers described as rationality and anti emotionality.
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The repression of anger is what was underlying that trait.
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It was in research with patients who had melanoma, that the Type C personality was proposed.
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So we've all heard of the type A personality, someone who's tense moves fast, maybe a little more aggressive or angry, always in control, and also more prone to heart disease, unfortunately.
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Whereas the type B personality is described as balanced, able to experience a range of emotions without getting lost in them, or having uncontrolled emotional outbursts.
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The Type C personality, which was ascribed to patients with melanoma were found to be extremely cooperative, patient, passive and lacking assertiveness, and just really accepting overall.
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A lot of us are encouraged to be that way in our lives.
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But I'll describe the issue with that by describing one of the specific studies from the book.
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There was a research study in which distressing images, basically a slideshow of insults was shown to the research participants.
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Some of the research participants had melanoma, some had cardiovascular disease, and some were normal healthy controls.
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All three groups had the same physiological response.
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Their bodies were all activated by reading and receiving these insults and these distressing images.
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Only the melanoma patients said that they were fine.
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They weren't affected by what they had seen.
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Whereas the other two groups described an emotional reaction that matched their body's reaction.
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The melanoma patients were not lying.
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They weren't aware of what was happening inside their bodies.
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They had gotten that skilled at disconnecting from their body signals.
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This is a pattern that we see in a lot of individuals who end up going on to develop cancer.
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We all have cancer cells in our bodies.
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That's normal.
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It is normal for cells to reproduce and some of them to be abnormal, and our body has developed this process called apoptosis.
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That's the scientific term for the physiologically regulated death of cells that's necessary to maintain healthy tissue.
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A system within us that's designed to take away those abnormal, unhealthy cells and remove them from our bodies so they're not the ones who reproduce.
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So why do some of us develop cancer and others don't when we all have these abnormal cells in our body? The thought in this book is that habitually repressing our emotions, disconnecting from them, not using them as information, but instead ignoring them to the point that we can't even access them, creates a condition of chronic stress within our body, which creates an unnatural biochemical environment in the body, and that interferes with apoptosis with the normal natural process of getting rid of unhealthy cells.
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I am going to talk now about irritable bowel disease or syndrome.
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Our gut serves as a defense against toxins in the environment.
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When food goes into our system, it is still considered a part of the outside world up until it actually gets absorbed into our system.
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Our gut is so important for our health and wellbeing.
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In addition to being a sensory system, it also allows us to react to our environment, right? Gut reactions, gut wrenching, gut punch.
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These terms exist because it is so well known.
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It's just assumed.
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Our gut tells us how to react to the world.
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The gut even has its own immune system, which is how important it is for our survival.
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Our gut has to stay in a state of controlled inflammation in order to do its job.
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So it uses tissue swelling, immune cells, and antibodies, and active communication with the brain in order to make sure that we stay safe.
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And anything that disrupts this balance causes harm to our system.
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Chronic stress not only disrupts the balance in our gut, but also impacts how we experience pain and discomfort.
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So when an emotional stimulus comes in that stresses the gut out, the gut responds with muscle contractions, blood flow changes, and secretes lots of different substances and sends this information to the brain.
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There's actually more information going from the gut to the brain than from the brain to the gut.
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The brain takes this information and processes it through emotional filters, some of which add story to the sensation, sends information back to the gut, confirms the gut's initial reaction, and this back and forth between the gut and the brain continues until the threat has subsided.
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But what if that threat isn't going away or it's internal and we're not even aware of it? When there are too many gut wrenching experiences, the neurological apparatus becomes overly sensitized, meaning it becomes extra sensitive.
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It does not take as much to activate the response anymore, and then the pain threshold gets lower too.
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That's how you get to a point where a normal amount of gas or tension in the intestines will trigger pain, not just discomfort.
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It really doesn't take as much to cause pain anymore because the system has been chronically reacting, and now it reacts to less with a bigger reaction.
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Then you go to the doctor who runs tests and says Nothing is physically wrong.
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But your body says otherwise, and your body is right.
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You're still in pain.
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True pain.
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Real pain.
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Perhaps because your body has learned that pain or physical discomfort is the only message it can consistently bring to your awareness and bring it it does with life altering consequences.
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And then there's the placebo effect.
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In clinical trials of medication for inflammatory bowel disease, there have been instances of placebo response in a range of 60%.
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That means 60% of people in these studies feel better with a sugar pill instead of the active medication.
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This range around 55% actually also shows up in relation to trials of narcotic medication for pain control and antidepressant drugs.
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To be clear, the placebo effect is not an indication that something is only happening in your imagination or that it's not real.
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The placebo effect is actually entirely physiological.
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Neurological and chemical processes are being activated that serve to reduce symptoms and promote healing.
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Why? My guess is because help is on the way.
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Someone is finally paying attention to what the body has been trying to communicate all along.
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The threat is diminished.
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The p and i system can calm down and the person can start to feel better, and thank goodness, whatever helps, That doesn't mean the pain or discomfort wasn't real to begin with.
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It means that the nervous system is finally feeling safe enough to let its guard down.
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Anger is a tool.
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When I feel angry and I display it, that can be appropriate and lifesaving, Think about an animal who feels threatened, who hisses or growls at another animal in order to get that other animal to back off.
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That display of anger is appropriate and lifesaving.
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Anger represents both the recognition that something is not okay or dangerous and a response to it.
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But what if my early life experiences taught me that expressions of anger are not okay.
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I'm not allowed to do that.
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That will lose me the care that I need or get me judged or banished.
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I won't belong anymore.
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We can't survive without belonging.
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So if I repress anger within myself, that's gonna lead to disordered immunity.
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In order for the immune system to know how to work properly, it has to be able to tell the difference between what is self and what is not Self.
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Our immune system has memory.
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It can learn to recall instantly any previous threats and respond accordingly.
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But what if we learned as a young child that certain emotions are not okay, that it's important to repress anger in order to survive, but then anger comes up when I'm older because it's a natural human emotion.
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If I have not learned as a child what to do with that anger, how to appropriately express it and move it through my body, then anger can become directed at me, right that same energy instead of moving it through me becomes turned upon myself.
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Repressed anger will lead to disordered immunity.
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The inability to process and express feelings effectively and the tendency to serve others before I even consider my own needs makes me more primed to have that anger turned against myself.
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When I cope in a way that isn't authentic and doesn't allow true experience of emotions and expression of them in healthy ways, boundaries get blurred.
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Confusion happens between what is self and what is not self on the psychological level, and the same thing happens with our cells on an immune level.
