All Is Well: Heal Your Body With Medicine, Affirmations, and Intuition (18 page)

as much power to do so as the next person. You just have to take

hold of it and make it work.

From the Clinic Files: Addiction Case Study

Jenny, now 49 years old, was always sensitive and nervous.

When she was a child, her father was a businessman and traveled

frequently for work. Jenny often felt lonely. She turned to food,

which became her faithful companion. Jenny’s other passion was

to be a ballet dancer, but when she applied to ballet school she was

told she was too heavy for a serious career in ballet. Although she

continued to dance, she struggled with her weight and was often

injured. After a particularly bad knee injury, Jenny’s doctor pre-

scribed Oxycodone for the pain and Xanax for the related anxiety.

However, even after her injury had healed, she continued using

the Xanax and Oxycodone and other prescription medicines to

manage her anxiety and fears. Finally Jenny quit ballet altogether.

Jenny eventually got married and life was better; she felt hap-

pier and was able to wean herself off the drugs. But after her sec-

ond child was born, her depression and anxiety returned, and

once again she turned to prescription drugs to deal with her stress.

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A New Attitude

Jenny soon developed symptoms that different practitioners diag-

nosed as various illnesses ranging from chronic fatigue to irritable

bowel syndrome to attention deficit disorder—all of which led

Jenny to medicate these new problems with medicine, at escalat-

ing dosages. At this point, one physician, recognizing a problem,

refused to write her prescriptions and told her she had to deal

with her addiction problem.

Addictions to drugs, food, sex, gambling, rescuing, or, in Jen-

ny’s case, prescription medicines are used to cover up emotions

we can’t handle, whether they’re sadness, anxiety, anger, lost love,

boredom, or low self-esteem—the list is endless. Addictions also

block intuitive messages that we don’t want to hear. The substances

fill a spiritual void, a “nameless emptiness” that we don’t even

know exists.

But addiction isn’t simple use of substances. It’s a dominant

use that has led to problems with work, school, home, or other

relationships. Addiction causes us to be late, absent, or fired as

we neglect our responsibilities to everyone, including ourselves.

Sometimes addiction can escalate to the degree that it becomes

physically hazardous, resulting in accidents or worse. But we can’t

stop the compulsive behavior despite its adverse consequences.

Jenny took Oxycodone and Xanax to get to sleep, to be free

from anxiety, and to handle the chronic pain from old ballet in-

juries in her feet and spine. So the first thing we did was try to

identify whether any of her “new illnesses”—the fatigue, bowel

complaints, and attention deficit disorder—could stem from this

drug use.

Oxycodone side effects include drowsiness, fatigue, impaired

attention and memory, and constipation, among others. Xanax

and other “benzodiazepines” cause problems with attention and

memory as well. When I suggested to Jenny that the very drugs

she was taking for sleep, anxiety, and pain could be causing all of

these new health problems, she told me it was worth it. She didn’t

feel that she could handle the pain without the Oxycodone, and

she got very defensive about it, asking me why I didn’t “get it.”

After she calmed down, she told me she was at a crisis point in her

life. She had already lost her driver’s license for driving impaired,

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and her husband had threatened divorce because her use of drugs

had so affected their marriage and family life.

I told Jenny that she was not alone and there was nothing to be

ashamed of, since problems with opiate addiction were escalating

across the world. Morphine, codeine, Dilaudid, Demerol, heroin,

and Oxycodone are all opiates that affect the “opioid” receptor,

the same brain/body receptor for mood, self-esteem, spiritual ful-

fillment, pain, and sleep. If you use these medicines, whether they

are prescribed by a physician or you get them “off the street,” you

quickly build up a tolerance, meaning that you need more and

more of the medicine to feel the desired effect. Xanax, Ativan,

Valium, and Klonopin hit a different receptor—the GABA recep-

tor. This is the same one that is affected by alcohol. The power of

these drugs is so intense that you can’t just stop, as sudden with-

drawal can cause seizures and death.

I told Jenny that she needed support to get off Oxycodone and

Xanax. In addition to going into rehab to help her body slowly

wean itself off the drugs, she would learn new skills to manage her

anxiety, sleep, and old athletic injuries.

Although she had a lot of reservations, after a month Jenny

went into a drug addiction recovery unit that helped treat her

addictions to the prescription drugs. The physicians very slowly

weaned her off the drugs she had been taking, and then she re-

ceived the nonaddictive drug clonidine to treat her racing heart.

In team meetings with her husband, she was offered a variety of

drug maintenance programs to help prevent her from going back

to Oxycodone when she was discharged.

A pain treatment team evaluated her spine and feet and di-

agnosed her with arthritis from her ballet years. To address this,

Jenny decided to go aggressive with high doses of vitamin C,

grape seed extract, and glucosamine sulfate. These supplements,

along with weekly yoga, acupuncture, and Yamuna body rolling

treatments, helped her tap into her natural healing powers. If

things got too bad, she could always use methadone, levometh-

adyl (LAAM), naltrexone, or buprenorphine but only under the

strict supervision of her treatment team.

