Trending Now: Prescription Addiction
March 4, 2012 | 
Author 
Is the medical profession finally catching on? I recently saw signs of hope.
In the February 22/29th edition of Jama (*1), the editors described a report issued by the CDC in a splendidly titled tome, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Throughout the dryly presented data were intertwined subtle sirens of alarm: The rate of unintentional drug overdose deaths in the United States has risen over 600% in the years between 1997 and 2007.
We are not talking about heroin or methamphetamine or crack. We're talking about prescribed analgesics. Prescribed. According to the CDC, "drug distribution through the pharmaceutical supply chain was the equivalent of 96 mg. of morphine per person in 1997 and approximately 700 mg. per person in 2007," a dose high enough for everyone in this country to take a standard 5 mg dose every 4 hours for 3 weeks.(*2)
The report continues its assessment and finally makes this stunning observation: "Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States…and has been driven by a class of prescription drugs called opioid analgesics."
It goes on: "For every unintentional overdose death…nine persons are admitted for substance abuse treatment, 35 visit emergency departments, 161 report drug abuse or dependence and 461 report non-medical uses of opioid analgesics."
Why? How could this be? Are these drugs being stolen? Manufactured by thugs in a trailer in the desert? Sold by wayward pharmacists? Smuggled from Canada? Hardly that dramatic. In fact, we are being addicted by the people we trust the most: "In an attempt to treat patient pain better, practitioners have greatly increased their rate of opioid prescribing over the past decade."
Did someone say there was a war on drugs?
Allow me to share a more personal and human rendition of these statistics. One was a patient (name and details changed) whose situation was far too common, and one was a personal experience I had after a back injury.
The patient came to me with minor anxieties and some depression in large part due to unresolved grief. She was in her mid-thirties, a nurse, without major medical complications. Almost all her complaints centered on her fear of abandonment in relationships. Early on in treatment, she slipped at work (trying to move a large man from bed to a wheel chair) and injured her shoulder. After MRI's and doctor visits that lasted months, they finally determined that she had some injured tendons. They put her on Vicodin. They refused her any other form of treatment.
That was 15 years ago. Needless to say her doses increased dramatically over the years as did her anxiety, her depression, and finally she was able to witness the abandonment she so feared. Her marriage fell apart. She was so addicted to the Vicodin that the withdrawal was more frightening than the dissolution of her family.
I have seen this scenario in different forms at least a hundred times. I have made phone calls begging physicians to please reconsider their choice of medication and allow for other medical solutions: acupuncture, physical therapy, massage, homeopathy, mindfulness meditation, hypnosis. With the exception of a few truly open-minded practitioners, the answer was a uniform "no."
Why would anyone object to an alternative treatment if it brought relief at lower cost and without the risk of addiction and all the associated medical risks?
I found this out for myself personally not more than a few years ago. I fell (hard) and twisted my back. When it happened, I was more embarrassed than in pain and told myself (and everyone else watching), "Oh, I'll be fine. It's fine." Within the time it took for my adrenal glands to stop pumping, the pain became intolerable. I could not walk. My husband took me to urgent care and they told me it was a muscle sprain because there was nothing on the x-ray. They urged me (I mean this literally) to take pain killers.
I said, "No, thank you."
The doctor on staff looked at me cross-eyed and said, "What do you mean, 'no, thank you?'"
I said, "I mean no. I don't want them. How about some aspirin or ibuprofen or something like that?"
He reluctantly gave in and wrote the prescription but not without saying, "You're going to be sorry."
The pain was not going away as quickly as I'd hoped but I had seen what opioid analgesics could do and was determined to do whatever I had to do to avoid it. After putting up a fight with the insurance company that lasted two months, I finally went for an MRI where they found the bulging disc that was impinging on my sciatic nerve.
I found a physical therapist who was a hands-on genius and she relieved the pain with a combination of deep tissue massage and abdominal strengthening. We also used guided meditation. She used to tell me to "imagine the butter melting" as she focused on releasing the Iliopsoas, particularly Psoas Major which is the muscle that connects the hip to the spine. It was miraculous and immediate joy.
It was getting better. I was still in pain and not as limber as I used to be, but it was moving in a good direction. And I was willing to work hard to get better. That is, until the insurance company insisted on a new doctor. He looked over my chart and said, "You're going to need Vicodin."
I said, "No."
Once again, that same look: "What do you mean, 'no?'"
I said, "I don't want dope. The massage and exercise works. Why can't we continue that and forget the drugs?"
"Because you're at maximum improvement. You can get the drugs but not the therapy."
It was my turn to look at him cross-eyed and I said, much to the amusement of the nurse in the room with us,
"Are you crazy? Who are you working for?"
"According to the insurance company, this is medical standard now."
I wanted to ask him when the insurance companies and bureaucrats became the arbiters of medical ethics and practice. It became clear to me that because of the structure of medical care today, people who would have otherwise had options and been good doctors, were being led in another direction, a new "standard" set by insurance companies and pharmaceutical interests.
Instead, I just said, "What about your oath?"
"I'm sorry."
I looked at him and said, "Yes, you are," and that was that. I walked out. No therapy and no Vicodin. And I had to pay for my own massages and take responsibility for my own recovery. And perhaps this is simultaneously the crux of the problem <em>and </em>the solution. Taking charge of my own healing instead of laying it on the doctor's shoulders and demanding an immediate pain solution was not easy. In fact, it is an ongoing decision because I still have days with spine-shivering pain. But it has been infinitely better than what I've seen with my patients, people who had been struggling with aches and pains or broken hearts turned into addicts with broken homes, empty pockets, and symptoms so wildly erratic they were sometimes mistakenly diagnosed as bipolar instead of addicted. So rather than getting them off the opioids, they were given ever-increasing doses of medication that eventually made reaching–or treating–them impossible.
So, this war on drugs we're waging? Maybe we should start in the doctor's office. And it seems to be up to us in more ways than one. I don't see the pharmaceutical companies leading the battle. Do you?
*1. CDC Grand Rounds: Prescription Drug Overdoses–a U.S. Epidemic, MMWR, 2012;61:10-13, cited in The Journal of the American Medical Association, February 22/29/20120, Vol. 307, No. 8, page 774
*2. Ibid.
Posted in Classical Homeopathy, Holistic Psychotherapy, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy | 
Tags: anxiety, bipolar, depression, pain, prescription addiction, Psychotherapy, therapy, vicodin | 
No Comments »
Initials on a Tree: How Love Lasts
[This article recently appeared in The New Paltz Times, The Woodstock Times, and The Poughkeepsie Times. Courtesy of Ulster Publishing.]
It’s 1962. My brother, Bill, is 19 and his new girlfriend, Cheryl, is just 17. They decided to go for a drive in his new yellow Opel with the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. They headed north from New York City towards New Paltz to take a hike in the Mohonk Preserve in the Shawngunk Mountains, a glacial ridge of sacred beauty filled with trails, wildlife and rock scrambles. Nestled in one corner of the mountains is a dirt path that leads up to the Mountain House, a historic hotel overlooking the Catskill Mountains. Behind it is a quarry lake so deep, the water so black, I imagine it as a nesting place for wishes, a portal to possibility, destiny, even magic, a holding space for lovers’ memories.
It was their first summer together and she can recall parking the car in a small lot and heading up a winding path toward the hotel. Sometimes they walked tandem over a narrow precipice, sometimes together holding hands.
At one point along the trail, Bill took out a pocket knife and carefully etched a heart with his and her initials into a tree.
Did he know then? Did she? That he wasn’t just another boyfriend, that she wasn’t another girlfriend? That it was a life-long love and could be engraved into an oak trunk that would bear witness to that walk and to those feelings for a hundred years?
***
It’s 1965, the year Cheryl and Bill were engaged. Right before he proposed, he sat down with our mother, who looked at him with uncharacteristic seriousness and asked him, “Are you sure?” And he said with uncharacteristic certitude, “Yes.”
***
It’s 2012 and Bill died three years ago. This week I went to find that tree and the hand-carved note he wrote into his future.
He and Cheryl were together for 47 years.
On The Trail of a Tree
Initials. How many initials carved into trees are a testament to too little judgment and too much moonshine? How many are a testament to loves lost and hearts still aching? How many are able to draw us a picture of two people on a trail, walking a little slower, perhaps, but still holding hands?
We used to see more of those hearts and letters years back. They used to be on trees or on park benches, occasionally you could see one on a bus, carved into a seat or scrawled onto an ad. Over time, instead of carvings, we saw spray paint splattered onto rocks and concrete bridges: “CS and CJ,” “I love Lane,” “Joey loves Marcy.”