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The immune system becomes confused and too disabled to work properly.
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In an autoimmune disease, the body turns upon itself as if it were a foreign substance because the body cannot tell the difference between what is me and what is others.
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Rheumatoid arthritis is a good example of an autoimmune disease in which this happens.
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In studies of individuals who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, the pattern showed traits of stoicism or putting on a strong front without acknowledgement of what's going on underneath, a reticence to seek help when it's needed.
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Uh, a tendency to put up silently with discomfort, perfectionism, and a denial of hostility.
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These are all traits that tend to show up in people whose bodies cannot tell the difference between what belongs to them and what does not.
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And I also wanna mention that Alzheimer's disease is starting to be viewed through an autoimmune lens.
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With Alzheimer's there are certain plaques and tangles in the brain that show up consistently in those who have it.
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But what research has shown is that there are also individuals who have those same plaques and tangles who never go on to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's They're starting to look at how excessive cortisol production may play a role in whether people who had those plaques and tangles go on to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's or not.
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This is newer research and it's still unclear, but what does remain clear is we have to be able to tell emotionally and on a physiological level, what is me and what is not me, because when we cannot, things get messy.
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I've talked about how we learn to deal with our emotions at a young age and continue coping in that way, and some of those chronic stresses that come from coping in ways that don't allow true connection inward and expression outward can contribute to the development of these diseases.
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What do we do about it? At the end of the book, Dr.
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Matay talks about the power of negative thinking.
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So if disease is an expression of internal disharmony, it's important to look inward and try to understand what is not working, and then allow experience of an expression of that.
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So Dr.
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Matay talks about the seven as of healing, and I'm gonna explain them, and encourage you to consider how you might wanna incorporate these into your life.
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He talks about the first a being acceptance, but I'm gonna switch it because I think you have to be aware before you can accept.
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So I'm gonna make the first a awareness.
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I have to be aware of what is showing up within me.
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Physical sensations, emotions, reactions to things.
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If I'm not aware of them, I can't do anything about them.
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So we start always with what do I feel and where do I feel it? And that doesn't necessarily mean I have to name the emotion.
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It could just be I feel tension in my chest.
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I feel an aching in my belly.
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I feel an absence.
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I feel nothing.
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I feel completely blocked.
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That is a feeling as well.
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Learning to read those symptoms, not as problems to overcome, but as messages to be headed is the starting point.
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And then number two, acceptance.
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So a willingness to take things as they are.
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That does not mean you have to like it, wish for it, or be willing to leave it as is.
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You may wanna work on changing things, but first you have to accept that this is the way things are and it really implies a compassionate relationship with yourself.
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You can think of acceptance like a compassionate curiosity.
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Hmm.
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That's interesting.
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or I'd like to learn more about that, not from a judgmental, get it to go away place, although that part can be present as well.
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Compassionate Curiosity is about being open to and curious about what is.
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Without necessarily coming at it from a positive or a negative place.
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Hmm.
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Just the way it is.
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let's drill down a little more into number three, which is anger.
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Just like repressing, anger isn't good for us.
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It's also not good for us too act out from anger or rage.
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Unregulated acting out of anger that increases our blood pressure can contribute to the development of coronary disease.
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Both lead to an abnormal release of emotions We often think about rage as being an acting out of extreme anger, but Dr.
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Matea has an interesting discussion in the book about how if you sit with the sensations of rage, the tightening of the voice, shallow breathing, muscle tension, it actually feels a lot more like anxiety.
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He says that acting out through bursts of rage is a defense against the anxiety that is often underlying the anger.
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Think about what it's like for a kid who has significant anger towards a loved one who is there to take care of them.
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It feels pretty scary as a little one to have aggressive feelings towards a loved one.
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That can create a lot of anxiety and guilt as well.
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So if we either repress the anger or we discharge it in inappropriate ways, we're not actually experiencing healthy anger.
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When we experience healthy anger and then we express it in appropriate ways, that's actually empowering and it relaxes our body.
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It decreases muscle tension.
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Anger doesn't require hostile acting out.
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It's actually a physiological process to be experienced, to be noticed, and then to be used in order to create a shift in a dynamic or just to express it, to be able to not hold onto it.
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I become greatly empowered without harming anyone if I allow myself to experience the anger, contemplate what may have triggered it, maybe choose to express it in some way or let it go.
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But what matters is that I don't suppress the experience of it.
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The fourth A is autonomy.
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We really suffer when our boundaries are blurred.
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Those of us at greatest risk of becoming Ill are those of us who experienced the most severe boundary violations before we were able to figure out who we actually were.
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When those clear boundaries don't exist between a parent and a child, the child remains enmeshed in the relationship and behaves in that way in other relationships too, maybe withdrawn sullen, self-defeating resistance to authority or chronic compulsive caretaking of others.
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Boundaries and autonomy are both essential for health.
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If we're not able to articulate our life experiences, then our bodies end up articulating what our mouths and minds can't.
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So healing has to involve establishing or reclaiming boundaries related to being an autonomous person.
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What do I desire? What do I want more of or less of, or not at all? Once I'm clear on my boundaries, I can start to bring my locus of control back inside to create an internal self-reference.
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Once I'm clear on what works and does not work for me, then I become more clear on my boundaries and.
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Part of it is about setting them clearly with others, but part of it is also just about creating more autonomy so I understand who is me versus who are you, and I feel more in control from that central place.
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The fifth A is attachment.
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It's our connection to the world that develops based on early life experiences.
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It can open us up or it can close us down.
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It can teach us healthy ways to experience and express anger, or it can teach us to fear and repress it.
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But even if we learned to shut down and distance from others for protection or go overboard with caregiving and becoming overly attentive to other people's needs, while ignoring our own, we can heal.
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We can shift that.
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But we don't shift it alone.
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We don't heal in isolation.
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We heal in community.
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We truly need connection in order to survive, not just for babies, not just for little ones who come into the world and can't take care of themselves.
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Adult human beings do not survive without attachment.
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In fact, the mortality risk associated with loneliness and isolation is through the roof.
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We need one another.
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We have to be vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to develop that meaningful connection.
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The sixth A is assertion, so declaring to the self and to the world that I am who I am.
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It's not about action or what I do, and in fact it's about letting go of the need to act.
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And just being irrespective of action without justifying my existence.
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I am who I am and that is okay.
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That is a big deal for some of us.
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Some of us do not feel able to do that.
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It feels dangerous, it feels threatening or maybe it just feels like, you know what right do I have? That's selfish.
