Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (10 page)

BELIEFS ARE PHYSICAL

Thoughts are an important part of our body’s wisdom because we have the ability to change our minds (and our thoughts) as we learn and grow. A thought held long enough and repeated enough becomes a belief. The belief then becomes biology. Beliefs are vibrational forces that create the physical basis for our individual lives and our health.

If we don’t work through self-destructive thoughts and subsequent feelings (“I am worthless,” “I’ll never be good enough”), our destructive thoughts and suppressed emotions set ourselves up for physical distress because of the biochemical effect that emotions have on our im mune and endocrine systems. Diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, certain thyroid diseases, and lupus erythematosus, for example, are all called autoimmune diseases, meaning that the im mune system attacks the body. Why would the immune system attack the cells of the person in whom it is functioning, unless it is getting some kind of destructive message from somewhere very deep within the body? Mental depression has been associated not only with self-destructive behaviors but with depression of immune system functioning.
¹³
Depression is also an independent risk factor for heart disease and osteoporosis. Many women with autoimmune diseases suffer from depression as well. Studies have shown, for example, that stress and loneliness can help cause latent (inactive) herpes virus to become active.
¹⁴
The same is true for those with Epstein-Barr virus, the virus linked with chronic fatigue syndrome. This is one reason why, even though over 90 percent of the population has been exposed to and has antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus, only a small percentage actually suffer from the disease. The same is true for those suffering from gastric ulcers associated with
H. pylori
bacteria and from yeast-related diseases. This information is especially relevant to women, since at least 80 percent of all autoimmune disease occurs in us.
¹⁵
Even endometriosis, epilepsy, premature menopause, infertility, and chronic vaginitis have autoimmune components.

What an individual believes is heavily influenced by the culture in which she lives. Beliefs held in common perpetuate the type of society in which we live. Given our society, it is not surprising that women feel so much stress. In several scientific studies, inescapable stress has been associated with a distinct form of immunosuppression (suppression of immune system response). Emotional shock is associated with the release of endogenous opiates (morphine-like substances) and corticosteroids (hormones from the adrenal glands), which prevent white blood cells from protecting the body from cancer and infection. People who have a sense of hopelessness or despair and who perceive their situation as being uncontrollably stressful have higher levels of corticosteroids and immune suppression than do those who have more resilient coping styles.
¹⁶
People who are exposed to what they perceive as inescapable stress actually release opioid-like substances (enkephalins) that literally numb the cells of their bodies (in stress-induced analgesia),
¹⁷
rendering those cells incapable of destroying cancer cells and bacteria if this goes on chronically.
¹⁸
The most crucialthing to understand is this: It is not stress itself that creates immune system problems. It is, rather, the perception that the stress is inescapable—that there is nothing a person can do to prevent or change it—that is associated with immune system suppression. But perception can always be changed. And
that
is the key to getting and staying well. It is important to understand that our beliefs go much deeper than our thoughts, and we cannot simply will them away. Many beliefs are completely unconscious and are not readily available to the intellect. Most of us aren’t aware of the destructive beliefs that undermine our health. They don’t come from the intellect alone, the part that thinks it’s in control. They come from the other part that in the past became lodged and buried in the cell tissue.

Jean, a lovely dark-haired graphic designer, came for a consultation with me. She was forty-five years old and was concerned that her periods had changed over the years from a pattern of every twenty-eight days to every twenty-five to thirty-four days. She had no spotting in between and no other symptoms. This history sounded completely normal to me, but another doctor had told her that her cycle change might represent cancer. He had recommended a uterine biopsy. Because her cervical opening was too small to allow a biopsy instrument to enter, a D&C under general anesthesia was suggested. Jean decided to seek a second opinion. Her exam was normal, but she did in fact have a very small cervical opening and therefore could not have an office biopsy. Her ultrasound showed a normal uterine lining.

I told Jean that I thought she was a very unlikely candidate for uter ine cancer and that I wouldn’t recommend a D&C. If she was really worried and wanted one, I said, it could certainly be done to be sure she didn’t have cancer. To help her make her decision, I asked her what her childhood experience of illness had been, since a woman’s child hood experience tends to profoundly influence her beliefs around health and disease. Jean said, “I was an only child, and my mother was always sick. She constantly had bowel problems. I had to take care of her. As a result, I personally react to everything that happens in my body as though it’s a catastrophe—just as my mother did.”

Then I said, “If you decided to have a D&C and it turned out to be normal, would you be able to relax and stop obsessing over cancer?” She said that it wouldn’t make any difference. She’d still worry. We agreed then that she had to change her belief system about her body and its vulnerability, which had been so firmly influenced by her early years.

To do this, Jean needs to understand that her fear is not entirely accessible to her intellect. Much of it is in her body and her sub conscious mind. Telling Jean, or women with similar problems, to “just relax, you’re fine, it’s nothing” and that “it’s all in your head” is not helpful or scientifically accurate. While Jean’s belief is indeed in her mind, her mind is lo cated throughout her body and in every organ in it.

For Jean to stop obsessing about cancer (or anything else), she will have to go through the same process that every one of us must go through to heal. To explain this process to patients, I used the first three steps of the twelve-step program, which originated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Since these twelve steps are based on spiritual truths, I’ve found them applicable to nearly every aspect of life about which I or my patients are seeking guidance.