Now, we see them rarely in any form. Instead of initials, you see graffiti celebrating the self or splattering rage. But it seems that fewer and fewer people are willing to make even the temporary commitment to paint. Carving initials into a tree that can last longer than we’d live? Never.
I asked Cheryl if she knew he was the one when she met him. “It wasn’t for me, but it was for him,” she laughed. “He talked about marriage from the beginning. He was open, honest. He poured out his whole life on our first date.”
And that communication proved to be the bedrock for the duration. “I could talk to him about anything. And there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. I remember one time, it was snowing and he couldn’t drive to see me. But he was determined. So he started walking from Yonkers. He called when he reached the Whitestone Bridge to Queens. He walked miles in the snow. My mother had to tell him to go home, not to dare cross the bridge in a storm.”
Is that sort of love predictable? Chemical? Repeatable? Is it even noticeable? Can we tell the difference between lasting love and young lust? Is it a choice, a learned capacity, or a gift?
Schipani interviewed dozens of couples for an online article in The Ladies’ Home Journal (http://www.lhj.com/relationships/marriage/basics/long-lasting-love/). They were all married more than 20 years and reported themselves to be happy.
How did they do that? Each one had a different story. For Margaret C. it was about being satisfied with what was offered. For Russell S. a happy marriage was acceptance.
Cheryl thinks it may be generational. “A lot of the couples we grew up with are still married, but sometimes that meant keeping their heads in the sand. Our generation overlooked more than yours does. Yours says, ‘I’m outa here.’ And the women now, they have the jobs, the means to leave. It’s easier today. When it’s not that easy, you find ways to work it out. You make a conscious choice to not let a moment, a resentment, a fear take over the whole marriage.”
From Ladies’ Home Journal:
“If he helps around the house — washes the dishes, cooks, vacuums — and it's not quite up to your standards, don't complain. Be happy he is making an effort to help.” –Margaret C., married 45 years
“Accept that you can't change someone. You have to learn to live with whatever annoys you, and remember that you have as many faults as your spouse does.”–Russell S., married 40 years
“When she gets mad, I just shut up, and she gets tired of talking. After a while, it's over. In all our years being together, we have never had an argument!” –James P., married 56 years
But all of these comments, while making good sense, are retrospections not prescriptions. They are simple observations on what they have done over the years, not recipes. And they certainly don’t tell us how to know beforehand, if in fact there is a way to know. Although Bill showed little hesitation when he picked up his knife and started carving.
Love Lost in the USA: Can Science Find It?
Currently the divorce rate is one in two, maybe higher in some regions of the country. It is so common, our culture so saturated with scandal and heartbreak, the statistic barely raises an eyebrow—even in more traditional and conservative circles.
One friend told us that he’d thought about getting married again but then he rethought it because he found out there was a fifty-fifty chance it might last. He is far from alone. Americans seem to have an issue with intimacy.
What raises eyebrows is longevity, love that does last, initials carved into a tree fifty years ago that could still be carved into a tree today.
While married couples tell only of their own experience, the “experts” talk about marriage and love as if either one were in fact a science, as if there were some way to predict, control, or warranty the outcome. On website after website, in book after book, they tell us what to do and what to look for.
The authors of Lasting Love: The 5 Secrets of Growing a Vital, Conscious Relationship, wrote:
“If you want a close vibrant love relationship, you need to become a master of commitment.” I could scarcely believe that a whole book had been dedicated to something so basic. Even though I had to grant that sometimes wisdom is a firm grasp of the obvious and there are clearly people who think they can have a good marriage without actually acting married or doing what it is that marriage requires, to me, it was like saying if you want to get wet, get water. Have we gotten to the point where we need that sort of elementary guidance?
Perhaps so. Scientific American Mind ran an article entitled “The Happy Couple.” In it, the author, Pileggi, states that how your mate responds to good news is as important, if not more important, than how well they support you when times are difficult. “In the past few years positive psychology researchers have discovered that thriving couples accentuate the positive in life more than those who stay together unhappily or split do. They not only cope well during hardship but also celebrate the happy moments and work to build more bright points into their lives.”
So people who have a good time together and have a good time having a good time stay together? Stunning.
One writer, Dee Anne Merriman, chose seven match areas to consider: Physical appearance, emotional maturity, lifestyle choices, financial style, value structure, marriage and sex, and intelligence. All of these make fine sense until you begin to notice the inherent problems: They are all presented as if, one, there were actually a sure-fire way to gauge or assess those match-areas, two, a way to centrifuge and separate a person as if he or she were a blood sample, and, three, even an idea of how to line those areas up between two complex beings to produce the perfect relationship.
I began to consider the possibility that this sort of pseudo-empiricism is part of the reason people experience such frustration with love and keep vainly trying to find the “perfect” match; Perhaps their confusion and resignation is due to the fact that they are told by the experts that if only they follow these simple steps, this or that proprietary program, everlasting happiness will be theirs. Of course, it rarely is.
The more I researched, the more I perused the so-called science of love, the more I was left wondering if it can ever be so well-planned or so conscious. I know I made my own “list” before I met my husband and, still, with as much “expertise” up my sleeve as anyone, my marriage certainly surprised me. It surprises me every day with its goodness, its fortitude, and the love that carries us forward—to no credit of my own, I am sure of that.
Did Cheryl and Bill ever think about things like that before they got married—match areas, accentuating the positive, lifestyles?
“We talked about goals—children, those things—but not like people do now. We were also very different. I was responsible and more grounded. Bill was…adventurous, impulsive. I was more restrained. He was an open book. I planned. He flew.”
And they were very different for as long as they were together. So are many of the people I know in long-term relationships or marriages. And not just superficially different—fundamentally so. Their marriages stand as a counterpoint to everything we are being told about how to find true love.
There is a debate deep at the heart of all this: Is love, in fact, a matter of the heart or the brain? Some would say it “depends” on what you mean by love. But I think for anyone who has actually loved another—whether that’s a child or a partner, a friend or a pet—there are no “depends.” While there is an element to it that is ineffable, inexplicable, eternal, when you feel it, there is simply no question as to its truth or meaning. It’s as solid as oak.
So that over the years as you move together through the first flush of Eros into friendship and familiarity, surf mighty high waves of irritation and frustration, it does not crash onto shore or ebb with the tide. It stays still. It digs in roots and holds strong.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted."
I would think of love as Lewis did, then: As a miracle, as an expression of something both lusciously earthy and other-worldly, as a glimpse at the promised Horizon through a field of waving tall grasses while tasting the juice of a single blade as you hold it in your teeth, as a Heavenly two-step, a delight of the Divine. It is not empirical. How can it be when it is a heart carved into a tree and a love that still stands, long after the tree itself has returned to the forest?
Carved Anew
We started out on the trail full of childish hope: Maybe, just maybe there would be a trail of crumbs, a sign, something that would lead us to the tree in a mountainside full of trees. We walked for hours.
It took little time until we noticed that most of the growth along the trail was quite young, from saplings to trees perhaps a foot in diameter. The older trees were set far back or lying in enormous pieces on the ground.
Fifty years. The one they carved would have to be closer to 70 or 80 years old. A tree would grow and see quite a bit in that time—flooding rains, ice storms, winds, drought. The odds of us finding Bill and Cheryl’s tree looked worse as time went on.
Then we saw a tree that finally made me accept the fact that we’d be leaving there without the photo we wanted. On a relatively young beech were two sets of names. It was the only tree we found with anything carved on it at all. The interesting thing was that the letters had been growing with the tree and were starting to widen and callous, looking in some parts indistinguishable from the bark. The names were becoming the tree. The tree had made them part of itself.
As we left, I found a poetic justice in that. They, their young affection, that day, that moment, had become part of that whole forest.
Thinking of that tree, of those two kids climbing a mountain and opening their hearts for all the world to see, of the future that would bring both drought and abundance, of children and business, of their last years together and their utter devotion, presenting love as a science reveals at best a profound lack of imagination and, if true, would leave most of us without much hope. I have never seen a list work.
So, as I often do for my articles, I asked my husband what he thought of this whole journey, the initials, whether there is a way to know, whether love can last anymore without people going to experts for answers or techniques. And, in his usual Montanan manner, to respond to the question, he took me out to our backyard and carved our initials into a tree.
Posted in Holistic Psychotherapy, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy, Keynote Speaker | Tags: art, Culture, Holistic Psychotherapy, initials on a tree, love, science | No Comments »
Verbal First Aid and Motorcycles!
