MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH
Why You Must Listen to Your Body
When it says NO.
“When we have been prevented from learning how to say no, our bodies may end up saying it for us.”
— Gabor Maté
The reason I wrote this article is because of a recent experience I had in regards to my health. I was taking great pride in having a healthy mind, and a healthy body. As a TCM and Ayurvedic practitioner, I successfully managed for the past couple of years to find the perfect balance for myself, living my life in accordance with the well-known Latin phrase: mens sana in corpore sano.
But of course, since life has no linear stream and changes are meant to occur, I got thrown out of balance quite easily a few months ago when I lost my job. It came unexpectedly and it caught me off guard. Everything went awry wreaking havoc in my mind. Thus, my immune system got weakened and I fell ill for a few weeks. My lower back also started acting out since my financial stability was threatened. My emotions were dysregulated and my body was suffering the consequences.
The thought slump I fell in was making my body sick. And that lasted for a good few weeks until I processed everything. It took me a while to go through all four stages of grief until I managed to reach the final one- acceptance.
I first got acquainted with Gabor Maté’s work last year during my MA in Integrative Psychotherapy. Gabor Maté CM is a Hungarian-Canadian physician. He has a special interest in childhood development and trauma and in their potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health, including autoimmune disease, cancer, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, addictions, and a wide range of other conditions.
You might be acquainted with the film ‘The Wisdom of Trauma’, in which he explains that trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. I highly recommended it if you haven’t watched it yet.
During my psychotherapy classes, we were studying the bio-psycho-social model in psychology. Our professor asked us to first read Gabor Maté’s book, ‘When the Body Says No’, and later on assigned us to check our family history for illnesses and then examine the psychological factors that could have led to them as well. That is, whether our lineage diseases were psychosomatic or not.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines psychosomatic as: of, relating to, involving, or concerned with bodily symptoms caused by mental or emotional disturbance.
Psychosomatic = mind (psyche) + body (soma). A psychosomatic disorder is a disease that involves both mind and body, usually lacking a medical explanation.
Although there are many factors that can lead to psychosomatic disease, the most common of them are difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions, chaotic lifestyle, and substance abuse.
Psychosomatic disorders can affect the body in short term leading to insomnia, stomach issues, high blood pressure, skin rash, stomach ulcers.
The inability to identify and process the emotional causes behind them in a healthy manner can lead to complications and chronic diseases.
I am sure you are familiar with most of these situations:
- Before an important exam, you feel nauseous and have stomach issues.
- You have to give a presentation, your palms become sweaty, and your heart starts beating very fast.
- You get angry at a person or situation, your immune system gets weaker and you get sick much easier.
These are some of the most common psychosomatic symptoms that most of us are aware of.
What happens when you experience a disease that has nothing to do with your genes or viruses?
According to Marriam Webster dictionary, when the word disease was first used, it referred to “lack of ease or comfort” rather than to how it is used today to refer to sickness.
So our body experiences disease as discomfort. This discomfort firstly comes from our thoughts and dysregulated emotions.
Research shows that the substances your brain produces such as dopamine, endorphins, which are natural painkillers, and gamma globulin, which strengthens your immune system depends in part on your thoughts, feelings, and expectations.
If you’re sick but you have hope and a positive attitude and you believe that you’ll get better, your brain is likely to produce chemicals that will boost your body’s healing power.
Of course, I am not talking here about toxic positivity which means you ignore or dismiss your symptoms and do not want to deal with anything in regards to your recovery.
According to Dr. Maté, the issue with Western medicine is that it doesn’t adopt a holistic approach. Western medicine states that diseases happen to organs such as heart disease, lung disease, separating them from the person and the person from the environment.
He is saying there are two main biases of western medicine. Illnesses have either physical causes like genes or bacterias or idiopathic causes, which means we don’t know their source from a scientific standpoint.
In the past couple of years though, Western medicine has started to make small steps in integrating a more holistic approach to illness though through the Biopsychosocial Model.
The Biopsychosocial Model was first conceptualized by George Engel in 1977. He suggested that to understand a person’s medical condition we should consider the biological factors as well as the psychological and social factors.
George Engel believed that to understand and respond adequately to patients’ suffering — and to give them a sense of being understood — clinicians must attend simultaneously to all of these 3 dimensions of illness.
Psychoneuroimmunology or better said psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology is a discipline that has evolved in the last 40 years to study the relationship between immunity, the endocrine system, and the central and peripheral nervous systems, or the psyche, nervous system, immune system, and the hormonal apparatus are interconnected.
