Mind/Body/Spirit: The Holistic Thug
Looking over comments to the previous thread, I see two essential contrasting views on the connection between psychological/spiritual wellness and physical health.
1. The primary causes of physical health problems are physical and biological. However, dealing well with such problems psychologically and spiritually in some cases contributes to recovery.
2. Underlying psychological or spiritual difficulties are usually or always a leading cause of physical health problems and of non-recovery from physical health problems.
Each view acknowledges that the mind can play a role in physical illness and recovery; #2 greatly overstates the impact of the mind on the body by ignoring evidence that would put it in perspective.
One small sample of the ignored evidence:
If view #2 is correct and poor physical health necessarily indicates significant underlying psychological or spiritual issues, then, conversely, a lack of health problems indicates significant psychological and spiritual integration. As a group, rapists, murders, thugs of all kinds, and brutal dictators are at least as physically healthy as average. It would therefore follow from view #2 that their level of psycho-spiritual development is at least that of average citizens and well above that of non-violent human beings who have physical health problems.
And to think: All this time we’ve been having them work on license plates instead of advice columns!
1. The primary causes of physical health problems are physical and biological. However, dealing well with such problems psychologically and spiritually in some cases contributes to recovery.
2. Underlying psychological or spiritual difficulties are usually or always a leading cause of physical health problems and of non-recovery from physical health problems.
Each view acknowledges that the mind can play a role in physical illness and recovery; #2 greatly overstates the impact of the mind on the body by ignoring evidence that would put it in perspective.
One small sample of the ignored evidence:
If view #2 is correct and poor physical health necessarily indicates significant underlying psychological or spiritual issues, then, conversely, a lack of health problems indicates significant psychological and spiritual integration. As a group, rapists, murders, thugs of all kinds, and brutal dictators are at least as physically healthy as average. It would therefore follow from view #2 that their level of psycho-spiritual development is at least that of average citizens and well above that of non-violent human beings who have physical health problems.
And to think: All this time we’ve been having them work on license plates instead of advice columns!
Posted by Paul at 12:25 AM Permalink
22 Comments:
we have always tried to find the right system for children to grow,yet every where they suffer from something or the other...aren't these problems then the basic need for us to understand the full nature of ourselves and what our inner strength is to us?
for a person living in the city,the huge buildings are nothing,but for the person in a village they are fasinating...to understand we should understand the basic aspects of life isn't it?
to know light we need to see darkness vis-a-vis.??
Digging into the example...
It could be argued that their lack of guilty conscience allows them to maintain physical health in a mental and spiritually sick state. In essence they disconnect their spirit/mind self from their physical self, becoming a fractured self, hence their anti-social behaviour.
From that assumption a theory could me made that if any awareness of self is aroused in these people they would either strive to improve their behaviors and hence grow into a truly healthy individual or gradually self destruct, growing more and more sick with the guilt that they bear.
Another explanation is that they believe in what they do, as in the case of a dictator. Their belief and will is so strong that they do not suffer as someone with less faith and strengh of will would.
Still, there's a question in the absolute psychological/spiritual over physical theory. A complete opposite of the example Paul wrote. Some of the best minds I know have poor physical health by virtue of inheriting bad genes or a sickness that they acquired. They are weak in body but powerful in spirit and mind.
What gives rise to such conditions if the spirit is the source of physical ailment?
The people who become ill from spiritual problems are oddly healthier than those with no physical symptoms. They are becoming whole; they are strong enough to integrate the physical and spiritual self so that they can heal.
In this day and age humans are still adapting to living in an overcrowded world..after millenia of surviving in hunter gatherer kin-clans then on to agricultural city states and finally modern urban prisons..completely unnatural settings.
Our original brains are having a terrible time trying to adjust and we see how desperately people cling to anything that will identify themselves as belonging to a specific group..based on any number of criteria.
Very stressful..which causes the older original part of the brain to scream fight or flight and the newer part to try to reason with the old part.
People are still fairly superstitious when it comes to causes of illness..lunacy (Moon) and venereal (Venus) and viral infections and molecular changes aren't dramatic enough for many.
Life and Death need to have an aspect of the supernatural to satisfy many. The 20 lbs of bacteria that we lug around to keep us functioning properly will adapt and move on when humans are all gone. Afterall they were here long before we were.
