Some disorders of the person have a physical cause alone, and some disorders are purely mental in origin. Where the physical and the mental meet is the realm of psycho- somatic disorder. In such a disorder, a physical illness has underlying psychological roots.
These roots consists of two factors : a particular negative belief about some aspect of life, together with an emotional mood that is generated as the response to that belief. The belief is not a conscious one, and I call it an unconscious idea, whilst the mood is the activity of one or more particular emotions that maintain the physical symptoms. This activity I call "emotional dynamism" (or sometimes I use the term "emotional dynamics" ). The intensity of the symptoms depends upon the intensity of the mood. [¹]
When the mood is active in the subconscious mind, then the physical illness is active as well. When a different mood is active, so the illness becomes temporarily quiescent.
If, through therapy or psychological support, the person is no longer troubled by the unconscious idea, then the emotional mood ceases to have any power and so the illness fades away. The person recovers his /her psychological health. The change in belief is the reason for a "remission" of symptoms, that is, when recovery occurs and cannot be explained by normal medical theories.
I use the term subconscious mind for what is personal to the individual,
and the term unconscious mind for what is general to humanity.
The unconscious idea is not unique to the person, so I assign it to the unconscious mind. The person's response is unique to him /her, and so the empowerment of emotional factors is a product of the subconscious mind.
I spent seven years engaged in an intensive psycho-analysis, followed by an equal number of years exploring the meaning of good and evil. During these years I experienced negative states of mind for extensive periods of time. I developed early symptoms of many illnesses and I could therefore analyse the emotional factors of them.
In addition to my own experiences, I spent many years as a porter in a local hospital. This gave me the opportunity to observe correlations between illness and the kind of personality that any patient had.
Another line of research was my reading of autobiographies. Autobiographies also produce material that can lead to the understanding of the subconscious emotional dynamism of illness.
My ability to identify states of physical pain was the legacy of the time when I intensively studied anatomy and physiology. This study was part of the requirement of a training course in Swedish massage and osteopathy that I undertook in my 30s.
I list and describe the illnesses that I experienced to some degree, together with some speculations on them and on one other illness (stroke). It shows what emotional motivation was dominant in my subconscious mind during periods of activity of the illnesses.
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Notation
I use the symbol to mean "indicates" or "implies", so that the symbol is indicating the emotional dynamism (or the emotional factors) of the particular illness. [²]
Table 1. List of my personal illnesses
Head and Eye aches Resentment or fear /anxiety
Rheumatoid Arthritis Jealousy (in self-pity mode)
Skin Cancer Guilt (in self-hate mode)
Angina Bitterness
Heart deterioration Pride (in mode of hatred of other people)
Multiple Schlerosis Fear and self-pity
.
Strokes ??? Resentment or fear /anxiety
The first disorders that forced themselves onto my awareness were eye-aches and headaches. These are related to the problem of strokes (or cardio- vascular accidents). I begin with these.
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1. Headaches and Strokes
There are two kinds of strokes since the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each with its own functions. A stroke on one side of the brain gives rise to qualitatively different effects than a stroke on the other side. The immediate cause of a stroke is excessive pressure within the brain.
Although I have not experienced a stroke, I have experienced the manner by which pressure within the brain causes headaches. There are two ways of generating pressure, and so there are two common kinds of headaches : one kind for each hemisphere. In addition, a third kind of headache can occur around the base of the skull, where it joins the neck vertebrae.
The immediate cause of headaches is pressure, but the precipitating cause is an emotional mood. The mood gives rise to the pressure, which then causes the headache. I present my discoveries on moods which act as headache triggers. These moods are fear, anger, resentment, and bitterness.
Fear
One day I observed the way that fear affects the brain. I called it the ascent of fear. First the fear was felt as a heaviness in my belly (solar plexus region) ; later it rose to my eyes, making them ache. Then I felt it rise to the right-hand side of the brain. I became aware of a sudden pressure, as the fear contracted the brain tissue : it seemed as though the tissue was being squeezed. I developed a headache soon afterwards. I have felt the contraction of brain tissue due to fear a few other times since.