Using Your Head After A Crash.
It’s dusk in the desert and you’re relishing the open space and the glorious solitude. The sun hangs heavy as it bursts into shards of color across New Mexico skies. It’s been a perfect ride. You and your riding companion come around a tight turn as you head down into a canyon, thinking only of where you’re going to have dinner, when the lead rider hits a patch of sand and high sides into a wall of granite.
You manage to stop in time, but your friend’s bike tumbled over an embankment and while he is thankfully still on the road, he is not moving. His leg is bent at an angle not meant for human bone. He is conscious but in shock.
You’re alone. It’s nearing dark. What do you do?
If you’ve managed to reach 911 and they’re on the way, what do you say when every moment and every word counts?
This is an all-too familiar scenario for riders. It happens in the country, in the city and all parts in between. Some people, mostly those who have been specially trained to handle critical events, have the skills to approach a situation like the one above with great calm, self-assurance and compassion. Most of us, on the other hand, slip into emotional shock along with the one who is injured. There’s an old wisdom about target fixation: Never watch someone go down, because that’s where you’ll wind up. It is true on a number of levels.
But, even when there’s nothing you can do besides wait for the ambulance, there are things you can say—and ways to say them—that can help your friend survive. Words, when used strategically, can be a most powerful medicine, helping us to lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, or stop bleeding.
Lt. Samuels (*name changed, story true) sat behind a large, conspicuously clean desk at a Westchester, N.Y. police station. He was cool, composed, and seemed as uncluttered mentally as he was physically. The awards on his book cases and certificates on the wall attested to a long, successful career. “I paid my dues,” he smiled as he scanned the room and the work it represented. As he saw it, however, his career really started in Vietnam when he was only a teenager serving in the U.S. Army. It was there, assigned to an armored car division sent deep into the jungle, that he learned what it took to survive physically, mentally, and emotionally.
He was on a mission in the Delta, it was summer and the temperature outside had reached upwards of 115 degrees Fahrenheit before noon. Inside the tank it was at best unbearable under normal conditions. On one particular day he still remembers with stunning clarity, it was life-threatening.
“It must have been 130 or more inside. It was hot in a way I had never experienced before. I couldn’t stop sweating, couldn’t drink enough, couldn’t just get up and go to the bathroom. I was burning up. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I was literally burning up and I had to lower my body temperature somehow or I was going to die. Funny how it didn’t scare me. It was just as clear to me as the coffee in front of me now. It was a fact. I had no air conditioning. I couldn’t get out of the tank. There was nowhere to go except a POW camp, if I was lucky enough to get caught and not killed right away. I remember thinking that I should have been panicking. Instead, I was utterly, crystal clear. It was in the space of such a small moment that I realized it was completely up to me. Whether I survived or not was between me and my own mind.” The lieutenant sat forward, his body compressed with the intensity of the experience, still vivid in him.
“For some reason, I thought about something I’d heard about some monks in the Himalayas, how they went outside in sub-zero temperatures and howling winds to meditate and never suffered any ill effects. They raised their own thermostats. And I figured if they could do it that way, I could lower it. To this day I don’t know exactly what I did or how I did it, but I imagined cool water inside me and around me, like I was dunking myself into a cooler filled with ice or skinny dipping in the lake back home. And hell if it didn’t work. I’m here. I never forgot that,” he sat back. “This,” he pointed to his head, “was my greatest weapon of all. And it has served me ever since, no matter what or where the battle.”
What he used without knowing it at the time is a simple protocol called Verbal First Aid. It is based on the simple notion that the images we hold in our minds are held in our bodies as well. What we think is what we are. What we feel determines how we heal. Dr. Larry Dossey, one of the foremost proponents of mind/body medicine, has written, “Images create bodily changes—just as if the experience were really happening. For example, if you imagine yourself lying on a beach in the sun, you become relaxed, your peripheral blood vessels dilate, and your hands become warm, as in the real thing.”
If this is even partially true, it is an astonishing statement.
The case to definitively establish the link between mind and body was opened almost 1,500 years ago when Hippocrates wrote that a person might yet recover from his or her belief in the goodness of the physician. It was continued in 1912 when one doctor reported that tuberculosis patients who had previously been on the mend, when given bad news (e.g., that a relative had passed away) took sudden turns for the worse and died. And today the data supporting the connection between thoughts and health, indeed between mental images and survival, are mounting.
Brain scans have shown that when we imagine an event, our thoughts “light up” the areas of the brain that are triggered during the actual event. Sports psychologists conducted one study in which skiers were wired to EMG machines and monitored for electrical impulses sent to the muscles as they mentally rehearsed their downhill runs. The skiers’ brains sent the Bille instructions to their bodies whether they were doing a jump or just thinking about it.
What does this mean for a person out riding in the mountains who suddenly finds himself stuck in a downpour and unable to get out before dark when the temperature is expected to fall nearly 40 degrees? How does this help someone with an asthma attack in the middle of a lake or a rider with a broken leg one hour from the nearest town?
What some people claim is that it can mean the difference between life and death because the words we say (to ourselves and to one another) do matter, especially when we are afraid, in pain, or in shock. By saying the right words in the right way we are able to speak directly to the body, reduce an inflammatory response, help to slow down or stop bleeding, change the way an event is interpreted so that it is experienced differently IN the body.
What Can We Do, What Can We Say: Verbal First Aid in Real Life
According to medical experts, anxiety (or fear) and pain are inextricably woven together for the vast majority of people. A great deal of human discomfort comes from our anticipation of it and our perception of it. Unfortunately, there is nothing marketed as vigorously in this country as is fear. If we’re not scared to death by a headline, it’s a radio report, a movie, a video game, or a television show. We’re literally bombarded by images and ideas that promote fear. We are propelled by it and sold by it.
If the science is correct, the good news is that we can change it on every level—from the conscious to the autonomic. When we alter our thoughts, are soothed by a kind authority, or are assured that we are in good hands, we can begin to feel the changes in our bodies—the softening of muscle fiber, the opening of bronchial tubes, the quieting of pain, the start of healing. This is why so much of Verbal First Aid in the field is directed to the alleviation of anxiety through the development and utilization of rapport. In rapport, a person will feel, “She understands me.” “He is going to help me.” “I’m safe, now.” When we feel understood, our anxiety is reduced. And when anxiety is reduced, pain is relieved. Even if we are entirely alone, clinicians and scientists agree that what we say to ourselves matters and we can direct our thoughts so that our chances for survival are enhanced.
Whether you’re speaking to yourself or to someone else on the trail, how you approach someone mentally and emotionally is at least as important as the medical expertise you have, according to Winnie Maggiore, former Asst. Chief of Placitas Volunteer Fire Brigade, paramedic, former Asst. D.A., and now a malpractice defense attorney. “We saw the Bille things in the wilderness that we saw locally—snake bites, mountain bike wrecks, breaks, falls, cardiac conditions—but the injuries in the wilderness feel worse to the patient in that he’s away from familiar surroundings. Most of what we had to do in rescues was anxiety management. The first step is to let the person know you have the expertise to help. This conviction allowed us to say ‘do this’ in a way that motivated compliance.”
The other major ingredient in dealing with crises, according to Maggiore, is giving people some sort of control over what is happening to them. “When we were just learning emergency medicine, we were given a course in hypnosis so it could be used in pain control, because it could be all we’d have to work with out there. The worst part for patients was being out of control so put them back in control as much as we could, gave them something positive to focus on. Panic is a patient’s worst enemy.”
People normally want to reassure with blanket statements, e.g., “you’re fine.” When this is obviously untrue, it’s the sort of statement that breaks rapport. It’s better to say, according to the experts, that the worst is over and you’re there to help. Your caring presence is the cornerstone of the healing process. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing and listen as you wait for help or do standard first aid. Your care can do more than you might imagine.
The following are just two examples of ways we can talk to someone in distress so that they are calmed, their pain is reduced, and they are moved steadily towards healing.
Asthma Attack .
Bill and his son, Jake, went for a dirt bike ride up a trail that was almost never used. Bill was sure his son had his inhaler with him. Jake was sure dad had it with him.
It was a rugged trail that required more physical exertion than either had expected. When they finally made it up to the first crest, Jake was starting to panic from the tightness in his chest. When they realized they’d forgotten it, Bill was smart enough to take a deep breath himself so that when he turned to his son he was calm, focused, and sure-footed.
Bill: Jake, I can see you’re breathing but that it’s a little tight?
Jake: (Nods, but can’t speak.)