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But truly we have to be able to assert our needs in order to meet the needs and separate from others' needs so that we can choose where to join with others and where to distance from.
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The seventh and final A is affirmation, making a positive statement or moving towards something of value.
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And there's two parts to this.
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There's affirming my own creative self, honoring the urge that I have, the need that I have, the emotion I have, but also affirming the universe itself and my place in it.
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Connecting with something larger than myself, whether through nature, religion, or various other roots, while also connecting with my personal self.
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It was really disheartening reading some of the stories in this book about the bad things that have happened to people and the ways in which they have struggled and then gone on to develop these diseases.
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But what was so affirming at the end of the book were these stories about how people have turned disease around, survived and thrived because they started to shift their habitual coping styles, started to turn inward and notice what was showing up.
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Honor it, establish appropriate boundaries, and move away from living in the way that they always had because they didn't know any other way, towards allowing their internal experience to become their guide and I found it really uplifting at the end.
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We are all going to experience stress in our lives.
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But the hidden stressors are what I wanted to call attention to today.
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The ones that are impacting us in ways large and small that we don't even recognize that add up over time.
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I've come a long way.
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I didn't used to have access to any of this information internally.
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Emotions were not my guide in the past, and in fact, they were something to distract from.
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Tune out, turn off, numb, mute.
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Really anything to get away from the discomfort and I have found my life is so much richer and clearer the more I turn inward, notice what's showing up, process where it comes from and what I need to do with it, and then use that as a guide moving forward.
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I actually have so much more connection, compassion, and clarity in my life as a result of my willingness to do that hard work and turn inward and start to develop this sense of what are my emotions telling me? What is my body telling me and what do I want to do with that? I'm in a much better place to pay it forward now because I've been practicing it for so long now, and I felt like a book that actually ties early life attachment experiences and coping styles that develop to physical health and wellbeing needs to be more well known.
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And so thank you for taking the time to listen, for allowing me to give you this book report, which is basically what this is.
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I highly recommend reading when the Body Says No doing so will allow you not only to have this information, but also to read the stories of people who have been willing to open up their lives, not only from a medical perspective, but an emotional and relational perspective, because it really truly is all tied together.
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I wish more doctors would view things from the lens that Dr.
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Matea does, which is one of trauma informed attachment based healing.
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I wanna end today with a quote from the late great poet Andrea Gibson.
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Andrea was non-binary and used they them pronouns.
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I came across an interview that Andrea did on the podcast we Can Do Hard Things back in 2024, after learning that their cancer diagnosis was now terminal.
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They used that platform to share the news with their fans and with the world.
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When I first heard this podcast episode, I was deeply touched, moved by Andrea's openness and honesty, willingness to turn towards their pain even as they faced their own mortality.
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They talked about how the experience of learning that they were living with terminal cancer led them to absolutely fall in love with their life.
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In that instant, their world shifted and they started to view every aspect of living as though it were love.
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Pain was actually just love.
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Suffering was actually just love.
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It all became a gift.
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Even the disease, which they called both the disease and the medicine because it healed them of the double suffering that they had been experiencing all their life.
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The pain about feeling pain, and it was really profound to hear this.
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Andrea talked in this episode about the importance of opening up to your feelings, all of them, whatever they are, not repressing anything, including anger, which some of us avoid for understandable reasons or even joy, which some of us avoid because we fear losing whatever we're joyful about.
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So here's what Andrea suggests.
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Just relax into your body.
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Whatever shows up, let it move through you.
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This is simple and it is hard to do.
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When I'm in anger, when I'm in frustration, I'm not feeling good about it.
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I'm just feeling the feeling.
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I'll be the first to admit that I have some emotions that I don't wanna touch with a 10 foot pole.
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They're uncomfortable, they're overwhelming, and I would rather do anything but turn towards them.
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And I have learned, especially in recent years, that as I've said before, what's in the way is the way, and I can avoid it all I want, and I do sometimes, but eventually I need to stop repressing it, and I need to get curious about it.
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So when Andrea says, relax your body, that may or may not be possible, but we can always turn towards our body and notice, what am I feeling? I always start with the physical sensations and then I get curious and I go from there.
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It is not easy to do, but it can be lifesaving for us in the long run.
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If we allow the natural energy to flow, it allows us to live more fully.
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As I was in the process of creating this episode of Authentically Connected, I came across their podcast episode again and I was reminded just how impactful Andrea's attitude towards pain and love and life was on me then and continues to be now and.
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And speaking of profound, Andrea and their partner, Meg, actually welcomed a film crew into their home for the last year of Andrea's life, and together they made a now Oscar nominated documentary called Come See Me in the Good Light.
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Which you all can watch on Apple Plus whenever you want to.
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It was a love story, y'all.
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You would think it was just depressing.
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But no, it was so much more than that.
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It was life affirming and love affirming.
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Andrea touches something in my soul Everything about Andrea's poetry speaks to me, and it really is striking to me that that's the case, because I have never felt that way in response to poetry before.
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But there's something about the way Andrea puts pain into words and encourages us to turn towards what ails us.
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It really speaks to the heart of what I'm sharing with you today, and I think that's why I was so taken when I read this quote, because it dawned on me that this is exactly what I'm encouraging you to do.
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So here is the quote.
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All of my pain is a spider.
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I've learned not to crush with the heel of my shoe, but to guide with a page of my journal into an empty glass, asking questions about its life, its purpose, as I walk careful out to the garden and rest it down on the earth.
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My pain, how happy it is to leave me whenever I treat it kind.
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Thank you for taking the time to listen today.
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I hope I've planted a seed of how valuable it is to turn towards what ails us to treat our pain with the kindness that it deserves and how happy it will be to leave us when we do.
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Thank you all for your time, your energy, your openness, and if you liked what you've heard, please like follow and share so that other people can find their way to this community.
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In the meantime, please be kind to yourselves, y'all, till next time.
00:00:22,240.211192738 --> 00:00:26,590.211192738
Welcome back, my friends, to another episode of Authentically Connected with Dr.
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Rachel Faust.
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I cannot thank you enough for choosing to spend your precious time and energy here with me.
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I have no doubt that you will take away interesting and perhaps helpful pieces of information.
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And as always, I wanna remind you that what I share here is for informational purposes only and is not meant to replace advice or direction given by your own doctor or personal therapist.
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Let me start by saying that I believe wholeheartedly that every single human being brings with them into this life, a unique light, a spark, a contribution that has the potential to make the world better.
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Whether it's a contribution made to the world as a whole, or an interaction with another human being that sparks something.
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That's what we're capable of when we arrive here.
