Doctor Gabrielle Duebendorfer with the second in her series.
The Biology of Belief – The Influence of Emotions and Beliefs on Health
Dr. Sarno describes in his book “The Divided Mind” how 80% of his patients
with musculo-skeletal pain get complete relief by understanding and
accepting the normal physiological process of the mind substituting physical
pain or other symptoms to prevent stronger underlying emotions from
emerging into consciousness. The mind subconsciously needs to suppress
strong rage, deep sadness or other emotional pain as it perceives them
as more threatening to survival than actual physical pain. Accepting this
understanding of the mind’s tendency to use pain as a distraction for self-
preservation as a normal physiological reaction plays a large role in the
disappearance of pain in Dr. Sarno’s practice because it undermines the
brain’s unconscious strategy.
Now this might sound quite unbelievable but there is more and more
evidence emerging that is supporting his theory and results. Dr. Lipton, in
his book “The Biology of Belief”, explains that beliefs formed in childhood
influence our stress responses in the body as they were unconsciously
embedded at the cellular level. There are actual perception proteins on the
cell membrane surface of each cell that evaluate whether the environment is
perceived as safe or threatening, which then cause the whole organism to go
either into defense or growth mode. If reinforced over time this is actually
laid down as particular pathways in the nervous system that replay whenever
these particular beliefs are triggered.
Recent research as shared on Science Friday has confirmed for the first
time that recalling particular memories activates very specific neurons
that contain that memory. The good thing is that they also were able to
show that these memories are plastic, i.e. can be reshaped by introducing
a new memory. By activating its opposite and holding both together, both
memories get woven together into new possibilities. This has tremendous
potential on how we can resolve conditioning from the past.
If this past conditioning to suppress emotions to keep us safe is not
addressed, the body’s response to this continued internal stress will
eventually cause physical and/or psychological disease as the body has no
way of actually fighting or fleeing from this threat. Dr Mate, in his book
“When the Body Says No”, explains how in most of us emotional competence
has been compromised by having learned to repress intense emotions in
order to avoid shame and rejection, which would have threatened our
survival as infants and young children. When a potent trigger activates
these memories, this learned helplessness prevents one from extricating
oneself out of the situation even if it were entirely possible.
This compromised emotional competence has caused us to loose our gut
feeling of our inherent warning system that something might be out of
balance. As a result, in response to some unconsciously perceived threat
based on past conditioning, the body mounts a stress response with the full
chemical and nervous system activation while the mind is unaware of it. This
has huge impact on the PNI system – a complex system that connects our
psyche, nervous system, immune system and hormonal system through nerve
connections as well as constant biochemical cross talk – that is designed to
ensure our survival.
When stimulated by continued stress over a prolonged period of time all
organ systems in the body are affected and start breaking down, causing
symptoms and pain – perhaps a more effective way of the body saying NO
if we are beginning to listen to it. Inflammatory bowel disease and reflux,
chronic musculo-skeletal or nerve pain, hypertension and artherosclerosis,
osteoporosis, anxiety and depression, allergic reactions are just a few
of the diseases that can arise as a response. If these cries for help are
suppressed with surgery or pharmaceutical or natural drugs, the symptoms
will just show up somewhere else. In fact the term “symptom imperative”
is well-know in psycho somatic medicine, where there is one symptom at a
time alternating in different pathologies, i.e. joint pain alternating with more
severe episodes of anxiety.
Luckily we now know that these conditioned behaviors based on cellular,
nervous and muscular memory, can be changed. There are many different
approaches to bring these unconscious beliefs and emotions into the
conscious mind and rewire nerve circuitry. Dr. Sorno encourages patients
to consciously undermine the mind’s unconscious protective methods
by imparting knowledge about the process, systematically examining
contributing beliefs/emotions and focusing on them instead of on the
physical pain and how to manage it.
Dr Lipton focuses on re-establishing self-regulation by feeling and
expressing emotions effectively, learning to differentiate psychological
reactions that are based in the present from those based on past
conditioning , and increasing awareness of genuine needs rather than
repressing them.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programs teach people to be present
with what is and relax regardless what situation you find yourself in.
Integrative Restoration (iRest) takes it one step further and includes
meditative inquiry into these underlying unconscious beliefs and emotions as
well as actively nourishing that underlying, unchanging sense of well-being.
There are many more somatic based methods that recognize that traumatic
memories are stored in particular muscle tension patterns. They primarily
encourage development of feeling safe in the body again and focus more
on relaxing body sensing/releasing techniques. Some of them also include
more body sensing oriented inquiry in to the underlying emotions/beliefs –
i.e. Trauma Release Exercises, Trauma Yoga, Integrative Restoration (iRest),
Trauma Resiliency Process, Somatic Experiencing, yoga therapy
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