Bill: Sit with me here and lean forward like this. Put your head forward like this so your bronchial tubes can open and smooth out. [At this point, Bill’s voice drops in pitch and slows down so that it’s soothing and controlled. He “paces” his son’s breath with his own, carefully so as not to hyperventilate, just enough so that there is a joint rhythm. As he speaks to his son, his breathing slows down just a little bit at a time, “leading” his son back to normal breathing.) And as you do, you can remember very clearly how your inhaler feels when you take a puff on it, a little cool, a little tingly and how it opens you up pretty quickly, you can remember how it feels when it’s working…a little more open now…a little more open, a little cooler, until you can get a really good deep, slow, even breath…
A High Side at Five
When we get a whiff of twisting and turning mountain roads, open vistas and the winds of freedom that fill us, it’s easy to take off on an impulse and forget basics: water, first aid kit, cell phone.
Manny and Janice took off on an early Sunday morning, the first of spring. It had been a long winter and while they remembered to charge their batteries, they forgot just about everything else. Manny and Janice pointed their bikes west, Janice leading, and kept going until a deer ran in front of Manny. Reflexively jamming on his front break, he went head over hind end until he wound up in an intimate embrace with a hundred year old oak.
When he was finally able to gather his wits, he saw Janice standing over him. Even though neither had a first aid kit, Janice knew Verbal First Aid.
Manny: How’s my bike?
Janice: It’s fine. It’s just taking a nap. That was some acrobatic act.
Manny: Did you get it on video?
Janice: Yeah, with the camera in the back of my head. (She smiled.) I’m going to help you now, Manny. I can see that you’re talking and thinking just fine. Let me see how the rest of you is.
When he stood up, though, they realized he had a deep laceration from a piece of metal
That had been left on the side of the road and blood was pouring down his leg.
Manny: Damn it! It’s really bleeding.
Janice: It is and that’s actually a really good thing so that it cleans out the wound. As soon as you’ve cleaned it through enough, you can stop [Janice emphasizes “stop”] the bleeding.
Manny: Damn it. That was so stupid.
Janice: It happens to everyone. I know you’ve gotten cut before and you’ve stopped the bleeding before just like you’re stopping it right now. [She wraps her bandana around it and applies pressure.] You can hold it tight like this. Y’know even as we’re sitting here, it’s already starting to heal and the bleeding has slowed to a stop.
Manny: Damned if it hasn’t!
Janice: So… we can either wait for a car to pass or you can sit on the back of my bike…and we’ll ride into town.
Manny: I’ll hitch.
Mental survival—regardless of where a person is, whether that’s in the extremes of battle or a cross-country ride—is often a matter of recalling or being made aware of the resources one already has. As Lt. Samuels learned the hard way, the mind is the greatest weapon of all.
The Luxury of Divorce
Since 2008, most of us have been walking budgetary tightropes—cutting a piece off of this, snipping some off of that. For a significant percentage, it’s been a steady slide into fiscal chaos, foreclosures, and fear. For some, it’s just the luxuries that have been eliminated: No more the extended vacation, the new car lease every year or two, or the $400 handbag spree. On all counts, it seems that we are a culture moving from decades of “Want It!” to the more realistic “Need It?” Coupon clipping is in again and most people are more worried about whether they’re going to have a roof over their heads than whether they’re sporting the latest Uggs. It has properly affected every aspect of our lifestyles and, hopefully, our values and priorities. But, inevitably, a change so vast has also affected our relationships.
There seem to be two trends at the same time:
On one hand, with less expendable income, there are less expendable marriages. Our new economic realities may be forcing yet another belt tightening—or heart tightening—process: People can no longer afford to get divorced.
One attorney in White Plains, N.Y., Joy Joseph, Esq., has been a specialist in matrimonial law for many years. In the last six years she has seen a very clear downward trend in the number of divorces:
“For people of moderate means, the economy has had a big impact. It is very expensive to get divorced. Only a part of it is attorney’s fees. The bigger part is that the assets are split or devalued in the process. Usually that’s the house, in which they have very little equity. Plus there’s the risk of losing the partner’s health benefits. They’re afraid to live uninsured. So, they cling to an unhappy marriage because they can’t afford to leave.”
The statistics support her observations: A new paper in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy (*1) shows that as unemployment rises, the divorce rate goes down: For every 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate, the divorce rate goes down by 1 percent.
On the other hand:
The NPR-Kaiser Family Foundation survey (*2) suggests that while divorce is down, discord is up. They reported that high unemployment has contributed to ruptures in many families around the country. They state that more than 20% of all Americans who have been without work for more than a year claim that their close relationships have suffered. More than 30% say their financial difficulties have had a profound negative impact on their partners’ health/well-being.
What does this mean for marriages?
Unfortunately for the truly horrible ones it will mean a forced choice between one hardship and another. I know one woman who has no money, three children, no extended family, and no friends because her violent husband has sequestered her. He has gained control of everything, including the children, through both stealth and steady emotional manipulation. He has made her afraid of leaving even though staying will eventually mean her death. She has begun investigating shelters for her and her children and a life she will have to recreate from the very fundamentals, knowing he may still hunt her down. She stands at this crossroads and trembles.
For others in less dire circumstances, it gets complicated by other matters—both material and immaterial. Another woman I know says it’s about money but as it turns out she has about $30,000 in a bank account, a good getaway car, jewelry, and a small, discrete dog she can easily take with her in a carrying case. She knows people in other states. So, why does she stay with a man who hates her, berates her, and beats her? I asked her point blank and she said it was because she likes her furniture. She’s attached to her stuff. While I know that can be true, I think it’s more.
In my experience, a lot of people, men and women, who suffer in abusive relationships do so because they don’t know anything else and have no vista for hope. Often they were so painfully damaged by earlier relationships, they were made to feel as if they deserved no better. I think in her case, it is that she truly feels unworthy and doesn’t trust her own ability to step away, make new friends, get work, and survive in the world on her own. The stuff is little more than a ready excuse.
Another couple, two women who have lived together for fifteen years but have nothing between them but a mortgage, stay because they can’t sell their home. It has been on the market for two years and they have lived utterly separate lives during that entire time.
Some experts say that this may be a situation that bodes well for couples whose marriages are in the borderland between functional and finished. Necessity is the mother of invention and, they suggest, the necessity of living together can force people to find ways to do so companionably, work out issues, and perhaps find it in their hearts to love one another in ways they had not imagined before.
I think of the few moments I was angry and fleetingly considered baling on my marriage—probably the same time my husband considered a similar solution. What made us stand still and work it through? Admittedly, besides occasional pride and obstinacy, our marriage is very stable. Was it just love, then? Surely love was a good part of it, but I don’t believe it was all of it. I believe the commitment and the difficulty of feathering apart two completely interwoven lives overrode the momentary instability. In being faced with staying, we had to work at it. Easy? Far from it. Humbling. Frustrating. Wearisome. Not easy.
But eminently worth it for us. The process brought us to an entirely new level of intimacy, validating everything the optimists hope for and all that clergy argue: that most of us take the easy way out far too easily and leave before the miracle happens.
However, the data does not support the optimism when it comes to marriages that are fundamentally unstable or violent. To the contrary—the current situation should make advocates of domestic violence prevention quite concerned.
If the Great Depression was any indicator, the divorce rate went down, but incidence of violence in the home went up. According to Stephanie Coontz(*3), a historian and professor of women’s studies at Evergreen State College, when states began to permit no-fault divorces, domestic violence dropped by 20 to 30% and the rate at which husbands were murdered by their wives was significantly lowered. According to her, divorce provides a very necessary “safety valve.”
Joy Joseph stated that her experience supported Coontz’s conclusion: “As a result of their inability to afford full divorces, people are going to mediation, which can be good if there’s something to be saved. But a lot of women get hurt in the bargain because they don’t hire their own attorney. They’ve often stayed home to take care of the kids and the husband is generally the main provider and wields the most power. Despite the social changes of the last 50 years, there’s still a great deal of disparity.
“It’s not good,” she adds. “Financial stressors are one of the biggest reasons people split up. Then couple that with the bad relationship and you’ve got a real problem.”
Coontz and others predict that as the downturn resolves, divorce rates will quickly go back up again, which make some people hopeful.
That statistical prediction strikes me as sad, even if it is necessary or inevitable.
Is it wrong to hope that collectively we can learn something terribly important from this recession? Is it wrong to pray that we begin to realize we are not the things we own, rather the relationships we have and the love we give? While I am certainly not in favor of someone staying in a marriage that puts him/her (or children, especially) at risk, I think it might do us all a bit of good to slow down, to take a bit more time between the fight and the time we scream, “I’m outa here.”