Neuroscience will soon explain how and why our brains dream up grandiose explanations. We desperately try to link ourselves to some cosmic energy cycle (the force) because we are incredibly conceited and we thrive on elevating ourselves into 'mini-gods'.
I like the idea that we have heroically chosen our path before birth as being one in which we can best learn what we need to learn. We chose it but then we kind of forgot it.
I don't believe it, because I try not to believe anything. But I like it.
From one perspective we can call them physical health problems but we need a perspective on this. We are all about to die. We all have life still. I like that Kenny Rogers song :
You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when youre sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.
Now ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowin' what to keep.
cause ev'ry hands a winner and ev'ry hands a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.
"To know light we need to see darkness" - up to a point, I'd very much agree. Adversity, up to a point, is a good thing. Of course if it's too much, it can literally kill us or substantially lower our quality of life.
AHMAD: Your closing two paragraphs offer another example of the sort of evidence that viewpoint #2 overlooks: the fact that demonstrably sane and even highly sane people get sick too.
Your earlier paragraphs seem to support viewpoint #2: you remark that a lack of guilt may be what allows criminals to remain physically healthy. I'm not sure this quite works.
First, there's something that seems counterintuitive to the idea that the way to good health is to be either well put together or badly put together in terms of one's inner life.
Second, to the best of my knowledge the idea that violent criminals are free of conflict, guilt, and other forms of inner turmoil is incorrect. As I understand it, only a minority of them are true sociopaths who lack a conscience.
SOULPEACE: You believe that:
Physical illness is caused by spiritual illness.
However, most people with spiritual illness stay physically healthy anyway. This is because they "seperate their physical self from their spiritual self."
Physically sick people who recover are people who are especially well integrated. They are not only physcially healthy but they are exceptionally spiritually healthy as well.
While I understand this as a theory, I'd need to ask what it's based on. For example, do reputable studies consistently show that as a group, people who have recovered from serious illness are exceptionally well integrated psychologically and advanced spiritually?
It may be that my own experiences in this regard are unusual, but the people I known who have recovered from serious illness appear to be average people.
YVES: I know what you mean about things you'd like to believe but in all honesty you recognize that you don't have all the evidence you need. I have some of those too.
I remember song lyrics easily if I like them - those are among those I've memorized, so you're just lucky this is being conducted over cyberspace or you'd have to put up with a lot. I've always loved my singing but am still looking for someone else on earth who feels the same...
It's hard for me to explain this to someone who is not ill or who is "worried well". Basically, we are hugely adaptive creatures. What was once "normal" to me before, running, hiking, swimming and training for triathalons...is no longer "normal" to me. You adjust, just as people adjust as they grow older. This becomes your new normality.
Saintly well-adjusted people become ill. Mean old codgers who spent their entire lives hating everyone and committing every form of meanness live to their 90's and die in their sleep. "The good die young." The "will to live" is a hugely atavistic instinct coiled somewhere in one's reptile brain. It isn't a force you can control. Disease is not something you can wrap around yourself like a mantle or call to you like a dog by virtue of your psychological makeup or your spirituality. It comes in its own time. It doesn't care how many people are praying for you nor does it care how many hours of meditation you did.
If people seem to become well after dealing with their spiritual issues, I would suggest that they were either not ill to begin with, or their disease process worked its way through as it would have eventually anyway.
We have a tendency as a species to attempt to form connections. This is one of the cases where I believe that we want to assign a cause and effect relationship to something that has no cause or effect. It merely appears to be that way sometimes.
Sometimes the best thing is to just "let the mystery be" and let science sort it all out.
Excellent point about my last comment. My theory is based on personal experience -- I was healthy as a child. When I later began to deal with repressed spiritual issues, I became very ill (cancer, seizures, etc) and the severity of my illness seemed to coincide with the release of issues.
I do admit, however, that it is egocentric theory based only on my own experience.
http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/discussion_list.asp?boardID=51182
(I think you have to become a member to see it or participate but that's not hard, just the usual username/password thing.)