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Like an entire oak tree is contained within a single acorn.
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The potential is there within each and every one of us.
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I truly believe that.
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And I don't believe that we can do anything to lose that potential.
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It's always there.
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Even as we encounter struggles in life and pain and hardship and trauma, the potential remains.
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Even when our habitual coping strategies, the ways we learn to cope with this life when we were young, that we continue to do in adulthood, get in the way sometimes.
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It doesn't change the fact that the potential is there, that our uniqueness is underlying that.
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I've been sitting with why I wanted to share the information contained in this episode today.
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It's not inherently uplifting, which is what I tend toward these days.
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Even when I'm talking about hard things, I move toward the uplifting and I have a feeling that's what I'm gonna end up doing in this episode as well.
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But I do think the information that I wanna share today should be something that we all have a chance to consider.
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It's what I believe to be a vital perspective about the mind body connection and the role that emotions play with helping us to live in a way that is aligned with our potential and whatever our unique purpose is here in life.
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In recent years, I've cultivated within myself an instinct to turn inward with curiosity.
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I think that's probably pretty evident from the episodes I've made so far.
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I like to get to know all the different nooks and crannies within myself because that's how I'm made.
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I've been this way always.
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I just didn't use to have the tools to do it.
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And even though I had an innate curiosity about the human condition, I used to turn inward with judgment and shame.
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And so I'm really pleased that I don't treat myself that way anymore.
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But I also recognize that not everyone has this innate curiosity.
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Some of us are just trying to get by in life and we have other things that interest us, but some of us don't feel like we're living fully.
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Like we're embracing our whole human condition or living in a way that allows our potential to unfold.
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Just like that Acorn needs the right conditions in order to turn into an oak tree.
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So do we as human beings.
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What happens when we turn away from the parts of that human condition that are really painful, that are uncomfortable, that unsettle us, or that we have learned early in our life to turn away from, or repress or deny because we were taught at a young age that they were not acceptable and we had to survive.
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That's why I wanna talk about the book When the Body says No by Dr.
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Gabor.
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Mate.
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What happens when we turn away from who we truly are? It may not be a conscious choice.
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It may be a survival strategy.
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And that's what I'm going to get into as I talk about this book.
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I read it a number of years ago, and it really struck me.
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I thought about revisiting it recently as I was thinking about different potential topics for podcast episodes, and my energy went there right away.
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Explaining what is contained in this book and why it is so important to not repress our emotions, but to allow them to flow through us, to guide us towards whatever feels true and right for us, to whatever our potential is that is uniquely ours.
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That is why I wanted to share about this book today.
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Before I jump into explaining about the book, I wanna mention a little more about Dr.
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Gabor Mate.
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He is a psychiatrist and author who is well known in the field of trauma treatment.
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He focuses a lot of his work on how early life experiences with our primary caregivers impact brain development and physical health for the duration of our life.
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A little more about Dr.
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Mate personally.
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He was born to Jewish parents in Hungary in the early 1940s.
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When he was born.
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His father was in a Nazi camp, and his mother was extremely distraught, as you can imagine.
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He often references this time in his life during which attachment was so incredibly important, but also entirely missing because of circumstances that he was experiencing.
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And he has since in his life and work connected some of the struggles that he's had to those early life experiences where the nurturing was missing and he learned to cope in certain ways.
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There's a lot of value in the work because it does such a good job of tying early life experiences to later life outcomes.
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And, it's also nice to know that there are things that we can do about it, which I will get to later on.
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Let's start by talking about the different ways that we can experience emotions.
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There are the physiological changes that happen inside our body with emotions.
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This could be our nervous system activating.
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It could be muscle tension, it could be hormone changes or activation of the immune system.
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It's not under our conscious control, and often we're not even aware that it's happening.
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We perceive a threat, our body reacts.
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And when this happens in the short term, it can be really useful to help us cope or manage a stressor.
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When it happens chronically over time and we're not even aware of it.
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That's what leads to chronic illness.
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And I will get more into that in a little bit.
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Another aspect of emotional experience is our emotional display as seen by others, which we may or may not be aware of.
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This is where our body language comes in.
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Nonverbal signals like our mannerisms and gestures and facial expressions.
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It could be our tone of voice, even pauses between words.
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This conveys tons to the people around us, whether we are aware of it or not, and whether we agree with it or not, right? So if I'm saying I'm not angry through gritted teeth, obviously I'm angry and I'm just not admitting it Those expressions of emotions that other people are picking up on are what most affect other people, including by the way, our parents when we are young children.
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And we may be triggering things in them, that have an impact on how we're treated.
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And then there's the third type, which is the subjective experience, and that's the one we usually talk about.
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Basically what we experience inside ourselves, how we feel.
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We often have conscious awareness of that emotional state and the physical sensations that go along with it.
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But there are some of us who actually learn through coping as children to distance ourselves from that, to deny it, to repress it because it's getting us into trouble or making us feel unsafe.
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When I'm consciously aware of my emotional state and the bodily sensations that go with it, then I can use that information and this is where emotional competence comes in.
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So how do I know if I have emotional competence? I have three things.
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I have the capacity to feel my emotions, be aware of them.
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So I know when I'm experiencing stress.
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I also have the ability to express my emotions effectively and maintain my integrity, maybe by setting appropriate boundaries.
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And then finally, I can distinguish between reactions that I'm having to what's happening in the present versus reactions that are happening in the present, but are about something that happened long ago.
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So, for example, if someone in my life does something and I have a big reaction that doesn't feel in proportion to the situation.
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I can say to myself, whoa, there's a mismatch here.
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What just happened doesn't seem to necessitate a reaction like that.
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Let me sit with, hmm, what else might be showing up for me? What old stuff is here now that I need to address so that my reaction now doesn't negatively impact this relationship? When I have emotional competence, I can do those things.
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And we live in a society that has historically taught us to steer away from developing emotional competence in ourselves or in our children, and that creates a lot of stress in our bodies.
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When we don't have emotional competence and stress occurs, and it always will, it leads to a disruption of homeostasis in our body.
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And when we have chronic disruption, that's when illness happens.
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We often hear about the mind body connection and how important it is to consider a person as a whole person, even as we live in a society where Western medicine has all of the different parts of our bodies and systems within our bodies siloed.
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We've got a doctor for the brain, a doctor for the feet, and everything in between.
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And oftentimes they don't communicate with one another.
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That is not how our body works.
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Through the lens of a field called psycho neuroimmunology or PNI, it's actually more aptly named Psycho neuro.
