When the Body Says NO

The title of this blog is the title of a book I'm currently reading. No, I'm not experiencing any particular health issues. I picked up this familiar-sounding book after my yoga teacher mentioned it to me. Turns out when it was published in 2004 the author, Gabor Maté, was interviewed by The Georgia Straight. And, as it turns out, I was fascinated by some of his insights and kept the article - which I have since found.

This book is about "the link between emotions and disease". Repressed emotions build up a lifetime of stress. Not surprisingly, to me at least, there is a vast link between the two but many medical professionals and disease-affected people don't acknowledge it. One of the most basic stressors is our lack of personal boundaries -- our inability to say NO.

Another interesting cause of disease is stress from childhood events: "Physiological stress, then, is the link between personality traits and disease. Certain traits--otherwise known as coping styles--magnify the risk for illness by increasing the likelihood of chronic stress. Common to them all is a diminished capacity for emotional communication. Emotional experiences are translated into potentially damaging biological events when human beings are prevented from learning how to express their feelings effectively. That learning occurs--or fails to occur--during childhood."

Gabor goes on to explain that these pivotal childhood experiences when blended with a person's own temperament results in personality traits. As a result, what many of us refer to as personality traits are actually coping mechanisms developed in childhood, "... a response to the environment, a pattern of behaviours developed to ensure survival."

This begs the question, "how much of WHO I AM is habitual patterning based on survival vs. my own, individuated character?"

If I did feel a bit of the ol' daily stress weighing me down before, you can well imagine how tightly strung I am now! Let's face it, my art is all about self-discovery. And I had been feeling like I was getting a bit of a handle on WHO I AM. Now I have a need to re-examine my self-examinations with an eye to "behavioural-survival-response" vs my values and beliefs. As if it wasn't challenging enough!

In spite of my personal, psychological melt-down, I find this is an interesting book. It's not overly medical-ie -- only enough to provide support for the findings. And if you're wondering if removing some of that chronic stress from your life may be a worth the effort, consider the alternative... chronic dis-ease.