1) http://www.npr.org/2011/12/20/144021297/marriage-economy-i-couldnt-afford-to-get-divorced
2) Ibid.
3) http://googlinggod.com/2011/12/21/how-to-stay-married-in-the-economic-downturn/
Posted in Faith-based Counseling, homeopathy, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy | Tags: budgets, divorce, economic trends, lawyers, marriage | No Comments »
People to Watch: Hudson Valley
This was one of the best welcomes I have ever had, or could hope to have. While I'm still missing New Mexico terribly, this article about Verbal First Aid, The Next Osama, and my general practice as a psychotherapist and homeopath certainly took some of the sting out.
Hudson Valley Magazine People to Watch 2012!
Posted in Blog, homeopathy, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy | Tags: homeopathy, Hudson Valley, Psychotherapy, Verbal First Aid | No Comments »
Can We Just Call it Homesickness?
Since 1935, when Dupont adopted the slogan “Better Living Through Chemistry,” we have been a culture pummeled by polymers and overly impressed by the new and shiny. Their advertising not only changed how we thought about the rush of chemicals being delivered to us (through medicine, in our water, in our foods), but reflected a new age of humanity in which biochemistry became a cruel and indifferent king. No longer were people thought of as “heartbroken.” They were thought of as chemically imbalanced.
Most people don’t know that diagnoses vary and move along social currents. Because of the authority with which words like “clinical depression” or “bipolar” are used in modern conversation, they are given the impression that those words have a permanence and solidity they do not actually have.
For instance, what we now commonly call PTSD has only been recognized as a formal disorder since 1980. During the American Civil War, soldiers returning from battle with inexplicable symptoms were said to have “Soldier’s Heart.” In World War I it was referred to as “War Malaise” or “Shell Shock,” in World War II, “Combat Fatigue,” in Korea “Gross Stress Reaction” and after Vietnam, it was cleverly called “Post-Vietnam Syndrome.”
Does it matter what we call it?
Some think it matters a great deal because names often determine approach or treatment. It makes sense. If someone is called “Your Highness” we are sure to approach him or her quite differently than if he or she were called “dear.” Similarly, if we call a state of mind a chemical imbalance, than we are very likely to approach (or treat) that state with chemicals, often many. If, on the other hand, we call it a broken heart or loneliness or arrogance or self-pity, we take a rather different tack.
This comes up because of something a patient said to me the other day. She also recently moved east from New Mexico when her husband was made a corporate offer he couldn’t refuse. She came from an old family in Santa Fe with a history that went back almost 400 years to the Spanish Conquest. She had grown up with open vistas, nearly eternally clear skies, and a community in which everyone knew one another. To say hers was a shocking uprooting would be an understatement.
She came in complaining of inexplicable and free-floating anxiety, lethargy, a tendency to weepiness over trifles, an inability to sleep through the night because of dreams and restlessness. Her first question after she elaborated on her symptom picture was: “Do you think I’m depressed?” The as yet unspoken question underneath was: Did she need medication?
Instead of answering either of those questions, I asked her about her dreams, when these symptoms started, what she’d been doing since she moved here and how well (or poorly) she was getting acclimated to a new environment and culture.
As it turned out, her symptoms began about a month after arriving, shortly after the last box had been unpacked and recycled. Suddenly, there was nothing to do. Her husband was going to his new job. Her two young children were in school. She was at home, sans friends, sans work, sans family. In New Mexico, she had not only been working, she had an extended family that occupied a great deal of her time with social engagements and care-taking elderly members. People stopped into one another’s homes fairly regularly. She had a church she loved. Here, she was alone. Worse, she was lonely.
Could someone call that depression? I imagine they could find support for it in the diagnostics and standards manual. But I’d rather call it homesickness. Not only because it is more precise, but because it gives her a way out.
Of course she misses her home. Of course she feels lonely. Of course she’s bored and restless. Of course she longs for friends and relatives. Who wouldn’t in her situation? There’s no pathology in that.
What needed to be changed were not those feelings, but what she was doing all day with them. First prescription: Volunteer. Second prescription: Find a church with her husband. Third prescription: Join a club (in her case she agreed to a yoga class).
It took about a month for her symptoms to abate. While she still missed friends and family (and bright, endless blue skies), she was no longer as lonely, bored or restless. She slept better because her energy was redirected and expended during the day. She began to make new friends and feel a part of something bigger than her own heartbeat in a large, empty house.
The more I think about her case, the more I am inclined to think of PTSD as Soldier’s Heart. I think it more clearly sums up what we are looking at: A wound of war that breaks a heart, not a chemistry problem.
Posted in Classical Homeopathy, Faith-based Counseling, Holistic Psychotherapy | Tags: advertising, diagnoses, homesickness, Media, psychiatric diagnosis | No Comments »
A Personal Case for Homeopathy Part II
After the debate with my last articles on this topic, I find I couldn't agree with the critics more. Homeopathy is strange and sounds magical. When I try to explain it to people — despite years of study and personal/professional experience — I wind up sounding like my worst woo-woo nightmare, stumbling over words like "energy," "resonance" and "organism."
As I stumble, my husband patiently awaits my sound byte, still anxiously hoping I can give him a way to explain what I do to save him from sounding just as ridiculous.
As he is a musician, I put it to him this way: "Think of it as you do of music… notes and chords… entire arrangements of single notes (or combinations thereof) and the spaces between them."
He looked at me, single eyebrow raised. I had crossed over onto his turf. I'd better know what I'm talking about.
"In homeopathy, you can think of both the human being (or any living creature for that matter) and the remedy as pieces of music. A person comes in for treatment and the disease or pathology is presenting as a song, out of tune with the rest of the person when in a healthy state. We look for a remedy that most closely matches the totality of that pathology's song. When we give it to the patient, the remedy cancels the disease. A song for a song. Like cures like."
Eyebrow is lowered. I am momentarily reprieved. "Is it phase cancellation?"
"I'm not sure because it's not an opposing frequency, it's a similar one. But maybe the amplitudes are opposing."
Eyebrow is raised. I realize that I'm back to where I started.
Perhaps an easier way to see it is with this metaphor:
See yourself as a being of a million small crystals, each one with a frequency. When you become ill, some of those crystals change frequency and begin to vibrate or sing out of tune. When we choose a remedy, we choose it to best match those crystals that have fallen out of tune. When delivered, it shatters those sick crystals, leaving only the healthy ones behind.
Admittedly, it is a metaphor, and as such, still leaves a great deal unexplained. I can understand the frustration of allopaths and critics with the obvious absence of hard, linear facts that are repeatable regardless of the person or place. Compared to current pharmaceutical philosophy, making scientific "sense" of homeopathy is like trying to play ordinary billiards in a quantum pool hall.
The problem is that homeopathy is aimed at treating the individual with a single remedy, chosen specifically for him or her. It is not for treating masses of people with the same pill. Twenty people could have the "same" flu, but each one would need a different remedy (not necessarily Oscillococcinum) and be rightly cured because each one would manifest illness in a way that is utterly unique to him-/herself. We always treat the person, not the disease. As such it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to replicate homeopathic treatment the way pharmaceutical companies try to do in drug trials.
A Simple Case in Point
My dog, who is not generally considered a good candidate for placebo, was sitting in on a session with a young patient I had been seeing for quite a while. While he was curled up on the couch next to her, he looked up at my patient and she frowned, "God, what's wrong with him?!"
Without warning his eye had started bulging out of its socket. I was taken aback and instantly concerned. I begged her indulgence and called my homeopathic vet, who is located about two hours from us. He told me to take him for an emergency physical exam at a local hospital.
I asked for an emergency reschedule (she was in no danger and there was no threat to the therapeutic relationship) and rushed him over. After the exam, the local vet ruled out the more terrifying possibilities (rupture, tumor etc…) and pronounced it an inflammation, probably due to a scratch, spider bite or bee sting. She prescribed a bucket full of different pills and ointments.
More at ease now that there was no crisis and my panic had passed, I thanked her and left with just one of the ointments in case I didn't find the right remedy immediately.
When I got back, I went to the repertory (in a computer, unlike my first homeopathic physician) and made a scrupulous list of his visible symptoms. Obviously I could only surmise how he felt, so I didn't even try. These were the rubrics I chose for him:
1. Eye, inflammation
2. Eye, inflammation, acute
3. Generals, aggravated on the right side
4. Generals, sudden onset
5. Eye, lachrymation
6. Eye, protrusion with red discoloration.
The remedy was Apis Mellifica, potentized bee venom. This is a particularly straightforward example of how like (when it is potentized, meaning highly diluted to the smallest possible dose) cures like: Venom cancels out venom. Within minutes of giving the dog a few pellets, the inflammation was gone. And it never came back. No other treatment was necessary.