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A New Attitude

In the rehab unit, Jenny took part in a therapy program called

dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), which is tailored for people

with substance abuse problems. DBT is a form of mindfulness

training that helped Jenny learn how to regulate her anxiety. She

worked with a psychiatrist who was skilled in the science of com-

bining pharmaceutical medicine with complementary medicines.

So along with passionflower, lemon balm, and 5HTP, Jenny was

prescribed Zoloft and Remeron.

Finally, Jenny was required to create a strong long-term plan

with a vocational counselor and coach. She began to see that

much of her drug use, pain, anxiety, and insomnia came from

a lack of direction after her ballet career was cut short. Her voca-

tional counselor helped her identify some alternatives that would

allow her to continue being involved in what she loves, including

the possibility of starting a dance school for children.

In addition to the help Jenny got in learning about herself and

cementing her self-confidence, she worked on her own to address

the emotions that were contributing to her addiction. She used

affirmations for anxiety (I love and approve of myself and I trust

the process of life. I am safe); depression (I now go beyond other

people’s fears and limitations. I create my life); panic (I am capable

and strong. I can handle all situations in my life. I know what to

do. I am safe and free); and addiction (I now discover how wonder-

ful I am. I choose to love and enjoy myself).

Bringing all these treatments together to create a strong, in-

tegrated plan helped Jenny find herself. She was able to face the

uncertainty and pain in her life and heal her addiction.

All Is Well in the Third Emotional Center

The third emotional center encompasses a broad spectrum

of health problems, including mild or serious digestive disorders,

blood sugar issues, and weight and addiction troubles. But at the

heart of all of these is a lack of self-esteem and an inability to bal-

ance inner needs with outer responsibilities. When you feel good

and you have a healthy sense of self-esteem, you can create lasting

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health in the third emotional center. Look to the messages your

body is sending you about how healthy you are emotionally and

physically. Identify the stressors that contribute to your imbal-

ance. Your body will tell you if you listen and heed its warnings.

Once you change the negative thought patterns and behaviors

that stand in your way and learn to define yourself not by fam-

ily, work, or what you do for others but by who you are, you will

find health. Know your weaknesses but do not dwell on them or

run from them. Feed your self-worth and realize that you have

innate goodness. Resist any negative thoughts about who you are

with the assertion “I am good enough. I don’t have to overwork to

prove my worth.”

Love yourself and all will be well.

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The Fourth Emotional Center:

Heart, Lungs, and Breasts

The fourth emotional center is about balancing your needs

and the needs of someone else with whom you’re in a relationship.

If you aren’t able to do this, your body will let you know by creat-

ing health problems related to your heart, breasts, or lungs, such

as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attack, cysts, masti-

tis or even cancer, pneumonia, asthma, coughing, or shortness of

breath. The secret to mastering health in your fourth emotional

center is learning how to express your own needs and emotions

while also taking into consideration the needs and emotions of

others. It’s a matter of give and take.

Just as with the other emotional centers, the part of your body

that is affected will depend on what behavior or negative thought

pattern is causing the imbalance in how you deal with emotions

in a relationship. Those who are not in touch with their emotions

tend toward heart problems; people who are overwhelmed by their

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emotions often experience lung issues; and people who express

only the positive side of their emotions develop breast problems.

We will get more specific later when we address each body part.

However, generally speaking, the negative thoughts and behaviors

that are associated with fourth emotional center health tend to

come from anxiety, irritability, depression, and long-term emo-

tional problems. People who have fourth emotional center health

problems fear life and don’t feel worthy of living a good life—they

have an apparent lack of joy. They also tend to overmother and

put others’ emotions before their own.

If you have heart, breast, or lung issues, your body is telling

you that you need to examine how you maintain your own emo-

tional health while nurturing the emotional health of a relation-

ship. The signs may not be as severe as a heart attack or breast

cancer; they may be as subtle as breast tenderness, slightly elevated

blood pressure, or lung tightness.

Taking note of these slight changes in your health is the first

step. As always, seek medical help for any serious health problems,

but also make sure to look at the emotional aspects of these health

problems. Your goal is to transform your behaviors and thoughts

so you can find a comfortable balance between the effort you ex-

pend to help others and how much energy you invest in yourself.

Fourth Emotional Center Affirmation Theory and Science

Louise’s affirmation theory explores the subtle emotional dif-

ferences behind the health of fourth emotional center organs.

Health in these areas depends upon your ability to fully express

all emotions and to develop the capacity to experience anger,

disappointment, and anxiety—the so-called negative emotions—

without becoming overwhelmed by them. Only then is it possible

to truly move through anger, find a way to forgive, love, and ex-

perience joy again. Knowing, feeling, and expressing all of your

emotions, whether love and joy, fear and anger, is good for your

health. These emotions keep you moving steadily through life

and, as Louise says, this helps keep your blood flowing through

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Sweet Emotion

your heart and blood vessels. In fact, the word “emotion” comes

from the Latin word meaning “to move.”

The ultimate goal is to use affirmations to transform nega-

tive thoughts and behaviors into positive ones and actually effect

physical change, such as lowering blood pressure and cholesterol,

easing asthma symptoms, or balancing hormone levels that in-