1. The Bermuda Triangle
“When we have been prevented from learning how to say no, our bodies may end up saying it for us.”
Psychoneuroimmunology, science of the interactions of mind and body, the indissoluble unity of emotions and physiology in human development and throughout life in health and illness. This disciple studies the ways that the psyche - the mind and its content of emotions - profoundly interacts with the body's nervous system and how both of them in turn, form an essential link with our immune defences. Some call psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology to indicate that the endocrine, or hormonal apparatus is also a part of our system of whole-body response. These function down to the cellular level.
Many of us live, if not alone, then in emotionally inadequate relationships that do not recognize or honour our deepest needs. Isolation and stress affect many who may believe their lives are quite satisfactory.
Stress can transmute into illness. Stress is a complicated cascade of physical and biochemical responses to powerful emotional stimuli. Psychologically, emotions are themselves electrical, chemical and hormonal discharges of the human nervous system. Emotions influence and are influenced by the functioning of our major organs, the integrity of our immune defences and the workings of the many circulating biological substances that help govern the body's physical states. When emotions are repressed, this inhibition disarms the body's defence against illness. Repression - dissociating emotions from awareness and relegating them to the unconscious realm - disorganizes and confuses our physiological defences so that in some people these defences go awry becoming the destroyers of health rather than its protectors.
There is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body. The word 'mindbody' has been suggested to convey the real state of things.
We are all self deniers and self-betrayers to one extent or another, most often in ways we are no mare aware of.
Repression is a major cause of stress and a significant contributor to illness. While all of us dread being blamed, we all would wish to be more responsible - that is, to have the ability to respond with awareness to the circumstances of our lives rather than just reacting. We want to be the autoritatative person in our own lives; in charge, able to make the authentic decisions that affect us. There is no true responsibility without awareness.
“Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as vacuum.”
“Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as vacuum.”
“Why can’t parents see their children’s pain?
“I’ve had to ask myself the same thing. It’s because we haven’t seen our own"
“Wit can be a coping style that blocks conscious emotional pain, camouflages anger and provides a means of gaining acceptance by others.”
- Acceptance : Acceptance is simply the willingness to recognize and accept how things are. It is the courage to permit negative thinking to inform our understanding, without allowing it to define our approach to the future. Acceptance does not demand becoming resigned to the continuation of whatever circumstances may trouble us, but it does require a refusal to deny exactly how things happen to be now. It challenges the deeply held belief that we are not worthy enough or 'good' enough to be whole. Acceptance also implies a compassionate relationship with oneself. It means discarding the double standard that, as we have seen, too often characterizes our relationship with the world. Compassionate curiosity about the self does not mean liking everything we find out about ourselves, only that we look at ourselves with the same non-judgemental acceptance we would wish to accord anyone else who suffered and who needed help.
- Awareness : Animals and young humans are highly competent at picking up on real emotional cues If we lose that capacity as we acquire language, it is only because we receive confusing messages from our immediate world. The world we hear tell us one thing, the emotional data say something different. If the two are in conflict, one will be repressed. We repress our emotional intelligence in order to avoid an ongoing war with the crucial people in our lives, a war we cannot possibly win. And so we lose our emotional competence even as we gain verbal intelligence. Awareness also means learning what the signs of stress are in our won bodies, how our bodies telegraph us when our minds have missed the cues. In both human and animal studies, it has been observed that the physiological stress response is a more accurate gauge of the organism's real experience than either conscious awareness or observed behaviour. We can learn to head symptoms not only as problems to be overcome but as messages to be heeded.
- Anger: Anger is the energy Mother Nature gives us as little kids to stand forward on our own behalf and say 'I matter.' Anger respect boundaries. Standing forward on your own behalf does not invade anyone else's boundaries. It does not require hostile acting out. It is a psysiological process to be experienced. Second, it has cognitive value - it provides essential information. It is a response to a perception, threat or the like. Experience the anger, contemplate what triggered it, depending on circumstances manifest it in some way or let go. Don't supress the experience. Display it in words or deeds, but do not act it out in a driven fashion as uncontrolled rage or supress it. Aggressive impulses are suppressed because of guilt and the guilt exists only because of the simultaneous existence of love, of positive feeling. It is incredibly anxiety provoking and guilt-producing for a person to experience aggressive feelings toward a loved one. Healthy anger is a relaxation and empowerment. It helps anxiety disappear. Don't let it turn into range. Healthy anger help reduce muscle tension.
- Autonomy: Autonomy is the development of internal centre of control. In the self-definition we define what we value and want in life, the locus of control is from inside ourselves. Mind and spirit can survive grievous physical injury, but time and again we see that physical body begins to succumb when psychic integrity and freedom are jeopardized. People suffer when their boundaries are blurred. It is important to give freedom with restrictions. Most commonly in the lives of children, boundaries are not so much violated as simply not constructed in the first place. Many parent cannot help their child develop boundaries they themselves were never enabled to do so in their own formative years. We can only do what we know. Without a clear boundary, the child remains enmeshed in the relationship leading to withdrawal/sullen or self-defeating resistance to authority. Boundaries and autonomy are essential for health. We experience life through our bodes. If we are not able to articulate our life experience our bodies speak what our minds and mouth cannot.
- Attachment : Attachment is our connection with the world. In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy. We experienced anger, fear or repressed it. There we developed our sense of autonomy or suffered its atrophy. Connection is vital to healing. We sometimes find it easier to feel bitterness or rage than to allow ourselves to experience that aching desire for contact that when disappointed, originally engendered the anger. Behind all our anger lies a deeply frustrated need for a truly intimate contact. Healing both requires and implies regaining the vulnerability that made us shut down emotionally in the first place. We are no longer helplessly dependent children; we no longer need fear emotional vulnerability. Challenge the ingrained belief that unconsciously burdens - that we are not lovable. Seeking connection is a necessity for healing.
- Assertion :It is the declaration to ourselves and to the world that we are and that we are who we are. Assertion in the sense of self-declaration is deeper than the limited autonomy of action. It is the statement of our being, a positive valuations of ourselves independent of our history, personality, abilities or the world's perceptions of us. Assertion challenges the core belief that we must somehow justify our existence. It demands neither acting nor reacting. It is being, irrespective of action. It is letting go of the very need to act.
- Affirmation : When we affirm, we make a positive statement, we move toward something of value. There are two basic values that can assist us to heal and to remain whole, if we honor them. The first value is our own creative self. Everyone has an urge to create, we need to honour the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. 'What is in us must out'. The great art is to express our vitality through the particular channels and at the particular speed Nature foresaw for us.' The second great affirmation if of the universe itself - our connection with all that is. We are dust enlivened. We are part of the universe with temporary consciousness, but never apart from it. The word seeking is frequently employed in relation to spiritual world. We are seekers. Each seeks his or her own way to the light within and without.
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