Is it always so straightforward? Hardly. I wish it were. It is especially more complicated when people come in with years and years of emotional suffering, chronic illness, and lists of medications sometimes two pages long. I had one patient on 27 medications because she had been diagnosed depressed. Was she feeling any better? Not in the slightest. It was a long haul to wellness for her with the incredible help of a thorough and patient physician.
Taking someone's case in this situation takes a great deal more time, sensitivity and patience than a simple inflammation. But the essential idea, the bedrock of the interview is the same: Find the remedy that matches the totality of symptoms, which means understanding precisely what it is in her life, in her experience, in her soul that has led to and expresses the essence of the state she is in. It is not enough to say someone is depressed. The word "depressed" doesn't really mean anything. To say, on the other hand, as one patient did, that she felt forsaken, was chronically sad because she felt all alone in the world yet she was averse to company — that begins to narrow it down a bit. When she added that she had no will power, yet felt better from a good debate, a challenging puzzle, or a lively conversation (mental exertion ameliorates), we begin to see how "depression" expressed itself uniquely in her. The remedy that patient needed (based on those and other symptoms) was Natrum Silicatum.
Now, just because you're sad doesn't mean you should go buy Natrum Silicatum. That is the mistake a lot of people and even poorly trained homeopaths make. It is unlikely that you will receive the benefit she did because her state (remember those crystals) was a Natrum Silicatum state. When it was given, what was unhealthy shattered and left behind only what was vital and strong.
I do not blame the debunkers. Homeopathy is very hard to repeat experimentally precisely because of the way it works: Individually. And so much of its success is in the hands of the homeopath whose task it is to see the patient clearly for who he or she is, to see that particular light, to hear that singular song. This is a hard pill to swallow until you've seen it work. But when you have seen it — it's the easiest one of all.
Posted in Holistic Psychotherapy, homeopathy, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy | Tags: classical homeopathy, medicine, music, therapy | 1 Comment »
A Personal Case for Classical Homeopathy
Part 1 of a 2-Part Series on How To Explain (or Not) Classical Homeopathy
The American Sound Bite
Out of nowhere, my husband turned to me and said, “I wish you’d tell me what you do so I can tell other people. They ask me what you do and I can’t explain it.”
“I’m a psychotherapist and a consultant in classical homeopathy,” I stared at him. “You know what I do.”
“But I can never explain it quickly enough. I tell them ‘rebalancing,’ ‘rewiring,’ ‘peeling the skin off onions,’ but then I lose myself. I can’t come up with a simple way to describe it.”
This is the worst problem for a homeopath. How do we explain an exquisitely subtle and complex process in a simple way? Take something so important and put it in a sound bite?
I remember a long time ago having to try to explain Verbal First Aid in five seconds or less for a three minute TV news interview. I totally blew it. I’m not very good at sound bites.
But that is what we want in this country—drive through information, fast-food for the mind. If we can’t eat it in the time it takes to reach for the remote, the opportunity to communicate is lost.
But there is hope, because we do like stories. So, I thought that perhaps the best way to communicate what I do is to share with you a few cases. The first one is my own. The others (in Part II of this article) are patients with their identities protected. I have never shared my own story before, but I do so because I believe its dramatic nature will help you to understand what classical homeopathy can do and why some people are so passionate about it.
The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Mass
Many years ago, I suddenly developed abdominal pain. I had not been sick in any other way and had no idea what was happening. I went for a gynecological exam and was told I was fine. The pain continued. I went back and after numerous exams was sent from the table to the couch. The psychiatrist sent me right back to the doctor. After about a year of bouncing back and forth with increasingly intense (searing, stabbing) pain, they finally “discovered” a mass several centimeters in width in the area of my left ovary.
At this point, the surgeons were called in. I was scheduled for an emergency laparotomy. As they wheeled me in, the surgeon said to my mother, “It could be cancer.” I was 26.
After surgery, as soon as I stopped vomiting, the doctor told me that it was not cancer. My mother wept. He said it was a streptococcal infection (Strep B) that had created adhesions and that I could forget about having children. He proudly went on to inform us that they had “scraped me clean” and that I’d be on antibiotics for about a month.
I did as I was told. I was raised by a doctor, surrounded by doctors, and had complete faith in the system.
Within a short time a whole new sort of pain emerged, this time, however, deeper. It was more localized, again on the left side. I thought the infection had returned. The pain continued for quite a while. I went to the doctor, but there was no infection. After dismissing it (and me) for at least a year again, I finally wound up in hospital. A cyst had burst. This cycle recurred every few months. They recommended birth control pills, pain pills, and pills I didn’t understand. Nothing helped. By the fourth rupture and hospital visit, they recommended a full hysterectomy.
I sat silently until I could take a deep breath again. I asked if there were no other options. The doctor said, “You’ll just keep getting them and since you can’t get pregnant anyway, this is the best idea.”
I told him I would think about it. He told me not to think too long but looked at me is if I couldn’t think at all.
I called a friend who had been talking about homeopathy. She used a homeopath for herself and had located a homeopathic vet. I asked for more information. She sat with me. She loaned me books. And she gave me the name of a doctor. I decided to at least try something before I let my reproductive center be removed forever.
I told my gynecologist about it. He said, and I quote, “You can use all the weed wackers you want, it won’t help.”
I said, “We shall see.” And I meant “we.” I had no more experience in it than he did. But I wanted some option other than organ removal.
He did not escort me out. He was more than mildly annoyed.
But I was on a mission.
Where the Magic Begins
This is what saved me: a young doctor with a tattered copy of a repertory (the book that is used to look up symptoms and match them to different remedies) and another equally frayed Materia Medica (the book that contains full descriptions of the remedies themselves) in a basement office in New Rochelle, NY.
It was the strangest medical experience I’d ever had. He didn’t examine me the way I had expected. He talked to me. Well, actually, he talked very little. He asked me endless questions: Where is the pain? When does it come on? What happened then? What does it feel like? What makes it better? Do you have any food cravings? Do you kick your feet out of the covers? Do you like other people around you? Are you warm? Cold? What makes you afraid? Anxious? Sad?
He was relentless. Two hours of questions that could not seem more unrelated to me or to my ovaries. But honestly, it was such a relief to have someone listen to me without judgment that I suspended my own.
At the end of the interview, he went into a little closet, pulled out an amber bottle, opened the cap, poured a few pellets into the cap, tipped my head back, and said, “Open your mouth.”
He poured the little pellets under my tongue.
That was my first remedy. It was Pulsatilla, a common flower in highly diluted (potentized) form.
After that, my mood improved slightly but briefly and the physical symptoms did not go away. Instead they shifted and got worse. I’ve learned since then that this can happen when a remedy is close but not a bull’s eye. The symptoms became far more localized and presented with greater clarity. It seemed to me then that it was like a boil coming to a head, collecting the “illness” from a large area and concentrating it so it could be seen properly and discharged. We waited a very uncomfortable month.
After the second interview he gave me Thuja. After that I had a frankly rude aggravation (cystitis) which lasted about a month and the cystic pain completely disappeared. An aggravation is what homeopaths hope for as the sign that a cure is beginning. It is also precisely what allopathic doctors find wholly inconsistent with their training. They are supposed to make symptoms go away, not generate others. But because homeopaths see the human organism as a moving, dynamic system, they believe that this discharge is absolutely necessary. Aggravations are like siphons; they allow previously suppressed diseases or eruptions a way out of the system. In homeopathic philosophy, it is part of the cure.
But I didn’t know that at the time. So I called him and complained, and after he ruled out any dangerous infections, he said “Now, we wait.” I’d call him back, still annoyed, uncomfortable, and worried. And he said, again, “WAIT!”
So, I did. After a while, the “rudeness” was gone and so was all the pain. And after a year I realized so were the cysts. None of it—not the cysts or the strep or any of that pain— has ever come back. More important, perhaps, than the physical relief, was that over the next couple of years I became calmer, more centered. Much of the insecurity that had ruled my life up until that point also seemed to just not be there. I didn’t see it leaving. It was just gone when I remembered to look for it.
That was a very long time ago. All my exams are still splendidly normal and I still have my own organs in my own body.