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Immuno endocrinology because all of these different systems within our body communicate constantly through the nervous system, which I've talked about in other episodes.
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But here's how it actually happens.
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And I'm not gonna get too far into the weeds in this but some of it is really useful to understand.
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The components of the PNI system are entirely interrelated.
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Their job is to recognize potential threats from outside of us or from within us, and to respond with behaviors and biochemical changes that are coordinated to maximize our safety at minimal cost.
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That's what the PNI system does.
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It uses the brain, the nervous system, immune organs and cells, and our endocrine glands, which are joined together through several pathways, and they talk directly to one another through the central nervous system.
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The PNI system is like a giant switchboard.
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It's always a light with coordinated messages going back and forth constantly, all directions at all times.
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And so it follows that whatever short term or chronic input acts on any one part of the system, it acts on the whole system at the same time.
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The hub of the PNI system is the hypothalamus.
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It's actually the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis or the HPA axis.
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When threat is perceived, the hypothalamus in the brain does two things instantaneously.
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It triggers a series of events that lead to the release of cortisol, the stress hormone, and it sends messages to the sympathetic nervous system in order to activate the fight or flight response, which then releases adrenaline, gets us ready to fight or flee and activates the cardiovascular and the nervous system.
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So these things are happening anytime a threat is perceived.
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But here's the thing, the threat doesn't have to be external.
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Any psychological factor that creates a sense that something essential is lacking is gonna trigger this.
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So uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, or lack of information activate the HPA axis.
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Unsatisfied emotional needs also activate this response.
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Even if we don't have an externally obvious stressful life, but we are constantly worrying fretting about things or feeling that things are lacking in our life, this can also activate this chronic stress reaction within our body.
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When we remove a stressor, the system calms down.
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So if we're no longer being chased by a lion, our body can shake, release and let it go.
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When we remove obvious sources of stress our body can return back to a calm state.
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But what if we are in a situation where we don't have the ability to do that? As in what if I'm a kid and I don't have the ability to control pretty much anything about my environment? That's where the idea of authenticity versus attachment comes in.
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Humans are born with two basic needs that often conflict with one another.
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The needs are authenticity versus attachment.
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We all have a need to be authentically ourselves.
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We can feel that at our core when we spend time trying not to be who we actually are.
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We also have this need for attachment that ensures our survival.
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If my primary caregivers when I am born are not willing to care for me, I will not survive.
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I will not have food, shelter, all the basic needs met and love.
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That is a basic need for human beings.
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We cannot survive without it.
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When that is threatened in any way, a child is faced with the choice.
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I can either stay true to myself and risk losing that vital care, or I can prioritize making my primary caregiver happy and distract myself or ignore or repress or judge out of being whatever my authentic personal needs are.
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So, for example, if a 2-year-old has a tantrum, which is what two year olds do.
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If that triggers something in their caregiver and then the caregiver stops offering that care, that teaches that little one, that it's not okay to express that need because it could put their survival in jeopardy.
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And so very often when we're young, we make those hard choices without even realizing it.
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I know if I express my anger, I get punished, or I have important things withheld from me.
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Okay? Now I know I can't express that anger, which means I am choosing attachment over authenticity, being authentically myself.
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This happens time and again when we're little and in prioritizing the efforts to please or placate our caregiver, a coping style is born.
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It's not an inborn trait, it's a coping style.
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So if I learn that certain parts of me are not acceptable, that I can't express anger, or if I'm needy, I don't get my needs met.
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But if I offer care as a little one, if I show up for my parent, if I take care of them, for example, then I learn that's how to make sure that people stick around.
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That's how to make sure I get my needs met.
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Little ones learned from a young age what works with their caregivers and what does not, and they do more of what works in order to ensure their survival.
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It's not a conscious choice.
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It's a survival strategy.
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The things that helped us survive when we were young are the things that we keep doing as we age and grow into adulthood.
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And what we call personality- some of it is temperament that we brought into the world with us, and some of it is, this is how I survived my childhood, and now I'm gonna keep on doing it.
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I should be clear, many children are conditioned in this way not because their parents intended harm or abused them, and in fact, many of the parents were very well-meaning and loving and did the absolute best they could.
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But it is also possible that those same parents were threatened by their children's big emotions or things that they sensed in their child that brought up their own feelings.
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Or they were simply too busy or stressed out to pay attention.
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But regardless, this is pretty common, right? I hear people say all the time, I'm just a perfectionist.
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That's just who I am.
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Or I'm just really controlling.
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That's how I've always been.
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What is often not acknowledged in that statement is that this helped me survive in childhood, or I came into the world with this because this was a legacy that was passed down in my family.
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Regardless what happens is we adopt these coping styles in childhood, we carry them into adulthood and they just feel like they're who we are.
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Here's the problem.
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A child whose parents punished or inhibited acting out of emotion will be conditioned to respond in the future with repression of any emotions that weren't tolerated by their parents.
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That self shut down serves to prevent shame and rejection.
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This ends up compromising emotional competence.
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In the future a person doesn't know how to effectively handle those natural feelings, those messages that are coming from parts of them that are trying to help them be authentic.
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Because they were taught that they were not okay when they were young.
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The result turns out to be a kind of helplessness.
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I feel things, but I shouldn't, or I don't even let myself have access to those feelings anymore.
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Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which we don't extricate ourselves from stressful situations, even when we have the physical opportunity to do so, because we don't think we have the choice or we don't think we deserve it.
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So then we end up stuck in situations that are dysfunctional or even abusive, a lifestyle that robs us of true freedom, because we feel like we don't have any recourse.
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That's what happens when we learn to repress or distance ourselves from emotions and internal experiences that are trying to help us navigate our way through the world, but they feel dangerous to us because of how they were responded to, or the perception that we had as children, that it was not okay.
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Before I share research looking at patterns of personality styles that are often found in people who are diagnosed with certain major illnesses.
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And I should say that they say personality styles, but really truly, I think those can be more aptly called coping styles.
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I wanna share a caveat with you.
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The patterns are striking, that's why I wanna share the information.
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But I've had some concern about how best to share this without, in any way coming across as though these generalizations are true for everybody.
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I really wanna be considerate of my listeners who are either currently or in the past have dealt with these illnesses or have a loved one, someone they care about who is dealing with these illnesses.
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You're not to blame in any way for what you are experiencing or have experienced.
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Please take what I'm about to share as information about the mind body connection, and I will eventually be sharing steps that we can all take to connect with and express our emotions in healthy ways.
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The overarching theme among every illness that was talked about in the book, among every personal story that the author included, always came back to a chronic tendency to repress anger.
