One thing I really enjoy each time I meet a new patient is the initial interview. That interview gives you so much information about the patient and possibly your only chance make a positive impact on that person’s life. Earlier in my career, I would focus on the content that I would get from these interviews i.e. medical history surgeries they’ve had and the usual medical training taught me (as Dr. House echoes in the back of my consciousness), looking for zebras, looking for a “medical diagnosis“.
A lot of my patients will have at least one or more major health scare in their history. Sometimes it’s a personal history of a heart attack, or sometimes it’s witnessing a young parent die of heart complications, or it could be another personal history of another ailment, which has now, somehow spread to their heart. I used to try to structure the “story” into the medical interview paradigm and sterilizing it to find a treatable diagnosis!
As I got older however, I started to enjoy the “Story“ more than the content that the patients share about their particular ailment and about their lives. Some people are very verbose and descriptive, while others utter a few words and turn away.
I noticed that as my personal spiritual journey progressed into my 40s, I was no longer satisfied or convinced that the person sitting across from me, is an actual illness as the patient would often have themselves believe. I try to understand the patients’ fears and start there. Certainly, I do not mean that I stoke those fears, but I try to listen to the language beneath the “palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath, syncope, hypertension, and atrial-fibrillation… . “
I now look at it as part of my job to help usher people away from identifying with their ailment. I try to find the space between the patient and the heart attack they may have had, the high blood pressure they still have or their worries about future events.
Having practiced medicine for just about 20 years, I feel like I’ve just begun to scratch the surface, of what disease actually is, where it comes from and if, or hopefully how to help a patient heal from it.
In David Hawkins monumental book “Letting Go”, Dr. Hawkins elegantly and simplistically explains that the birthplace of all disease is negative emotion. To be more accurate, unprocessed, or undigested negative emotion, because the ironic and splendid aspect of our humanity is that; is that we cannot grow without adversity.
Such a profound and powerful thing, “Letting Go“. I think it is especially difficult these days to let go, because, for the last, hundred years, humanity has been focusing on individualistic and self-centered growth. It was no doubt an improvement in terms of a guiding principal, than its predecessor ie the horde and or tribal mentality without a uniform code of ethics for everyone.
Individualism has gotten us as far as it can take us, which is right here; the intersection of the pinnacle of technological advancement and in a dumpster fire of technology without soul. Of course I am talking about social media. As a physician, I realize that Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are like the tobacco companies of the 40s through 60s, we all knew it’s bad at the time (you’re putting fire and smoke into your lungs for God sake!)
Now we see people developing neck problems and deep psychological disorders from how long they stare down at the screen of useless nonsense things Or people that may or may not be doing certain things. We know that, evolutionarily speaking this is a side step at best, but very likely a step backward as it puts us back into horde mentality of “our tribe.” And further dividing the peoples simultaneously make all its users feel more and more isolated.
It’s time to face our lives in real life.
It’s time to face our emotions, feel them to their depths, and let them go.
Yes, your heart is racing. Your blood pressure is high, and you did have an actual heart attack, but moving forward it’s your choice of whether or not you look inward for answers. Your heart is racing? From my experience, it’s only trying to keep up with your mind, you are carrying too much in there, so your subconscious is telling your body that you are essentially under attack, which you are! Our minds cannot differentiate from actual environmental stress or perceived stress, the net result to our psyche is the same.
And yes, we will put a monitor on you to make sure your rhythm is stable and likely start you on a beta blocker if you have a lot of symptoms. You can expect me to ask about those stressors in our follow-ups and you’ll likely hear me suggest that you exercise more and stress less.
The truth is , however, neither the drugs, nor the advice will work will work as well as facing one’s emotions, feeling them and letting them go. The recurrent thoughts that initiated the palpitations or the hypertension or inflammatory state that led to diabetes, etc., will cease on their own, when they no longer have an emotional anchor in your psyche, and in your heart!
So I encourage all my patients that, in addition to an excellent diet and adequate exercise and whatever medical therapy we decide on, to look inside their bodies and seek the unexamined emotions that may be festering in your mind, face them, and let them go.
There’s no need to convince anyone about this advice it can only be understood when it’s experientially true. Just try it!
The two-step method is easy:
- Step 1: You get a que from your body of a malady, say high blood pressure. Accept that your body has high blood pressure and soak up that reality; you must now watch and reduce salt, alcohol, stress and increase activity and improve sleep.
- Step 2: Just let go! You must also see where your mind keeps going lately. Meditation can be essential here, like Deepak Chopra explains about meditation; ” …each time you go into the gap, you are washing your karmic debt into the stream of universal consciousness”. So when a residual negative emotion (from a previous trauma, a relationship ending, a situation that’s not ideal etc.) surfaces, accept that situation totally, make choices from that position and most importantly, let go of the emotions behind it.
So in summary, we should do our best to accept reality exactly how it is, especially when it’s uncomfortable. We should experience the discomfort as fully as possible and just let it go! This is by far the fastest way to heal any illness and each time we do this we prevent our emotional residues from accumulating and becoming another illness in the future.