If the contraction is maintained for some time then the capillary blood supply in the affected region will be squeezed and perhaps cease ; in this situation the death of some brain tissue is likely to occur due to lack of oxygen and blood. A stroke may result. I find that aspirin is effective against this type of headache.
Anger and Resentment
In contrast, anger and resentment cause headache by raising the blood pressure. The headache is felt on the left-hand side of the brain, or occasionally in the middle of the forehead. However, if the resentment or the anger is extremely intense then a band of pressure may be felt around the whole head.
Increased blood pressure may cause leakage of blood from the capillaries that are supplying the brain tissues ; the increase in fluid in the brain can add additional pressure on the tissues in the affected region. Too much pressure can damage tissue and a stroke may result. I find that aspirin is usually ineffective against this type of headache, and so I prefer to use paracetamol.
In my view, the reason for there being two main types of headache is because anger is binary, or complementary, to fear. [³]. Each emotion produces a different response in the head.
To summarise so far :
there are two main types of headache and two types of stroke.
Fear causes headache and right-brain strokes by contracting the tissue of the right brain. So presumably the physical cause of the stroke is infarction of brain tissue due to contraction of the capillaries.
Anger and resentment cause headache and left-brain strokes by increasing the blood pressure within the left brain. So presumably the physical cause of the stroke is capillary leakage which then compresses adjoining tissue. Anger is short-term, whereas resentment can last for days or weeks at a time.
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Bitterness
There is a third kind of headache that occurs around the base of the brain. I notice it mainly along the left-hand side of the occipital bone (that is, to the left of the junction with the neck vertebrae). The pain often develops when I am laying down trying to sleep, or when I am reclining with my head on pillows. The kind of pressure exerted is increased blood pressure, since my nose is inclined to bleed during these headaches.
The headache pain needs to be separated from musculo-tendon pain that can occur in the same region. The base of the occipital bone, running from ear to ear, is the site of attachment for tendons that join to various back muscles. These tendons can cause pain and stiffness at the points of attachment to the skull. This pain can be relieved by exerting strong thumb pressure on the painful sites for a couple of minutes : the pain will fade as the thumb pressure induces relaxation in the tendon and muscle. The reason for this effect is that the muscle is initially over-stimulated by the thumb pressure ; but this over-stimulation cannot be maintained for longer than a minute or two, and so the muscle has to relax. As the muscle relaxes, the pain fades.
However, the headache pain is not reduced by applying thumb pressure to the site of pain. The emotion that creates this headache is intense bitterness. This is not a short-term effect. I experienced intense bitterness for many years before this kind of headache began to appear.
2. Eye-aches
As with headaches, so with eye-aches. There are two common types. Anger and resentment raise blood pressure in the eye muscles, so making them ache. Fear contracts the eye muscles (and produces coloured lights when gentle pressure is applied to the closed eye-lid – this effect is not produced by resentment). I presume that the muscles concerned are the extrinsic ones which control the shape of the eye-ball, and not the intrinsic ones which control the shape of the lens.
Hence changing one’s spectacles may have no effect on eye-ache, since the spectacles only compensate for lens defects. Whereas doing eye exercises (such as rolling the eyes) will reduce eye-ache, since the eye muscles are given a work-out.
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3. Rheumatoid Arthritis
When my mother died I went through long periods of intense guilt and jealousy. During the times when jealousy (mode of self-pity) was dominant, I began to experience rheumatoid arthritis. In each different period of jealousy the arthritis was generated in a different place, though usually on my hands and wrists and sometimes in my feet. When the long spells of jealousy faded away, so did most of the arthritis.