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That was the common pattern among all the illnesses.
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For ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
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Patients with a LS were often described by their care teams as the most pleasant people.
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People who were just kind and thoughtful, positive, and never really asked for much.
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But what research found is that that actually veered into a space of being rigidly competent.
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So people with a LS, according to this research, refused to ask for help, refused to acknowledge that they had needs or discomfort or emotional pain, and then to ask for support for it.
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That was a consistent finding in a LS patients.
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There was also information about patients who have breast cancer.
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In addition to the repression of anger, they were often described as the altruistic caregiving type.
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Individuals with lung cancer had a tendency to bottle up their emotions.
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And actually with the lung cancer studies that they found was that the single greatest risk factor for death was a trait researchers described as rationality and anti emotionality.
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The repression of anger is what was underlying that trait.
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It was in research with patients who had melanoma, that the Type C personality was proposed.
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So we've all heard of the type A personality, someone who's tense moves fast, maybe a little more aggressive or angry, always in control, and also more prone to heart disease, unfortunately.
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Whereas the type B personality is described as balanced, able to experience a range of emotions without getting lost in them, or having uncontrolled emotional outbursts.
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The Type C personality, which was ascribed to patients with melanoma were found to be extremely cooperative, patient, passive and lacking assertiveness, and just really accepting overall.
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A lot of us are encouraged to be that way in our lives.
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But I'll describe the issue with that by describing one of the specific studies from the book.
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There was a research study in which distressing images, basically a slideshow of insults was shown to the research participants.
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Some of the research participants had melanoma, some had cardiovascular disease, and some were normal healthy controls.
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All three groups had the same physiological response.
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Their bodies were all activated by reading and receiving these insults and these distressing images.
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Only the melanoma patients said that they were fine.
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They weren't affected by what they had seen.
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Whereas the other two groups described an emotional reaction that matched their body's reaction.
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The melanoma patients were not lying.
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They weren't aware of what was happening inside their bodies.
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They had gotten that skilled at disconnecting from their body signals.
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This is a pattern that we see in a lot of individuals who end up going on to develop cancer.
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We all have cancer cells in our bodies.
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That's normal.
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It is normal for cells to reproduce and some of them to be abnormal, and our body has developed this process called apoptosis.
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That's the scientific term for the physiologically regulated death of cells that's necessary to maintain healthy tissue.
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A system within us that's designed to take away those abnormal, unhealthy cells and remove them from our bodies so they're not the ones who reproduce.
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So why do some of us develop cancer and others don't when we all have these abnormal cells in our body? The thought in this book is that habitually repressing our emotions, disconnecting from them, not using them as information, but instead ignoring them to the point that we can't even access them, creates a condition of chronic stress within our body, which creates an unnatural biochemical environment in the body, and that interferes with apoptosis with the normal natural process of getting rid of unhealthy cells.
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I am going to talk now about irritable bowel disease or syndrome.
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Our gut serves as a defense against toxins in the environment.
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When food goes into our system, it is still considered a part of the outside world up until it actually gets absorbed into our system.
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Our gut is so important for our health and wellbeing.
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In addition to being a sensory system, it also allows us to react to our environment, right? Gut reactions, gut wrenching, gut punch.
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These terms exist because it is so well known.
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It's just assumed.
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Our gut tells us how to react to the world.
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The gut even has its own immune system, which is how important it is for our survival.
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Our gut has to stay in a state of controlled inflammation in order to do its job.
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So it uses tissue swelling, immune cells, and antibodies, and active communication with the brain in order to make sure that we stay safe.
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And anything that disrupts this balance causes harm to our system.
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Chronic stress not only disrupts the balance in our gut, but also impacts how we experience pain and discomfort.
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So when an emotional stimulus comes in that stresses the gut out, the gut responds with muscle contractions, blood flow changes, and secretes lots of different substances and sends this information to the brain.
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There's actually more information going from the gut to the brain than from the brain to the gut.
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The brain takes this information and processes it through emotional filters, some of which add story to the sensation, sends information back to the gut, confirms the gut's initial reaction, and this back and forth between the gut and the brain continues until the threat has subsided.
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But what if that threat isn't going away or it's internal and we're not even aware of it? When there are too many gut wrenching experiences, the neurological apparatus becomes overly sensitized, meaning it becomes extra sensitive.
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It does not take as much to activate the response anymore, and then the pain threshold gets lower too.
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That's how you get to a point where a normal amount of gas or tension in the intestines will trigger pain, not just discomfort.
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It really doesn't take as much to cause pain anymore because the system has been chronically reacting, and now it reacts to less with a bigger reaction.
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Then you go to the doctor who runs tests and says Nothing is physically wrong.
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But your body says otherwise, and your body is right.
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You're still in pain.
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True pain.
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Real pain.
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Perhaps because your body has learned that pain or physical discomfort is the only message it can consistently bring to your awareness and bring it it does with life altering consequences.
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And then there's the placebo effect.
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In clinical trials of medication for inflammatory bowel disease, there have been instances of placebo response in a range of 60%.
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That means 60% of people in these studies feel better with a sugar pill instead of the active medication.
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This range around 55% actually also shows up in relation to trials of narcotic medication for pain control and antidepressant drugs.
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To be clear, the placebo effect is not an indication that something is only happening in your imagination or that it's not real.
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The placebo effect is actually entirely physiological.
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Neurological and chemical processes are being activated that serve to reduce symptoms and promote healing.
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Why? My guess is because help is on the way.
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Someone is finally paying attention to what the body has been trying to communicate all along.
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The threat is diminished.
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The p and i system can calm down and the person can start to feel better, and thank goodness, whatever helps, That doesn't mean the pain or discomfort wasn't real to begin with.
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It means that the nervous system is finally feeling safe enough to let its guard down.
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Anger is a tool.
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When I feel angry and I display it, that can be appropriate and lifesaving, Think about an animal who feels threatened, who hisses or growls at another animal in order to get that other animal to back off.
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That display of anger is appropriate and lifesaving.
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Anger represents both the recognition that something is not okay or dangerous and a response to it.
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But what if my early life experiences taught me that expressions of anger are not okay.
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I'm not allowed to do that.
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That will lose me the care that I need or get me judged or banished.
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I won't belong anymore.
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We can't survive without belonging.
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So if I repress anger within myself, that's gonna lead to disordered immunity.
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In order for the immune system to know how to work properly, it has to be able to tell the difference between what is self and what is not Self.
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Our immune system has memory.
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It can learn to recall instantly any previous threats and respond accordingly.
