“When The Body Says No”
Some time ago, I discovered the strong correspondence between the symptoms of stress and the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease,
THE OVERLAPS BETWEEN STRESS AND PARKINSON'S DISEASE, PART 1.
Later, I found these conclusions were further strongly supported by the book
"WHEN THE BODY SAYS NO"
by Dr Gabor Mate. I highly recommend everyone with, or is involved with, Parkinson’s Disease read this book at least once. It is both empowering and enlightening, if at times somewhat disturbing for reasons will we cover below. At its core, the book covers the subject of Psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology (PNEI):
"…the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body, …, takes an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating psychology, neuroscience, immunology, physiology, genetics, pharmacology, molecular biology, psychiatry, behavioral medicine, infectious diseases, endocrinology, and rheumatology".
Whilst the findings of the book are all supported by lots of hard science and peer reviewed scientific and clinical studies from many disciplines, the story is told in a highly accessible way, and illustrated not only by case studies from the author's own patient files, but also by exploring cases of famous people who became chronically ill in the public eye.
The book especially focuses on how relationships and emotional problems, especially those which affected childhood, can result in certain inappropriate coping styles or behaviours, which in turn can drive us towards chronic illnesses. The author details how these self-stressing, emotionally repressive coping "strategies" can and do affect the hormonal/neurotransmitters of our brain and body, causing chronic imbalances in our chemistry. These chemical imbalances in turn disrupt the normal operation of our Nervous System and impact on the immune system, so when sustained over many years, those negative coping behaviours can and do make us prone to chronic diseases.
The understanding Dr Gabor brings to the subject also provides us with the ability to identify and address our own possible negative patterns, which may be driving us towards or worsening our chronic disease, and possibly the emotional origins of own personal unhealthy coping styles.
If you have a chronic illness, or know a close friend or family who does, this book is an absolute, if at times upsetting, "must read", and once read, "must action". If you are a parent or are thinking of becoming a parent, or a teacher, this is also a must read, and will help to break the invisible cycle of emotional trauma which may have passed down to our own parents from our grandparents.
I personally found reading parts of this book difficult, triggering and disturbing, but it was a revelation I needed, and gave me the certain knowledge that the brain and body and mental and physical health are absolutely non-separable, and that long term effects of chronic stress on the body, and of physical trauma or injuries on the mind, are now very well established by a mature, robust and hard science. Starting from Dr Mate's work, I researched further and found that indeed such mind-body-emotions connectivity concepts are not just some alternative or eastern philosophy, but are absolutely proven in traditional, mainstream western science too. Indeed, the science behind the book points to susceptibility to many idiopathic chronic illnesses being linked to specific lifelong stressful modes of behaviours, thought processes and relationship styles.
Where this becomes very difficult for those of us already with such chronic illnesses is the dawning realization that, through his illustrative case notes, Dr Mate is describing ourselves: in parts it can seem that he is writing the story of our own lives. Moreover, the book uncovers a very hard truth. The very parts of ourselves we consider so strongly to be our "self-identity" and we may even be quite prideful of, are not inherent personality traits at all, but what Dr Mate refers to as "inappropriate coping styles".
These coping strategies include patterns of responses learned through emotional or physical trauma, especially in early life, which at the time did exactly the job they were designed to do, and allowed us to survive. However, because we humans tend to get stuck in the events of the traumas and can't move forwards, we also got stuck in these high stress patterns of behaviour. Continued onwards into adult or later life, these trauma induced coping styles become inappropriate to the context, causing us to live our lives almost perpetually in fight-flight-or-freeze stressed states. These coping styles are what make us lose connection with the present, to have little sense joy or aliveness in the now, turn our relationships toxic, cause addictive and obsessive-compulsive behaviours, feelings of shame and guilt, etc., thus contributing greatly to our susceptibility to idiopathic chronic illnesses.
The books most disturbing revelation is that people with such illnesses tend to have a super-strong, rigid sense of self, that we feel pride in and hold dear, but is part of the problem. According to Dr Mate, the very "personality traits" by which we define our prideful strong sense of self, are actually, precisely, the behaviour patterns of the inappropriate coping strategies or maladaptive survival styles we learned through getting stuck in trauma.
From here, I turned once more to my network and gently probed other people with Parkinson’s Disease as to whether they would describe their personality traits and patterns of behaviour, prior to diagnosis, in ways which matches up with what Dr Mate outlines. Indeed, the similarities to what the book describes and the real lives and case histories of people with PD I found was startling.