However, some arthritis was left as a permanent residue. Years later, I still feel twinges of pain, mainly in my right thumb. I have been left with weakness in my hands and wrists, and sometimes my feet hurt when I walk.
4. Skin Cancer
During a period of prolonged guilt (mode of self-hate) after my mother died a small ulcer appeared on my nose. It developed quickly, but then equally quickly disappeared when my mood changed. Subsequently it re-appeared and disappeared a few times, always on my nose and always occurring during the periods of guilt and then fading when the guilt passed away. The size of the ulcers varied, up to about a quarter of an inch square on the largest one.
My nose has been red for all my adult life, due to capillary damage from intense sunburn when I was in early adolescence. Hence it is a site of physiological weakness. I interpreted these ulcerous attacks to be a form of incipient skin cancer (in a malevolent form), since they fitted the description of such symptoms.
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5. Angina and Rapid Ageing
In the spring of 1993 my left upper arm (deltoid muscle area) became susceptible to cold for some days, whilst my right upper arm was adequately warm. My dominant mood then was resentment.
When bitterness was intense I noticed that when walking into town the first half-hour was a time of difficulty – my heart did not seem to be responding to the need for extra effort. When I was in a good mood the walk caused no problems. A month later I could detect occasional spasms in the blood vessels in my left deltoid area. Then after a week, during a short spell of intense bitterness, my left deltoid muscle went into pronounced, regular spasms as I lay in bed. The upper left shoulder is a preferred area for referred pain from the heart. Obviously I was developing heart problems, presumably angina, during the periods of bitterness.
The effects of resentment and bitterness are different. Resentment has no noticeable effects on the heart (apart from raising blood pressure) ; but it produces a coldness in the left shoulder/deltoid area. This effect is most easily detected in cool surroundings, such as when I am in bed. This symptom verifies a social metaphor : when I resent someone I show him the cold shoulder (so long as it is the left one ! ). Intense bitterness produces angina.
Bitterness also causes another dramatic effect – prolonged periods of it institute rapid ageing ! My beard turned from black to a mixture of white and gray during the years of my psycho-analysis and the following few years. The most noticed example of rapid ageing in a public figure was that of Hitler, when Germany began losing the war in Russia. [4]
6. Heart Deterioration
When pride (mode of hatred) is dominant and I drink strong tea, I usually detect mild aches from the heart region. This effect is absent when I am in social company, since the anxiety burns up the caffeine. In my view, heart deterioration is caused by pride in this mode, aided by caffeine.
There is another common effect produced by pride. All three forms of hatred (those produced by guilt and pride, as well as hate on its own) restrict the blood circulation to the body’s extremities. The pride and the guilt have the greatest effect, and help cause cold hands and feet, as well as the dry skin feeling in the hands. However, the most noticeable effect of pride occurs on the head – the reduced circulation to the scalp over a long period of time causes baldness.
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7. Multiple Schlerosis
One day in my 30s, years before I began my self-analysis, I was walking to work one morning. Suddenly my left leg seized up and refused to move. I was rendered motionless. I had to use enormous will power to get it moving again ; even then it was some moments before I could stop dragging my leg and walk normally. The temporary paralysis was probably due to fear. At that time I did a lot of walking, so my legs were in excellent condition.
I had much trouble with dreams in 1991 and the early part of 1992. These dreams caused a great deal of sweating in my thighs. The dreams were frequent enough for me to lose weight off my thighs. And in my dreams I had difficulty in walking (dreams can be indicators of incipient or potential illness).
One day in 1993, I shared afternoon tea with a new female acquaintance. My sexual anxiety was high. My left leg, particularly the thigh, was persistently shaking with fear. Trouble with my left leg was not new. I stored enough tension in my left leg and buttock to cause constant irritation when I slept on my left side. The tension, rather like a dull ache or even a dead feeling, seemed to originate from the piriformis muscle area, which presumably then irritated the sciatic nerve. By 1995 the outside area of my left ankle and heel had become sensitive to pressure when I was laying in bed.
