"I write so that my handful of pebbles, cast into still waters, will create a ripple."

Thursday, February 23, 2012

When Your Body Says “No:” The Stress/Disease Connection


I came across this amazing link and I want to shout it from the rooftops. 

Vancouver-based Dr. Gabor Mate argues that too many doctors ignore the research. They’ve apparently forgotten the once commonplace assumption that emotions are deeply implicated in human well-being.

Well, HELLO! A couple of friends and I were discussing this very thing (we’re grandmas, but never too old to diss our upbringing!) 

Tina mentioned that her mother was an “I love you, BUT…” type. My friend grew up feeling she’d never quite “made the grade” with her mother. In her words, by adulthood this feeling had oozed out to include everyone in the whole world. She calls herself a Pleaser. Not surprisingly, she’s plagued with health problems. I love her the way she is, but I can see that she says “yes” way too often.

Our other friend, Mary, said her mother is a narcissist who manages to deflect every triumph back to herself. If Mary brought home a good report card, she was told she took after her mama who always got straight A’s. Mary’s fought a weight problem her entire life. Her mother, of course, is a perfect size 6. Her horror is that she will spend her golden years caring for her mother's dramatic, malingering passing. We coined an unflattering nickname for her mother that makes Mary laugh. After all, what are friends for?

My mom is a raver--in the good sense. She raves over us. Her favorite phrases involve, “Isn’t that beautiful!” or “You made this all by yourself?” Three generations of her progeny tease her about her attribution skills as we glow in the light of her appreciation. 


I took the joy of accomplishment for granted until I began noticing that not everyone had it so good. Dr. Mate says her joy helped me develop a sunny disposition that supports a healthy immune system. Were it this simple!

I inherited her attribution skills and for that I’m grateful. But my awful twin makes it easy to interject sarcasm and deflect attention to myself. My attribution skills come at a cost. I’ve had to learn to sit and really listen. To take a backseat. (See, not easy. Count the I’s and me’s in this paragraph and you’ll see.)

So what is this rant really about? To take it back to the top, I’m an expressive who apparently has been tending my immune system my entire life. If I live to be 90, I’ll have to thank my mom, my blog and everyone who has had to listen to me verbalize my feelings.

How about you? Any insights into your emotional/physical connection?
Don’t forget to check out Dr. Mate’s interview. 

10 comments:

  1. after listening to several videos of Dr Gabor Mate with Amy Goodman, i realize how much i have missed truly intelligent exposes since hibernating on a lonely half acre in the belly of the country. (thank you anne and you tube too).

    the natural connection of mind and body is so often overlooked or plain ignored..and people lose their health every day due to the inability to communicate feelings and perceptions..
    men and women arrive at adulthood without the necessary tools of human interaction..the saddest part is the unwillingness of the medical establishment to educate patients..
    some learn to recognize the signs of disappointment and anger when needs are not met or suffer stress when wants are weighting on the mind or weaken the body.
    i am grateful for writers who share their experiences and expose situations..narrowing the gap between isolation and illness to reveal and heal the wounds of stressful living everywhere.

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  2. My mother "gifted" me with her insecurities, so I've all my life battled with a clenched stomach and headaches. She was wonderful in so many ways, but that was a definite drawback for me. It didn't help that my beind adopted at an older age (15 months) made me even more sensitive to insecurities. Luckily, I undersood that dynamic and did not pass it on to my son. (God only knows what other dynamics I passed on!)

    Thanks for Dr, Gabor Mate's work to my - and others' - attention. Not enough people understand the mind/body/spirit connection.

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  3. Love your positive spirit and that your mother was a "raver." I remember my mom saying, "Don't just sit there. Pick up a book, do something," so now I find it difficult to do "nothing."

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  4. Anne, I was curious if you have "Ordinary Aphrodite" coming out in e-book format? Thanks, Sonia.

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  6. Hi everyone who has left a comment. I love that you're sharing your insecurities. It's a sign that we're grown-ups when we can forgive and move on. Rght?

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  7. Sonia, Thanks for asking! You can find my book on Kindle by clicking on the Ordinary Aphrodite cover to the right of my blog.

    I'd love to see this little gem catch on. Women say they read a chapter every night, stretching them out like a box of truffles.

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  8. How wonderful you were blessed with such a mother. And with such good health!

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  9. I love this for two reasons. One I think it is so true as I see the damage mothers can do in one set of my grandchildren's lives and the blessings the other set has of a loving, giving, optomistic mother (and father.) Number two because it awakened in me the desire to write about an incident when I was five and my dad shared a really fun time with me. He died that winter. I've always thought to write it in a children's book, but I can never quite capture the essence of it. Today, reading this, it hit me that I should write it as a memoir aimed for a women's magazine. If it sells, okay. If it doesn't, at least I'll have it for my children and children's children. As for my mother, maybe it's her saying, "It's not what you like that makes you fat, it's what you get." that has given me the ability to roll with the punches. :-)

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  10. Thanks, Jennifer and Eunice. Sharing our lives, one step at a time. That's what we do.

    I'm glad this article inspired you to write something. And I think you can do both the article and the children's book (or an article for a children't magazine.) And if you want to submit to a popular online website for children, try KritiqueKorner.com.

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