Dear select readers, how many of you related to that first image? Hands up ladies! Knowing my friends who might read this, I'm betting many of you. Now, this image is a pitch for some supplements, but I found it because I've been reading a book at the recommendation of my newly found cancer naturpath, "When the body says NO" by Gabor Mate. It's been a really hard slog for me to get through. Not because it's isn't well written or interesting, rather because I read a few pages and stutter. And reflect. And put the book down to think a little about why it keeps making me react. I'm reacting more to this book that even the Sheryl Sandberg leadership manifesto that made my blood boil.
I'm not through the book yet and I keep seeing myself in it, over and over again. The author is a palliative care doctor, and he writes from his own experiences with patients with diseases such as MS, Crohns, cancer and the like. The book explains some of the research done in an area called Psychoneuroimmunology. It is an area of study that focuses on the connection between the mind and the nervous and immune systems of the human body. When I think of the mind-body connection, I always think of my mother, who would always, always, get a horrible cold or some ailment whenever there was a funeral that she was supposed to attend. It was never a feigned illness. She hated going to the funerals and her body, without fail, was happy to find a reason to make it impossible for her to attend.
This book, while careful not to blame the patient, pulls on the connecting threads between chronic stress, repression of emotions and these life altering, life reducing or life ending illnesses. It begins to explain the connections between our complicated immune system and our psychological state. Much of the book focuses on the childhood experiences and stresses of the patients. Some is rubbing me the wrong way as I've never met a perfect parent, perfect family or perfect child. I've always felt that we are all the victims and benefactors of our upbringing, and we all have the choice to benefit from the good and learn from the bad.
But if you start to think this through, if chronic stress or rather an inability to cope with chronic stress causes not just your run of the mill, depressed immune system, cold/flu, your hypertension or migraines, but also diseases like cancer or MS, what do we do with that? For someone like me, where I have a disease that from a statistical point of view, I shouldn't have, it seems logical to blame stress.
It's a pretty easy leap, really more of a hop, to say that the unremitting stress of last year and the feeling of being totally out of control in my life was a catalyst for an immune system that was not up to the job of catching the growing cancer cells. But if how we are built makes us sick, what do we do? If your life is built on loyalty, family and love, what do you do? Unmake ourselves? Be people that we aren't?
I think often about something that a former colleague used to say to me ALL the time. Whether talking about work or home, just about every day, he would say "Yes, it's a problem, but it's not YOUR problem". I've always wanted to solve problems, jump in and carve a path forward. Push for a resolution, a decision, a direction. But in reflecting on this connection and the few studies that have shown personality types being associated with diseases, I am starting to ask myself some uncomfortable questions.
I've spent a lifetime trying to live up to my expectations for myself, and trying to drive down my expectations of others. Maybe I need to find a new balance.
More later as I continue reading and reflecting!