What illness symptoms were these? There seemed to be just two possibilities, either multiple schlerosis or Parkinson’s disease. I favoured the former diagnosis. During the time when I worked in the local hospital I occasionally observed patients with multiple schlerosis. My observations seemed to indicate a factor of self-pity – the patients were nice people, but inclined to be passive. Fear comes into both multiple schlerosis and Parkinson’s disease. Fear produces either a feeling of muscle "deadness" and "inertia", or else muscle shaking and tremor.
The novelist Arthur Koestler developed Parkinson’s disease in his old age. In his autobiography ("Arrow in the Blue", chapter XII) he related his problems with anger. When he read about atrocities committed on Jews he felt himself choke and seethe with impotent anger. He wrote that he suffered from "Chronic Indignation" in the same way that other people suffer from chronic indigestion. He compared the sensation of choking with indignation with the periods of relaxed quietude that he often experienced – they were opposite states of mind for him.
Now Parkinson’s disease may well be a symbolic representation of this attitude to anger, in the way that the limb muscles operate on a start-stop-start basis ; that is, the illness may represent the choking back of nervous energy. I do not handle anger in this manner. Hence I interpret my leg problems to indicate signs of latent multiple schlerosis.
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Purpose to Illness
When a person has a major illness that is still progressing then any psychological counselling should have at least some component that aims to ameliorate the intensity of the emotion that is feeding the crisis. What happens if this intensity is decreased, or even fades away altogether ? In my view, a spontaneous remission of the symptoms of an illness reflects the cessation of the subconscious emotional dynamism.
When attempting to analyse the emotional dynamism of an illness, it is necessary to separate people who are engulfed by the illness from people who are recovering from it. Recovery denotes a change in subconscious motivation. (Subconscious motivation usually means the influence of the current subconscious mood and its associated ideas).
On the path of personal evolution, does psycho-somatic illness serve any purpose ? My answer is Yes. The body is the vehicle for the mind. The body that a person gets is that necessary to express his ideas, meanings and values within a physical existence. Without a body the person (as a pure consciousness) will usually remain in ignorance of his virtues and vices, particularly the vices !
It is one of the purposes of the body to reveal to oneself the way that one is handling dominant emotions, attitudes and desires. Ultimately, one’s repertoire of such states of consciousness indicates how one is handling power.
Usually the person does not like to be aware of negative states of consciousness, so he relegates them to the subconscious domain of his mind. But difficulties do not vanish just because the person prefers to ignore them. The negative states are brought back into awareness by a roundabout route. This is done by the manifestation of symptoms. The despised emotions, attitudes and desires help to create symptoms of physical illness, as well as accentuating any mental confusion. By facing up to these problems the person is thereby indirectly facing up to his psychological immaturities.
Causation
My understanding of psycho-somatic illness brings in the issue of ethics. Who is responsible for the production of such illness ? Is it the person who is ill ? I do not accept this. Then what or who is responsible for illness ?
There are two aspects to my answer.
First
My view is that it is the immanent life force (or the immanent god) which creates the illness, using the unconscious mind for this purpose. However, the particular psycho-somatic illness that the person experiences is not an arbitrary choice. The type of illness that is created is determined by the psychological characteristics of the person. The illness is created in order to bring the person’s subconscious emotions and attitudes and desires into normal consciousness where they can be faced and dealt with.
Secondly
The person's soul also has a hand in psycho-somatic illness ; my view is that the soul controls the intensity of the illness. In any emotional experience, whether pleasurable or unpleasurable, the intensity can be controlled by the soul. The soul can neutralise, minimise or maximise the joy or sorrow being felt. A deduction from this view is :
when a person experiences a remission of symptoms,
this is due to the action of the soul.
NOTE :- recently i've attended this programme in Kuala Lumpur and many things are realy scary....!!!!!We have lost our identity....