I went on to need other remedies over time to deal with other issues and wound up with a different remedy as my “constitutional,” the one that seems to fit my overall being. But this is how it started. And it convinced me on a cognitive and cellular level that what I had experienced was more than placebo or fanciful wish-fulfillment. As far as I could see, it could not be a placebo (although that would have been just fine with me at that point), because one remedy missed the mark, but the other did not. And as far as wish-fulfillment—if it had been up to me, I’m sure I would have wished for instant relief—sans aggravation!
In the follow up article, we’ll look at a couple of other cases to demonstrate the most important principle of homeopathy: like cures like. And hopefully discover the sound bite people need to understand what Hahnemann’s legacy has been.
A Primer in Classical Homeopathy: How to Make the Interview Easier and More Productive
(this is an expanded version of the piece currently on Huffington Post)
I’ve been a psychotherapist for 25 years. I believe it’s an important part of my job to make my clients as comfortable as possible from the first phone contact. Despite all reasonable efforts, though, the first interview seems to still be somewhat awkward and difficult for new patients. Really, it’s very understandable. They don’t know me. They feel vulnerable and unsure because they don’t know exactly what’s expected. They’re sometimes not even fully clear about why they’re there except they know they want to feel better.
The homeopathic interview may be even more of an unknown for some people. Not only does it start with the same “unknowns” as the social work assessment, but it adds some new ones, like the simple but monumental fact that it turns allopathic or “standard” medical practice on its head. You may have called the homeopath to get rid of that recalcitrant psoriasis, but he or she keeps talking about whether you kick the covers off at night, how you feel about injustice, or whether your sadness is worse in the morning or at night.
Knowing what to expect of the process and what your homeopath is hoping to learn from you may make the experience more comfortable and more productive. The following is not a medical manual, but a primer for those looking to work with a classical homeopath. Hopefully, it will give you a good idea of what to expect and how to participate so you get the most out of it.
Preparing Yourself Philosophically
One of the fortunate aspects of my practice is that I see people more frequently because the primary focus of it is mental health treatment. Even though it also takes physical conditions into account, people almost always call me because they’re sad, anxious, grief-stricken, panicked, or in some way emotionally distressed.
Unless a person comes specifically to be treated homeopathically and has already had some experience with the philosophy and practice of classical homeopathy, I usually anticipate spending at least some time in the first or second session on education. I give material for reading, lead them to the National Center for Homeopathy website, and take as much time as he or she needs answering questions.
What you can do, then, to make the time you spend more efficient and effective when you are actively seeking treatment from a homeopath is to learn a little bit about it beforehand.
In my opinion, the best book for the starting patient is Impossible Cure by A. Lansky. It is written in clear, concise prose and doesn’t fall back on “homeospeak” so you can follow her all the way through. And hers is an amazing, personal story of hope.
The principles of classical homeopathy are the following:
Like cures like.
This is the manner of cure. It is also called the Law of Similars and it is the way all proper remedies are chosen. It means that the practitioner is going to ask you a host of questions intended to draw out information that will help him or her choose the remedy that is most “similar” to your totality of symptoms.
The simplest example of the Law of Similars is what we do when we get grease on our hands. We clean it with soap (or, if you’re out in the garage, Goop), which is little more than fat. The soap removes the grease because it is grease.
In a homeopathic case, it may look like this: A little boy suddenly gets a raging fever with a pounding headache, dilated pupils, cheeks so red they could be purple and becomes delirious. The remedy a homeopath would choose (and there would be a couple of contenders) would have to produce those symptoms in a healthy person. By giving the remedy that would generate that particular type of febrile state to a person with it, it is cured.
This is why quinine works curatively for malaria—because when it is given to a healthy person over and over, it creates symptoms similar to malaria. Like cures like. This principle goes back to Hippocrates and has been considered by homeopaths as the basis for all true healing.
Hering’s Law.
This is the road of cure in homeopathy. In simplest terms it refers to the way and the order in which the pathology will be healed. Cure moves from top down, from present to past, and from in to out (from the spiritual-mental-emotional down through the organs from most to least important and finally out to discharge in a benign way, e.g., a runny nose, brief diarrhea, fever, or skin eruption).
One remedy at a time.
This is the technique of cure and it is an obvious but overlooked wisdom. If multiple remedies are given too frequently and in too rapid a succession (except in extreme and acute situations), the case can be lost. This is even more true with combination remedies (pharmacy concoctions that include multiple remedies, even those that antidote one another).
It is terribly important to let each one reveal in its time what it must. Some remedies take longer than others. We all respond differently at different times to our environments. Remedies are no exception.
The Nature of Pathology: Layers
This is not a standard homeopathic “principle” but it’s one that leads me to ask of patients regularly: Patience. We are not out to just make a symptom disappear at the expense of your vitality and health. We want to get rid of the psoriasis but not at the expense of seeing you develop uterine fibroids or heart disease.
We want you to be healed. And that takes time. When patients ask me, “Well, how much time,” I have to say, “As long as your organism needs. You’ll tell me how much time.”
The reason for this is that there are layers to everything today. Including pathology.
Western practitioners often mistake the presenting problem for the only problem they need to cure, not having been trained to see the embedding of one pathology over the other or the inheritance one may have received from one’s ancestors.
These are levels of defense. We know this by what happens in our relationships. First bad joke, we get a giggle and a snort. Second bad joke, we get a “cut it out.” Third bad joke, we get kicked in the shins.
It is common knowledge that when an organism is injured, it inflames. It is a mechanism of repair. Homeopaths trace what happens if the injury is not healed (by itself, with proper medicine or the removal of inflammatory agent): the inflammation worsens, leading to induration (hardening). If that is not healed, then the organism resorts to its last defense to save the whole. Thus a cancerous tumor or an ulcer is a result of this process at the genetic level.
In homeopathy there are three basic levels:
The Psoric
Physical level: Inflammation (fevers, rhinitis, cystitis), pain, spasm, constriction, sensitivity
Emotional level: Anxiety, apprehension, irritability, anger, sensitivity, insecurity.
The Sycotic
Physical level: Accumulation (calluses, warts), synthesis, deposition, and proliferation
Emotional level: Hyper-anxiety, fearfulness, hypervigilance, Super-vivaciousness, showmanship (most of American TV), boasting, rigidity, hardness (like calluses), precocity, collection (OCD). Also the opposite: too relaxed (a loss of collagen, dropped uterus), looseness in character, overly yielding, shame, frivolousness, bashfulness
The Syphilitic
Physical Level: Exaggeration, distortion (pointed teeth, curved spine), destruction (cancer), auto-immune diseases, mutations (scoliosis)
Emotional Level: perversion, cruelty, hysteria or mania, (borderline personality disorder, psychosis), distortion of reality and loss of connectedness, delusions, destruction, fearlessness, loss of will to live, loss of senses (smell, sight etc…).
Less Really is More
This concept is one of the major reasons why people have a hard time understanding and choosing homeopathy.
In homeopathy we do not use gross quantities of a substance. We use smaller doses, often below Avogadro’s number—meaning that if you looked at the medicine with an electron microscope you would see nothing. This is also called a “mole.” The mole, as defined by Wikipedia, “is a unit of measurement used in chemistry to express amounts of a chemical substance, defined as an amount of a substance that contains as many elementary entities (e.g., atoms, molecules, ions, electrons) as there are atoms in 12 grams of pure carbon-12 (12C), the isotope of carbon with atomic weight 12. This corresponds to a value of 6.02214179(30)×1023 elementary entities of that substance. It is one of the base units in the International System of Units, and has the unit symbol mol.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_%28unit%29)
The way I explain it to patients is this: Homeopathy is an energy delivery system, like a musical instrument or a beating heart or a scream of “fire” in an auditorium. So if the remedy is sulphur 30c, there are no molecules of sulphur in it. It acts on the vital force (and this is important!!!) by energetic resonance. It does not work on our bodies directly the same way that taking an aspirin or steroid does. It seems to work more along the lines of quantum physics than Newtonian law. (Poitevin, Bernard (2005). "Jacques Benveniste: a personal tribute". Homeopathy 94 (2): 138–139. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2005.02.004.)
The rule of thumb is: The smaller the dose, the more potent.
How does this happen? According to one study, homeopathy works because water has memory.
(E. Dayenas; F. Beauvais, J. Amara , M. Oberbaum, B. Robinzon, A. Miadonna, A. Tedeschit, B. Pomeranz, P. Fortner, P. Belon, J. Sainte-Laudy, B. Poitevin and J. Benveniste (30 June 1988). "Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE" (PDF). Nature 333 (6176): 816–818. doi:10.1038/333816a0. PMID 2455231. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v333/n6176/pdf/333816a0.pdf.)