However, from there we begin to understand how the trauma or lifetime of chronic stress perspective of idiopathic chronic disease can give us renewed hope. Through my ongoing networking and research, I had found a myriad of methods which can heal our traumas, but moreover, a vast array of people around the world, who, through applying various trauma healing modalities, had indeed managed to significantly reduce their own symptoms, recover or partially recover from many conditions. This included illnesses which some medical doctors believe to be "incurable" or "degenerative" or "hopeless cases".
Role of Dopamine in the Body Saying No
An interesting conversation piece in Psychology Today,
Dopamine Suppression and the Neuroscience of Giving Up,
reveals how dopamine is not just used to reward and entrench behaviours, but also in natural mechanisms for evaluating when to "give up" on specific tasks. The neurochemical mechanism for this is via the release of a chemical called nociceptin, which suppress dopamine.
"From an evolutionary perspective, the researchers speculate that neural circuits linked to motivation and reward … are designed to preserve energy when resources are scarce. Therefore, nociceptin neurons may be a biological mechanism designed to force humans and animals to cut losses as opposed to continuing fruitless attempts to go after a reward due to sunk costs. ‘Persistence in seeking uncertain rewards can be disadvantageous due to risky exposure to predators or from energy expenditure,’ the researchers noted."
We can speculate, therefore, that there may be some inherent "body wisdom" in dopamine deficiency conditions such as Parkinson's Disease. Perhaps "disease" occurs when we stop listening to such STOP signals and carry on regardless with unrewarding, or unhealthy, activities and behaviours. Or perhaps modern society puts us in a position that we cannot simply "give up" even when our energy is spent, continuing our highly stressful efforting in to the unrewarding job, the commute to work, a toxic relationship, and so on. Perhaps, by suppressing dopamine more and more, our body and brain keep trying to put the breaks on harder, until we are literally forced to listen through stopping ourselves us in our tracks. Even then, we might not allowed to stop due to financial and other societal pressures, so we opt for dopamine replacement pills in order to carry on for a while longer against our body's own wishes. We still don't stop to consider that our body may be trying to tell to us something, so eventually require more and more dopamine drugs, until even these stop working too. In this scenario, such conditions become neurodegenerative as the brakes are put on harder and harder by the dopamine suppressing “all stop” system. This perspective of PD would then tally with Dr Mate Gabor’s work in "When the Body Says No".
I would suggest, at least, that perhaps at the point of diagnosis we might be given some space and time and support to reflect on our own activities and lifestyles up to that point which might be contributing to our dopamine deficiencies, and be given the tools by which we can seek to understand which parts of our lives have become totally unrewarding, but in which feel we must carry on regardless. Having then identified these issues, maybe we could be provided with the support to be able to stop and not carry on making our situation worse, interventions such as early retirement, being allowed to work from home, marriage counselling and so on.
WORKAHOLISM AS AN EXAMPLE
An article in the Harvard Business Review,
Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure
really spoke to me about my own background in this context, about my pre-diagnosis lifestyle which I do believe contributed to my chronic illness, that perhaps led to my body saying no. Hence this may serve as an example of what we’ve discussed above. Indeed, I know many people with Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease will also identify with life-long coping styles such as "thriving on stress", not being able to sit still, never being able to just rest and relax for long periods.
"The scientists cite a definition of 'workaholism' as 'being overly concerned about work, driven by an uncontrollable work motivation, and investing so much time and effort to work that it impairs other important life areas.' … The problem comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient, and the resulting impact of overworking. We often take a militaristic, ‘tough” approach to resilience and grit. We imagine a Marine slogging through the mud, a boxer going one more round, or a football player picking himself up off the turf for one more play. We believe that the longer we tough it out, the tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be. However, this entire conception is scientifically inaccurate."
"The very lack of a recovery period is dramatically holding back our collective ability to be resilient and successful. Research has found that there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems. Overwork and exhaustion are the opposite of resilience. And the bad habits we learn when we’re young only magnify when we hit the workforce."
Indeed, I often muse on how very well muscled, very healthy, very fit male gorillas spend so much time totally relaxing, chewing the vegetation and being preened, but spend no time down the gym! I really feel we underestimate the vital importance of spending lots of time in total resting and relaxed states during the day on our health and wellness, and the article seems to confirm this view.