Step one is: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.” Instead of the word
alcohol,
you can substitute anything that you currently are obsessing about or feel powerless over. In Jean’s case, she must admit that she is powerless to change her belief and obsession about cancer with her intellect alone. She must also admit that this belief is not healthy and that it is making parts of her life unmanageable. Her belief won’t go away if she beats herself up about it or tries to force herself to change it with her intellect alone. She must also understand that the obsessive thought is trying to keep her from feeling something she may not want to feel. (The intellect likes to think it’s in control at all times.) But you have to feel in order to heal.

The second step is: “We came to see that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” This power “greater than ourselves” is a part of our inner guidance and bodily wisdom. You can even think of it as your soul—the part of you that lives beyond time and space. The word
sanity
means the samething as inner peace or serenity. Acknowledging that we have access to guidance from a power greater than our own intellect is a very positive step toward actually accessing that guidance.

The third step is: “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him
.” (You can change the word
Him
to
inner guidance
or
divine wisdom, higher self,
or
Divine Mother.
) This step bypasses the intellect entirely. It is a leap of faith that acknowledges the fact that all of us have inner guidance available within us and that that guidance has the power to remove our harmful beliefs. The words
made a decision
are very important. To create health, a woman needs to make a decision to do it. Then she must be willing to stay with the process. Participating in twelve-step meetings and working the steps around a fear, a belief, or even an illness that you’ve found your intellect to be powerless over can be very helpful and practical. I also love the affirming work of Louise Hay, who wrote the classic
You Can Heal Your Life
(Hay House, 1987).

For Jean and thousands of women like her, the knowledge that she is not alone in her fears and obsessions is itself very helpful. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t inherit at least some health-destroying beliefs either from her family or from the culture in general. By choosing to move forward into health and joy, we can uncover the deep programming of our bodies and change it to support health. The reason this works is that the very process of deciding to be happier or healthier will automatically bring up the thought patterns that have prevented greater happiness and health in the first place. Many women have been able to change their states of health and their lives once they understand that although their diseases are very real and physical, these diseases are often accompanied and reinforced by unconscious beliefs. Uncovering these and healing from them is a continuous, exciting, and empowering process. It is part of the process of creating health. It requires patience and compassion. And it works.

Beliefs and memories are actually biological constructs in the body. Think of your mind as an iceberg. The conscious part—the part that thinks it’s in control—is what peaks above the surface. But it amounts to only about 25 percent of the total iceberg. The so-called subcon scious part of your mind is the much larger part—75 percent of it lies below the surface. Our personal histories are stored throughout our bodies, in muscles, organs, and other tissues. This information, like the submerged portion of the iceberg, is not generally recognized by the part of the iceberg on the surface, our conscious intellect. Our cells contain our memory banks—even when the conscious mind is not aware of them and actually battles to deny them.

Once when I called a bellman to my hotel room to help me with my bags, he noticed a bottle of Chinese cough syrup near the sink. He made a face, held his stomach, and said, “I thought that was castor oil, and I remember that my mother gave it to me often as a child. I used to have stomach pains after taking it. Just looking at the bottle now gives me a stomachache!” This man had no conscious control over his body’s memory of his childhood pain. His body automatically reacted to the sight of a familiar-looking bottle even though the contents were entirely different.

Once I was hiking with a woman who told me that two weeks before, she had gotten some sunscreen in her eye and her eye had watered all day from the irritation. Several days later, she merely smelled the same sunscreen when someone else was using it, and her eye started to water again. Her biological memory was already encoded in her eye. Her intellect had been bypassed entirely!

How Beliefs Become Physical

At any given time, our state of health reflects the sum total of our beliefs since birth. Our entire society functions under many shared and sometimes harmful beliefs. (One that I hear regularly is, “Well, now that I’m thirty [or forty, or fifty], I suppose it’s normal to have aches and pains.”) All living things respond physically to the way they
think
reality is. Deepak Chopra, M.D., an authority on consciousness and medicine, uses the example of flies placed in a jar with a lid on top. Once the lid is removed, they will not leave the jar, except for a few brave pi oneers. The rest of the flies have made a “commitment in their body-minds” that they are trapped. It has been shown that in aquariums if two schools of fish are separated with a glass partition for a certain amount of time, the fish will not swim into each other’s space even after the partition is removed.

So it is that we can be sure the events of our childhood set the stage for our beliefs about ourselves and therefore our experience, including our health. For a woman to change or improve her reality and her state of health, she first has to change her beliefs about what is possible. This is a simple enough process. But it requires discipline and persistence.

That we have the wherewithal to overcome our destructive and unconscious patterns is a truth that I see proved daily. This power has also been documented experimentally in a study of the effects of beliefs on the aging process. Ellen Langer, Ph.D., studied a group of male volunteers over the age of seventy at a retreat center for five days. They all had to agree that they would live in the present as though it were 1959. Dr. Langer told them, “We are not asking you to ‘act as if it were 1959’ but to let yourself
be
just who you were in 1959.” They had to dress as they had then, watch TV shows from 1959, read newspapers and magazines from that time, and talk as if 1959 were right now. They also brought pictures of themselves from that year and put them around the center. Dr. Langer then measured many of the parameters that often deteriorate with aging (but don’t need to), such as physical strength, perception, cognition, taste, and hearing. The pa rameters reflected biological markers that experts in geriatric medicine often cite. Over the course of the five days, many of the chosen parameters actually improved. Serial photographs showed that the men looked about five years younger as well. Their hearing and memory improved. As they changed their mind-sets about aging, their physical bodies changed as well.