People who at most need to go to the doctor maybe every few years for antibiotics for a bad cold or the flu - like me prior to age 37 - have a very different experience of the medical system as compared to the chronically ill. Particularly the chronically ill who turn out to have diseases that are rare and difficult to diagnose and treat.
SOULPEACE: That strikes me as an important point. We are, after all, individuals; and anyone's perspective is going to start with what we know intimately from our own experience, if we happen to have had personal experience in this matter.
So I don't doubt at all that what you've experienced is what you've experienced - nor do I doubt Rosie. Your two comments make for a good contrast.
I think the personal sense we make of health issues may have a lot to do with where we happened to be mentally when it started and how events subsequently unfold for us both physically and in terms of our inner lives. It isn't the same for everyone.
And I also just want to say that I hope deep down you know and believe that you are not to blame in any way, shape or form for your health issues.
PHILLIPE C and ROSIE: Phillipe, thanks for introducing yourself. As far as society's health goes, I'm sure you have to be right about this having a relation to our physical health. If we act too slowly and with too little cooperation around the world on environmental matters, that relationship will only become more apparent.
Overall, I think my own view, which is #1 in the post, may be pretty much a brief combination and summary of things that you and Rosie each speak to in greater detail, with Rosie stressing the physical aspect and you noting the mental aspect.
I've offered very little evidence to support this position, only that observation about criminals. But next post I'll add to this.
Ouch, as what's he's name says, no matter how flat a pancake is, it always has two sides...
I only looked at one side - now that you point it out so clearly.
What came immediately to mind was that, I always took into account that #2 would mostly be "in the domain" of those super sensitive ones in our population.
Most people fit somewhere in the midddle of the imaginary scale.
At the extremes we find, and I totally agree with the fabulous, but very little known Doc. Dabrowsky (Oh, I hate labels, bare with me pls.) the socio/psychopaths (no true emotions), at the other end, the psycho-neurotics (super-emotional).
This "classifications" dates back to the 70's, I am sure we could find a better description for those at the "extremely sensitive end" now-days.
Using this as a reference, #2 makes all the sense of the world... although, very few would consciously choose to harm themselves...
Then, Carolyn Myss would say that causing oneself illness is nonsese.
So, from where I come from, I conclude we do have "something" serious to do with it - the big question is, what knwoledge and/or feeling would it take to change the course. Hmmmm?
I have the theory that unconditional LOVE in generous and consistent basis could right it all... but, that is just me...
Love, joy and laughter to you dear Paul
The preceeding comment does not deny #1, of course.
Both are valid.
Your post has got me to thinking about the role the mind might be able to play through the use of mental imagery in bringing about the healing of the body. I suspect that very soon we will discover through the science of brain imaging the power that the harnessed mind can have over our physical bodies. This is exciting to me.
But most violent criminals don't show this deficit and display a normal range of human emotion - for example, Mafia members may have warm relations with their spouses, parents, and children.
Statements one and two contradict each other and can't both be true. This should be clearer from my next post - I'll begin with "stripped down" versions of the statements.
Based on people I've known and events I see every day in the news, I honestly don't see anything to support the idea that physically healthy people are generally more loving than physically ill people. What are your reasons for thinking so - or do I misunderstand?
SUSIEQ: Interesting obsevation; I think I can use it in my next post.
PHILLIPE C: That raises enough issues on violent crime that I think we'd need solid research regarding violent criminals and health before concluding either that they tend to be at least as physcially healthy as average citizens, as I surmised; or that no criminal could be considered healthy in any sense, as you do. (Btw, this issue, either way, isn't central to my thinking as you'll see next post.)
Do you think you might not be overstating your conclusion though? Unless every physically strong criminal in apparently robust physical health who physically overpowers others can be shown to have undiagnosed physical health problems, it would appear to be an overstatement.
You make a valuable distinction between physical and mental health, but I tend to think that you have in mind physical strength and vigour when you speak of physical health.
I don't know what is meant by "the impact of the mind on the body". I think there may be some popular myths (and wishful thinking) embedded in this expression rather than truly observed phenomena.
Criminality cannot be a psychological categorisation because the only thing common between a refined mafioso and a hoodlum who grew up neglected and abused may be that they have both broken the law. What is common about those who have not broken the law? Nothing except for that fact.