From Benveniste’s observations, it appears that what’s been in it has a resonant effect. It is similar to the way our bodies remember a trauma. We have body memory even when the trauma is long gone and resonate with similar states or situations, until that original traumatic injury is healed.
As a psychotherapist, I think the tendency of trauma victims to unconsciously set themselves in traumatizing situations again and again is a desire to self-heal in some ways…they are searching for the similar agent. Freud was close to this when he talked about the repetition compulsion. People are often horrified (and not unreasonably) when they engage in unhealthy behavior time and again. They rightly want it to stop. But when it is framed this way and they can see that they have only been seeking resolution, it becomes not only easier to understand but to actually resolve. They feel less guilty with unconscious complicity, less victimized by their pasts and more empowered to move towards change. I’ve seen this understanding alone start to bring about healing even before a remedy has been delivered.
Yegads! No Coffee???
Perhaps the hardest thing for some patients is the need to temporarily give up coffee. I’ve seen patients give up vicodin, birth control pills, marijuana, and essential oils quicker than their daily java joy. I can absolutely understand it, too. I love coffee. But it is an unavoidable part of the homeopath’s process.
Although I’ve met some homeopaths who do not worry about coffee or other known antidotes (steroids, marijuana, camphor) very much, many of us do take the more conservative path. In general, it’s best to be prepared to have your homeopath ask you to leave the java (and the camphor) aside until you’ve reached a solid plateau of good health. It doesn’t antidote everyone or every remedy, but for most homeopaths it isn’t worth the risk of complicated the case.
What Do They Need to Know THAT For?
Come to the interview ready for a lot of unusual questions. It will not be enough for us to just “name that disease.”
What is important when we look at a patient and what are we going to ask you? We will generally work along the following areas even though we all have different styles and personalities.
Interior function (most important):
Creativity, compassion, forgiveness, centeredness, relatedness, empathy, adaptability, consistency in relationships, integrity/honesty, and consistency between intention and behavior.
Exterior function:
This may not coincide exactly with interior function. However, I believe and have found that our pathologies normally express themselves poetically or holographically. You may recall the expression, “as above, so below.” It is true for us, as well. So we will ask you about situations that reveal your capacity for appropriate behavior (clothing, responsiveness to social cues), money management, job status, time management, socialization, housing.
Physiological function:
Parents’ medical history, personal medical history, current disease state (psoric, sycotic, syphilitic), diet (especially cravings and aversions), exercise, chronicity (how long the problem has persisted), periodicity (how often it occurs and whether there are specific cycles), and modalities (what makes it better or worse).
Spiritual function:
Rigidity, belief system, presence, judgment, fear.
The Art of the Interview
When I teach clinicians and medical personnel (Verbal First Aid, crisis protocols, and alternative healing principles, etc…), I always remind them that questions, no matter how clever or how technically astute, are no substitute for the therapeutic relationship. There is an art to homeopathy that is not “technical” and cannot be acquired solely by accumulating knowledge. I’ve met people who could recite remedies and their exact properties by memory, but could not see a patient in his totality and could not, therefore, come up with the right remedy.
Part of what makes a homeopathic interview successful is the synergy between you, the patient, and your homeopath. There must be a give and take, a relationship of trust, and an open dialogue. If you have questions, ask them. If you have fears, share them. The homeopath must observe and listen, but no one can see what you do not present.
If in fact there is as much art as science to a good case-taking, then you are as much a part of that creative process as your homeopath. Be as open and as honest as you can and you will reap the rewards in the health, vitality and freedom you have always longed for.
The Answer Within: Shmuck.
In our Modern Age, we've all been told that to find the real answers, we need to look "within." It's a message we see in magazines, hear over and over on television, and, of course, have thrust into our consciousness with the endless torrent of self-help books published every year. Even that concept–self-help–is an idea all the generations before us would have found both bizarre and blasphemous.
But culture manifests all over, even at the deli counter. I was waiting to place an order when I heard a painful whine behind me. A little girl didn't know what she wanted for lunch. A well-meaning mother asked her in a dozen different ways what her preference was. Would she like this? Would she like that? Remember when you had it before? Do you remember what you liked about it? What you didn't like about it? The sweet thing just didn't know and soon she was crying. The woman knelt down near her daughter (she was quite little) and talked to her in a gentle way about finding the answer within her heart and tummy.
I thought that was simultaneously sweet, amusing, and intriguing, also impossibly patient. Of course, I think the mother was trying to teach her child a valuable skill, one well worth learning. And she probably did a lot of other things that were kind, reassuring, and nurturing for her daughter.
But that child became so frustrated and tired trying to figure it out by herself that she screamed, "I DON'T KNOW!" loud enough to wake up the cashiers in the front of the store. Poor little thing just wanted someone to tell her, "here's your lunch, honey…" and it made me wonder if perhaps we were overdoing it a bit. Maybe within isn't the only way to go?
Were there always answers within? Indeed, are there any there for any of us? And if there were real answers, would we really want to hear them?
I thought of all the times I tried to figure things out for myself and wound up in ditches double my reach. I can still remember at least a couple of times looking entirely to myself–the Deeper Within–with important questions, and the Deeper Within shouting the answer back up to me: "Shmuck!" The answers I've received that have been of enduring value have mostly come from others with greater experience, wisdom, or grace.
On the other hand, I can also remember having moments of utter certainty in the face of chaotic circumstances, times when I absolutely knew what was the right thing to do. I may have been scared or intimidated or concerned, but I somehow knew.
So, what our loving mother was doing at the deli counter was, in my mind, at least theoretically sound. It is good to teach a child how to rely on himself to some degree. But is it always right? Isn't it also necessary to teach that child what is right and wrong, what is expectable, and how the world works so he or she can make proper choices, can function socially, can be healthy? Isn't it necessary to have some leadership, even if it's as simple as pointing out which mushrooms to avoid in the woods? Or which foods to pick out at the deli counter?
As usual, I mentioned it to my husband and I asked him if he thought we could find the answers within ourselves. And, also as usual, my pithy Montanan said, "'pends what you mean by 'answers.'"
I thought about that for days. When people are looking for answers are they actually seeking out the truth? Or are they looking for corroboration for their impulses or desires?
The need to go to oneself may be in fact the way one satisfies the need to get one's own desires met. Often that leads us down the road to perdition, hence the old proverb–"A physician who treats himself has a fool for a doctor."
I asked another Montanan friend, Ed Johnson, a really bright fellow who's worked in higher education for more than 20 years, whether he thought it was possible to rely on oneself for the answers and whether looking within was all one needed.
At first he said, "I'll have to dig deep within myself for that one…" And then he referenced a National Geographic article he recently read on the teenage brain.
"It turns out," he smiled, "that they're not nuts. They have a different risk-reward equation. The teenager understands consequences, but they choose the potential-perceived reward and ignore the risks."
Because of this and other anomalies–genetic issues, early childhood difficulties–he felt that looking within could be unreliable until there was full neurologic development.
I had to agree with him but I take it one step further. Without real health and a full emotional, psychological, and physical maturity, we're looking for complex answers from an abacus when we require far more advanced equipment. Over the years of working with individuals in crisis of one kind or another, I have found that those who relied entirely on their own "feelings" or "inner voice" wound up in pain, confused, and rudderless because they had never received (or, later on, looked for) the kind of guidance, nurturing, or education (moral or emotional) that would have given them a proper reservoir of answers instead of a headache from feedback.
Which leaves me with this understanding: Answers are not innate. In fact, we are not born knowing very much. Children (and young animals) left to their own devices are perfect examples of what happens when we do not have the benefit of what others have learned, of ancestral wisdom. Those kids (and critters) either die or become socially and morally irredeemable. The hard-wiring for relationships is simply never created.
Answers are learned; sometimes they are intuited based on both spiritual and emotional input, sometimes inspired. But we all need road maps to start with.
People with a good inner compass have almost always been taught how to find true north, where to go and then precisely what to do to and when they get there. We may be born with the capacity, but not the skill. That is an important distinction. Unless a person is given the resources fairly early in life, the only answer he or she will find when they look within is either a resounding silence or, worse, an echo.
Which brings us back to my husband's point: Do we want answers or do we want truth? They are not always the same thing.
Ultimately this is about the search for truth. Unfortunately most people wind up in a search for what they want. Desire leads us down one road and often truth leads us down another.
Posted in Faith-based Counseling, Keynote Speaker | Tags: answers within, brain, teenage brain, truth | No Comments »