There are several studies to support the evidence of the mind-body-spirit connection. Let’s take anger and hostility.
Anger can cause inflammation in the body and weakens our immune system. In one study, Harvard University scientists found that in healthy people, simply recalling an angry experience from their past caused a six-hour dip in levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, the cells’ first line of defense against infection.
“Repressed anger — where you express it indirectly or go to great lengths to control it, is associated with heart disease,” says Dr. Aiken. In fact, one study found that people who were more prone to anger as a personality trait were at twice the risk of coronary disease than their less angry ones.
Hostility can affect your lungs. A group of Harvard University scientists studied 670 men over eight years using a hostility scale scoring method to measure anger levels and assess any changes in the men’s lung function. The men who scored high at hostility levels had significantly worse lung capacity, which increased their risk of respiratory problems. The researchers theorized that an uptick in stress hormones, which are associated with feelings of anger, creates inflammation in the airways.
Professor I. Wilhelmsen, in his article called Brain-gut axis as an example of the bio-psycho-social model, states that:
You cannot experience an emotion or think a thought without biological correlates. Unresolved mental conflicts lead to activation of the central nervous system (CNS), and of the autonomic systems.
Even though medicine has made great progress from this mind-body-spirit standpoint, it is still quite further from where it should be. Think about your last visit to your local GP. Apart from your physical symptoms, did he/she ask you about anything else? Such as whether you have recently suffered a loss or if you are stressed in your daily life? It has not happened to me yet. Nor to my parents.
Thus, it is very important that in addition to the physical exam your doctor gives you and following the treatment he recommends, to become aware of what is going on in your life from a psychological point of view as well.
Here’s a 3 step guide on how to become more aware and incorporate a more holistic approach to healing:
- Listen to your body
Focusing too much on duty, responsibility, and neglecting yourself it’s not going to do anyone any good. On the contrary. Not listening to your gut feeling is a disconnect from yourself, from your body. Which long term can lead to chronic illnesses.
Your body knows when it is time for you to take it slowly. Learn to prioritize self-care and say no when you feel like you need to take time for yourself to rest and recharge. You can do way more good if you show up as the best healthy version of yourself, rather than if you keep dismissing your body’s cues.
2. Avoid toxic positivity
It is of course best to keep an optimistic outlook but not to the point where you obsess over them and disregard what is actually going on. It can easily become a maladaptive coping mechanism because it makes you ignore your symptoms. Telling yourself that everything is OK whilst you’re obviously experiencing discomfort is not going to help.
It is very important to sit with your feelings, integrate and process them in a healthy way.
3. Drop these 2 beliefs:
- You are responsible for how other people feel
Yes, you should take into consideration other people’s feelings and have empathy, but not to your detriment. It is not your responsibility to take over others’ problems. Taking that upon you is unnecessary and burdensome.
Forcing yourself to do something you hardly enjoy just because you think you make the other person happy, it’s not worth your health. Learn to communicate your wants and needs in a healthy way and have people respect that.
- You must not disappoint anybody
Yes, you should be there for people and help them in any way you can but remember: other people's expectations from you are none of your concern. Being a people-pleaser is only going to result in you disappointing yourself.
It is not selfish to make decisions that are for your highest good as long as nobody gets hurt. Following your own path in life is important from both a mental and physiological standpoint.
Takeaways
- Whilst it is extremely important to go and seek a doctor’s opinion and follow the course of treatment, you also have to learn to listen to your body more. Not all diseases are psychosomatic but it’s worth investigating first whether that might be a possibility.
- Psychosomatic symptoms are the best way to become aware of what your body is trying to tell you.
- If you get back in touch with yourself, you’ll learn to recognize the ways in which your body tells you it’s time to rest and rejuvenate.
- Keep an overall optimistic mindset but avoid toxic positivity. You want to become aware and integrate everything, not avoid or run away from it.
- Drop the belief that you are responsible for how other people feel or that you mustn’t disappoint anybody. These two beliefs are highly unrealistic and put unnecessary pressure on your nervous system and mental health overall.
- Don’t beat yourself up blaming you are at fault; everything in this world is here to teach us something.
- Allow yourself the necessary time and space in order to be ok with the fact that you are going through a different stage in your life.
- Look at what is happening inside you through the lens of self-love and self-compassion.
“Knowing oneself comes from attending with compassionate curiosity to what is happening within.”
— Gabor Maté
Let me know what your approach to disease is and whether you listen to what your body has to say to you.
Thank you for reading!
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