In a similar way there are many kinds of physical illness and it is a strange thing to seek for a common cause. The people who do that are the ones who are trying to sell snake-oil or who seek the intellectual grandeur of an all-embracing theory.
Isn't it better to admit we don't know? Isn't it better to view the diversity of phenomena with the minimum filters of ideas and beliefs?
Yes - criminality is a legal definition and not a psychological category. Illegal immigrants, for example, are "criminals." However, a predispostion to violent crime would seem to at least relate to psychological classifications - for example, violent adult criminals often have a history of "conduct disorder" in youth. And most people would take violent aggression as a sign that an individual isn't doing well psychologically and spiritually.
I'm pretty sure we do know some things about disease - I'm about to post...
hmmm.
it seems to me, if one is going to posit the human model of mind/body/spirit against the backdrop of health or wellness, then the connections should, theoretically, be simple to view.
I would think that a lack wellness can always attributed to some blockage in the one or more of the combos of mind/body/spirit.
You break an arm, well, its probably mostly a "body" issue.
If one is clinically depressed it may very well be a little of blockages in all three.
If you've starved your self to the point of malnutrition because of lost love than it would seem that your spirit and mind has affected your body.
so and so forth.
It is a matter of seeing the true cause clearly enough to discern the reality. Each case presents a new situation.
A rapist may appear "healthy" to one who can not discern, but for the one who has a heart and eyes to see, a rapist is in an abject state of decline...
I read your thread over on BeliefNet. Yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about. It are two completely different worlds of thought based on where one is in the health to illness scale of things.
I did all the things Prof. J was speaking of in the beginning for pain management in psychotherapy ...biofeedback, hypnotherapy, tens units, that stupid hand waving energy thing as well as talk and group therapy. And I did a gang of alt med stuff.
The talk and group therapy were useful to help "clean house"and get me as resolved and sane as possible so I could deal with my illness and pain issues better.
Alt med did bugger all and in one instance actually provoked a serious SLE flare requiring hospitalization.
Don't get me wrong, I think having one's soul and psyche in balance and good order are a huge part of being able to cope with chronic pain and illness. Keeping the body as fit as possible within the perameters of the disease process is helpful.
But if you are truly have a physical issue that is causing intractable chronic pain, there is nothing like a good evidence-based pain management program.
I don't care how much alt med juju or meditation or spritual counseling you throw at it...eventually you have to do something that actually works or the pain drives you mad.
ROSIE: From this and your earlier remarks we've clearly had similar experiences - along with, as I'm sure you already know, millions of other people who have protracted, rare, or especially hard to treat illnesses.
We have such a different experience of providers and insurance companies - and financial devastation, and skewed family relationships, and thwarted expectations, and finding our honesty and integrity questioned - that I think it's really hard for the average healthy person to grasp.
I was healthy until I was 37 and it was like "stepping through the looking glass" after disease onset - an Alice or Al in a wonderland you'd really like to have missed out on...
Anyone hit with something like this who comes out of it WITHOUT physically recovering and is still as brave, thoughtful and considerate as your comments suggest, as I am, and as many of us are, is doing very well indeed psychologically and spiritually in my personal and professional opinion - I'm still certified as a counselor in two states.
To have things go that bad with your body and become chronically depressed, embittered, or even suicidal is understandable. To transcend this following an unavoidable struggle represents a tremendous feat of psychospiritual survival and resilience. Resilience when your body recovers is a relatively modest accomplishment compared to the extent of psychological and spiritual REintegration that is required of those who "fail" to recover.
My spirit is not represented by this feeble, faltering body. The passion that once filled my life with joy and that has in some ways expanded now to keep me strong enough to sustain this difficulty and speak from out of it - that is who I am. That is the spirit of me and, deep down, the spirit of everyone who, by one route or another, becomes sufficiently aware of who we are and a calling that comes from the infinitely greater than ourselves alone to the inmost recesses of one's own life and being.
If that's being in denial then I'm in full denial and fully intend to remain that way until the day I die.
TO ALL: I have an old site that gives at least some glimpses into what it's like for those of us who face serious long term illness. It includes my "HMO horror story" as given before the New Hampshire state legistature in 1999: www.hmoappeals.com.
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