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But what if we learned as a young child that certain emotions are not okay, that it's important to repress anger in order to survive, but then anger comes up when I'm older because it's a natural human emotion.
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If I have not learned as a child what to do with that anger, how to appropriately express it and move it through my body, then anger can become directed at me, right that same energy instead of moving it through me becomes turned upon myself.
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Repressed anger will lead to disordered immunity.
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The inability to process and express feelings effectively and the tendency to serve others before I even consider my own needs makes me more primed to have that anger turned against myself.
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When I cope in a way that isn't authentic and doesn't allow true experience of emotions and expression of them in healthy ways, boundaries get blurred.
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Confusion happens between what is self and what is not self on the psychological level, and the same thing happens with our cells on an immune level.
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The immune system becomes confused and too disabled to work properly.
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In an autoimmune disease, the body turns upon itself as if it were a foreign substance because the body cannot tell the difference between what is me and what is others.
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Rheumatoid arthritis is a good example of an autoimmune disease in which this happens.
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In studies of individuals who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, the pattern showed traits of stoicism or putting on a strong front without acknowledgement of what's going on underneath, a reticence to seek help when it's needed.
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Uh, a tendency to put up silently with discomfort, perfectionism, and a denial of hostility.
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These are all traits that tend to show up in people whose bodies cannot tell the difference between what belongs to them and what does not.
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And I also wanna mention that Alzheimer's disease is starting to be viewed through an autoimmune lens.
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With Alzheimer's there are certain plaques and tangles in the brain that show up consistently in those who have it.
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But what research has shown is that there are also individuals who have those same plaques and tangles who never go on to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's They're starting to look at how excessive cortisol production may play a role in whether people who had those plaques and tangles go on to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's or not.
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This is newer research and it's still unclear, but what does remain clear is we have to be able to tell emotionally and on a physiological level, what is me and what is not me, because when we cannot, things get messy.
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I've talked about how we learn to deal with our emotions at a young age and continue coping in that way, and some of those chronic stresses that come from coping in ways that don't allow true connection inward and expression outward can contribute to the development of these diseases.
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What do we do about it? At the end of the book, Dr.
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Matay talks about the power of negative thinking.
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So if disease is an expression of internal disharmony, it's important to look inward and try to understand what is not working, and then allow experience of an expression of that.
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So Dr.
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Matay talks about the seven as of healing, and I'm gonna explain them, and encourage you to consider how you might wanna incorporate these into your life.
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He talks about the first a being acceptance, but I'm gonna switch it because I think you have to be aware before you can accept.
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So I'm gonna make the first a awareness.
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I have to be aware of what is showing up within me.
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Physical sensations, emotions, reactions to things.
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If I'm not aware of them, I can't do anything about them.
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So we start always with what do I feel and where do I feel it? And that doesn't necessarily mean I have to name the emotion.
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It could just be I feel tension in my chest.
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I feel an aching in my belly.
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I feel an absence.
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I feel nothing.
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I feel completely blocked.
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That is a feeling as well.
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Learning to read those symptoms, not as problems to overcome, but as messages to be headed is the starting point.
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And then number two, acceptance.
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So a willingness to take things as they are.
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That does not mean you have to like it, wish for it, or be willing to leave it as is.
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You may wanna work on changing things, but first you have to accept that this is the way things are and it really implies a compassionate relationship with yourself.
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You can think of acceptance like a compassionate curiosity.
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Hmm.
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That's interesting.
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or I'd like to learn more about that, not from a judgmental, get it to go away place, although that part can be present as well.
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Compassionate Curiosity is about being open to and curious about what is.
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Without necessarily coming at it from a positive or a negative place.
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Hmm.
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Just the way it is.
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let's drill down a little more into number three, which is anger.
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Just like repressing, anger isn't good for us.
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It's also not good for us too act out from anger or rage.
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Unregulated acting out of anger that increases our blood pressure can contribute to the development of coronary disease.
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Both lead to an abnormal release of emotions We often think about rage as being an acting out of extreme anger, but Dr.
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Matea has an interesting discussion in the book about how if you sit with the sensations of rage, the tightening of the voice, shallow breathing, muscle tension, it actually feels a lot more like anxiety.
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He says that acting out through bursts of rage is a defense against the anxiety that is often underlying the anger.
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Think about what it's like for a kid who has significant anger towards a loved one who is there to take care of them.
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It feels pretty scary as a little one to have aggressive feelings towards a loved one.
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That can create a lot of anxiety and guilt as well.
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So if we either repress the anger or we discharge it in inappropriate ways, we're not actually experiencing healthy anger.
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When we experience healthy anger and then we express it in appropriate ways, that's actually empowering and it relaxes our body.
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It decreases muscle tension.
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Anger doesn't require hostile acting out.
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It's actually a physiological process to be experienced, to be noticed, and then to be used in order to create a shift in a dynamic or just to express it, to be able to not hold onto it.
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I become greatly empowered without harming anyone if I allow myself to experience the anger, contemplate what may have triggered it, maybe choose to express it in some way or let it go.
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But what matters is that I don't suppress the experience of it.
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The fourth A is autonomy.
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We really suffer when our boundaries are blurred.
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Those of us at greatest risk of becoming Ill are those of us who experienced the most severe boundary violations before we were able to figure out who we actually were.
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When those clear boundaries don't exist between a parent and a child, the child remains enmeshed in the relationship and behaves in that way in other relationships too, maybe withdrawn sullen, self-defeating resistance to authority or chronic compulsive caretaking of others.
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Boundaries and autonomy are both essential for health.
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If we're not able to articulate our life experiences, then our bodies end up articulating what our mouths and minds can't.
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So healing has to involve establishing or reclaiming boundaries related to being an autonomous person.
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What do I desire? What do I want more of or less of, or not at all? Once I'm clear on my boundaries, I can start to bring my locus of control back inside to create an internal self-reference.
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Once I'm clear on what works and does not work for me, then I become more clear on my boundaries and.
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Part of it is about setting them clearly with others, but part of it is also just about creating more autonomy so I understand who is me versus who are you, and I feel more in control from that central place.
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The fifth A is attachment.
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It's our connection to the world that develops based on early life experiences.
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It can open us up or it can close us down.
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It can teach us healthy ways to experience and express anger, or it can teach us to fear and repress it.
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But even if we learned to shut down and distance from others for protection or go overboard with caregiving and becoming overly attentive to other people's needs, while ignoring our own, we can heal.
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We can shift that.
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But we don't shift it alone.
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We don't heal in isolation.
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We heal in community.
