In This Episode

• How your attitude toward illness can help or hinder your recovery.
• How the stress response is triggered by our thoughts and emotions.
• Why fear and resistance are not the only possible responses to illness.
• How advanced neural retraining can change your habitual emotional, mental and behavioral responses to adversity and create a space for healing.

Show Notes

In episode 62, I’m going to talk about why your relationship with illness can actually be hindering your recovery. This is a concept that is part of my new program, MAP for Self-Healing. I call it Changing Your Relationship to Illness, and although the stress of chronic symptoms and health issues will be the subject of this podcast episode, the same principle applies to any difficulty you face.

In this episode I will talk about my insights from working with clients as well as the work of others, including Byron Katie and Anita Moorjani. We’ll discuss how your stance toward illness –either fighting it, fleeing in fear,  or withdrawing and freezing– may be triggering the stress response and how advanced neural retraining may be helpful.

In this episode I’ll discuss:

• The stress response (fight/flight/freeze) and how negative thoughts prevent recovery by inhibiting the restorative functions of the body.
• Why the person with chronic illness can have hundreds of stress responses each day.
• Most people’s response to adversity and illness is fear and resistance.
• Why fearful and fighting thoughts lead to desperation, frustration, helplessness and powerlessness.
• A few guiding lights: Anita Moorjani, Gerald Jampolsky, MD.
• Frank Bruni’s book, The Beauty of Dusk and what it has to teach us about the power of a positive mindset.
• The work of Byron Katie and her exercises for turning thoughts around.
• How MAP sessions can be a powerful way to change patterns of emotional, mental and behavioral responses.
• Why working with the mind is complementary to traditional medicine and alternative approaches.
  
  

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t miss episode 60: MAP for Emotional Causes of Illness where I discuss  the biochemistry behind mind body medicine and the benefit of working with emotions to promote healing.

To learn more about the MAP Method and how it works, visit mapforhealth.us for our free courses. To schedule an Introductory MAP session please book online at MindReMAPforHealth.com

Moments

[5:00] ...in the stress response every system of the body is gearing up to run away from an emergency. This is an old hardwired system that we've had for millenia, for a lifestyle we haven't had since we lived in caves. Nowadays, with our highly developed frontal cortexes, emergencies can be conjured in the mind through the simple act of thinking. Every worry thought that we have can incite the stress response.

[9:26] Your subconscious mind may be reviewing and reviewing some turning point, whatever it is that we may blame for bringing on the chronic illness or for the symptoms getting worse. Maybe it was a stress brought on by trying to do too much. We may think: "Why did I stay in the marriage so long?" or "Why did I stick it out in that job?" There's an element of self-blame to these thoughts.

[10:40] For some it is the fear that they won't find the help that they need, trying and trying so many things. and never really finding the relief they are looking for. And the longer this goes on and the more things that they try and that fail, the desperation, the frustration, the helplessness, the powerlessness that goes along with that feeds the stress response even more. 

[28:30] We are led to believe fear and resistance to illness is normal. But perhaps you have heard of people who regard their cancer, their illness, their loss, their accident was the best thing that ever happened to them. It didn't feel that way when they were going through it, but in hindsight they can see the gift in the challenge.

[32:30] Many of my clients find that MAP sessions are a powerful way to change their relationship to whatever they are experiencing. Through a set of sessions we can reduce the emotional intensity of past experience, we can replace negative repetitive thoughts with more supportive ones, we can change habitual responses and conditioned behaviors. Why? Because the subconscious mind is capable of making these changes. 

Learn more

• Listen to more Flourish with Neural Retraining podcast episodes.
• Learn about How Personality Traits Lead to Chronic Illness.
• Learn more about the MAP Method and How it Works
• How the MAP Method effectively heals trauma.
• Enroll in our free course on the MAP Method and how it is used for mind-body healing