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We truly need connection in order to survive, not just for babies, not just for little ones who come into the world and can't take care of themselves.
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Adult human beings do not survive without attachment.
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In fact, the mortality risk associated with loneliness and isolation is through the roof.
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We need one another.
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We have to be vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to develop that meaningful connection.
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The sixth A is assertion, so declaring to the self and to the world that I am who I am.
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It's not about action or what I do, and in fact it's about letting go of the need to act.
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And just being irrespective of action without justifying my existence.
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I am who I am and that is okay.
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That is a big deal for some of us.
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Some of us do not feel able to do that.
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It feels dangerous, it feels threatening or maybe it just feels like, you know what right do I have? That's selfish.
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But truly we have to be able to assert our needs in order to meet the needs and separate from others' needs so that we can choose where to join with others and where to distance from.
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The seventh and final A is affirmation, making a positive statement or moving towards something of value.
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And there's two parts to this.
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There's affirming my own creative self, honoring the urge that I have, the need that I have, the emotion I have, but also affirming the universe itself and my place in it.
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Connecting with something larger than myself, whether through nature, religion, or various other roots, while also connecting with my personal self.
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It was really disheartening reading some of the stories in this book about the bad things that have happened to people and the ways in which they have struggled and then gone on to develop these diseases.
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But what was so affirming at the end of the book were these stories about how people have turned disease around, survived and thrived because they started to shift their habitual coping styles, started to turn inward and notice what was showing up.
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Honor it, establish appropriate boundaries, and move away from living in the way that they always had because they didn't know any other way, towards allowing their internal experience to become their guide and I found it really uplifting at the end.
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We are all going to experience stress in our lives.
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But the hidden stressors are what I wanted to call attention to today.
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The ones that are impacting us in ways large and small that we don't even recognize that add up over time.
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I've come a long way.
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I didn't used to have access to any of this information internally.
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Emotions were not my guide in the past, and in fact, they were something to distract from.
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Tune out, turn off, numb, mute.
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Really anything to get away from the discomfort and I have found my life is so much richer and clearer the more I turn inward, notice what's showing up, process where it comes from and what I need to do with it, and then use that as a guide moving forward.
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I actually have so much more connection, compassion, and clarity in my life as a result of my willingness to do that hard work and turn inward and start to develop this sense of what are my emotions telling me? What is my body telling me and what do I want to do with that? I'm in a much better place to pay it forward now because I've been practicing it for so long now, and I felt like a book that actually ties early life attachment experiences and coping styles that develop to physical health and wellbeing needs to be more well known.
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And so thank you for taking the time to listen, for allowing me to give you this book report, which is basically what this is.
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I highly recommend reading when the Body Says No doing so will allow you not only to have this information, but also to read the stories of people who have been willing to open up their lives, not only from a medical perspective, but an emotional and relational perspective, because it really truly is all tied together.
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I wish more doctors would view things from the lens that Dr.
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Matea does, which is one of trauma informed attachment based healing.
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I wanna end today with a quote from the late great poet Andrea Gibson.
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Andrea was non-binary and used they them pronouns.
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I came across an interview that Andrea did on the podcast we Can Do Hard Things back in 2024, after learning that their cancer diagnosis was now terminal.
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They used that platform to share the news with their fans and with the world.
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When I first heard this podcast episode, I was deeply touched, moved by Andrea's openness and honesty, willingness to turn towards their pain even as they faced their own mortality.
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They talked about how the experience of learning that they were living with terminal cancer led them to absolutely fall in love with their life.
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In that instant, their world shifted and they started to view every aspect of living as though it were love.
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Pain was actually just love.
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Suffering was actually just love.
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It all became a gift.
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Even the disease, which they called both the disease and the medicine because it healed them of the double suffering that they had been experiencing all their life.
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The pain about feeling pain, and it was really profound to hear this.
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Andrea talked in this episode about the importance of opening up to your feelings, all of them, whatever they are, not repressing anything, including anger, which some of us avoid for understandable reasons or even joy, which some of us avoid because we fear losing whatever we're joyful about.
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So here's what Andrea suggests.
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Just relax into your body.
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Whatever shows up, let it move through you.
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This is simple and it is hard to do.
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When I'm in anger, when I'm in frustration, I'm not feeling good about it.
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I'm just feeling the feeling.
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I'll be the first to admit that I have some emotions that I don't wanna touch with a 10 foot pole.
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They're uncomfortable, they're overwhelming, and I would rather do anything but turn towards them.
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And I have learned, especially in recent years, that as I've said before, what's in the way is the way, and I can avoid it all I want, and I do sometimes, but eventually I need to stop repressing it, and I need to get curious about it.
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So when Andrea says, relax your body, that may or may not be possible, but we can always turn towards our body and notice, what am I feeling? I always start with the physical sensations and then I get curious and I go from there.
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It is not easy to do, but it can be lifesaving for us in the long run.
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If we allow the natural energy to flow, it allows us to live more fully.
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As I was in the process of creating this episode of Authentically Connected, I came across their podcast episode again and I was reminded just how impactful Andrea's attitude towards pain and love and life was on me then and continues to be now and.
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And speaking of profound, Andrea and their partner, Meg, actually welcomed a film crew into their home for the last year of Andrea's life, and together they made a now Oscar nominated documentary called Come See Me in the Good Light.
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Which you all can watch on Apple Plus whenever you want to.
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It was a love story, y'all.
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You would think it was just depressing.
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But no, it was so much more than that.
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It was life affirming and love affirming.
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Andrea touches something in my soul Everything about Andrea's poetry speaks to me, and it really is striking to me that that's the case, because I have never felt that way in response to poetry before.
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But there's something about the way Andrea puts pain into words and encourages us to turn towards what ails us.
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It really speaks to the heart of what I'm sharing with you today, and I think that's why I was so taken when I read this quote, because it dawned on me that this is exactly what I'm encouraging you to do.
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So here is the quote.
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All of my pain is a spider.
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I've learned not to crush with the heel of my shoe, but to guide with a page of my journal into an empty glass, asking questions about its life, its purpose, as I walk careful out to the garden and rest it down on the earth.
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My pain, how happy it is to leave me whenever I treat it kind.
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Thank you for taking the time to listen today.
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I hope I've planted a seed of how valuable it is to turn towards what ails us to treat our pain with the kindness that it deserves and how happy it will be to leave us when we do.
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Thank you all for your time, your energy, your openness, and if you liked what you've heard, please like follow and share so that other people can find their way to this community.
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In the meantime, please be kind to yourselves, y'all, till next time.
