Hudson Valley Magazine People to Watch 2012!

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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.

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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.

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(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.

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This colleague wrote:

The FTC and FDA have come down hard on the makers of zinc-based lozenges and other supplements over the years, hitting them with big-time fines over claims this mineral can beat the common cold.

Well, looks like apologies are in order… because a new analysis finds those claims were spot-on: Zinc can shorten the length of the cold, lessen the symptoms and severity, and even help you avoid getting sick in the first place.

Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration looked at 13 clinical trials and two preventive studies published over the decades, and found solid evidence that zinc stops the cold virus from replicating.

When the virus can't reproduce, you get better — and the Cochrane researchers say that, overall, zinc reduces cold duration by about a day.

But that benefit could be bigger — a lot bigger — if you take your zinc the moment the sniffles first hit: Some studies have shown it can slash cold duration almost in half.

The researchers also found that zinc supplements taken over five months slashed the odds of getting colds and reduced school absenteeism in children.

People who took zinc also used fewer antibiotics when they caught colds — but if your doc ever tries giving you or your children antibiotics for the common cold, politely decline… and then find a new doc, or at least a bag of zinc lozenges.

Listen, I'm no fan of the supermarket cold cures that have been fined and punished over the years.

They charge too much and you get too little — often with a sugary coating to boot.

But the question has to be asked: Now that it turns out zinc claims were based on science after all, will the feds refund all those fines and penalties?

Of course not.

File this one under "moral victory."

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Even Bananas Are Radioactive!

Despite U.S. consumers' growing awareness of iodide pills, Geiger counters and emergency kits in the wake of Japan's nuclear scare, most people here have little to worry about.

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Please feel free to comment there or here. Look forward to your thoughts.

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Verbal First Aid and Homeopathy

By

Judith Acosta, LISW

I recently listened to a CD of a world-renowned homeopath taking a case. Even though I was not in the room with her, I felt her compassion. She asked questions gently but probingly, she was never judgmental, she shared moments of good humor and made it clear by her tone and phrasing that she understood her patient’s suffering. She was available for his questions and answered them with an eye towards educating and healing him.

Listening to her, I recalled the first time I went to a homeopath, also very well known. His manner was quite different: cool, clinical, terse, impatient. He gave the impression that he wanted me to give him answers so he could find the remedy and be done with it. I was brand new to homeopathy and didn’t understand what to expect from  our first meeting, not to mention the treatment. He gave me absolutely no information and would not tell me what remedy he gave me, which is especially unnerving to someone used to the world of conventional medicine. When I called a week later, worried that some of my complaints had gotten worse (this turned out to be an "aggravation," a temporary worsening of symptoms that actually signals that the remedy is working), he said, “Well, if you want to ruin it with antibiotics, I can’t stop you.”

When I compared notes with others who knew this homeopath they told me, “Don't worry, he's like that with everybody. He thinks that if he gives too much information or gets too chummy, he’ll be unduly affecting the course of treatment. He just wants to see what the homeopathic remedy is doing all by itself."
I encourage you to get the archived edition on the Homeopathy Today website.

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Be still…It’s really such a simple request and such an impossibly difficult task for so many of us as we get older and more acculturated.  It certainly has been for me. I can barely talk on the phone for 15 minutes without washing the dishes or multi-tasking in some other way. America is a culture of action.  We do. We don’t sit.

The problem is that with constant busy-ness comes chronic spiritual insensibility. We can build things, accumulate things, and get from one point on a line to another faster than any other group of people on Earth. We are the cleverest, quickest, and most acquisitive culture in our planet’s history. But we see, feel, and understand less. We have collected data and sacrificed wisdom. We have built colossal glass cities and relinquished our sight.

By the time we are in high school, probably earlier, most of us are set into a rhythm of living. Our eyes are focused ahead and our peripheral vision shrinks with each passing year until we can barely see the tips on our own noses. And unless we can see not only ourselves but ourselves in context, the truth is that we can know very little. It becomes more and more difficult to see any evidence of God, no less know Him. Unless, of course, we’re in deep trouble and a sense of urgency is dramatically renewed.  As one Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has said, “Unless there is thunder, people don’t make the sign of the cross.” The American equivalent: “Everyone believes in God in the trenches.”

Yet, we are continually surrounded by the evidence. We are in a world filled with miracles. Clues are in every corner of our lives. Amma, the Hugging Saint of India, exclaimed that God is everywhere: “If you ask me who is God, I tell you, you are my god. The lion is god. The flowers are god.” Yet most of us don’t see it. Or don’t recognize these clues as such if we do see them. Some of us just forget to look.  But miracles are not empirical. They do not present themselves in the linear, organized manner of double-blind studies. We try but we cannot collect miracle data to analyze. Most people think they will believe it when they see it, but the truth is that we see it when we believe it or are at least willing to entertain the possibility. This is what is meant in Mathew and why we must be as little children to see the truth in the evidence that is all around us.

Two experiences have illustrated to me the urgency of keeping my eyes and mind open.

The first experience occurred when I was 12 years old and I was allowed to take an after-school art class. It was a small, unpretentious event held in the backroom of an old woman’s apartment in the Bronx but it changed the way I saw everything. Instead of looking at a thing and seeing its function first (how it pertained to me, how I could use it, eat it, play with it), it now had a life and a charge all its own. I saw light, form, color, shade, placement in its surroundings. If I tilted my head this way or that, the thing—and all those aspects of it—also tilted. I was suddenly in relationship with the world in a new way.

The second was studying for nearly five years to become a homeopath after already being a psychotherapist for about ten years. Classes would not start until we had all closed our eyes and sat still for a period of time, sometimes for as much as a half-hour. Even as I write this some years later, it hardly sounds like much—what’s a half-hour? But for me sitting still and letting myself be quiet so that I could receive impressions from my patients without actually collecting them, without any judgment or interference on my part was initially as easy as teaching a puppy not to run after a rabbit.  But by my last year (and it was a struggle every time) I began to notice something odd—I started to see more. Information was not just more available, it was clearer and more understandable. This, I began to understand, was where the miracles were to be found.

But understanding was far from enough for me. Humans are a complex and mixed bag of needs, desires and defects. Poised precariously between good and evil, heaven and hell, life and death, dangling between light and dark, the human heart is by nature a busy place, a shifting ground where there is both endless dance and relentless battle.

Stillness does not come easy for me.

I do not sit with much grace.

I have had to find a way to be still of heart and let my body move as it will. So, I do yoga. I walk in meditation and I pray as I hike. Sometimes on those hikes I talk. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I’m hurt and fearful. Sometimes I’m grateful and delighted. All I can do is bring myself—all of me—to Him, assuming that He can handle it, the awe, the anger, the confusion, the good, the indifferent, all of it, all of me, from the loftiest impulses to the darkest corners of my soul. And what I found was unexpectedly simple: Finding God was like being married. You have to show up for the relationship. All of you. Build it and they will come. The same is true of God.

Be there and He will come.

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(This article is dedicated to R.M. who inspired it. Thank you for reminding me of what we are supposed to be doing.)

For some reason lately I have been seeing quite a number of brand new social workers for supervision, some of whom are still in graduate school. It has been a poignant and privileged rite of passage for me after all these years to be passing on what I’ve learned.

One in particular touched me. She worked some time ago in a hospital emergency department in another state. As you might imagine, she bore witness to countless tragedies and sorrows, the worst of which was one little girl who had been beaten so severely by her mother’s boyfriend that they didn’t know if she would make it.

When she originally came on the ward she had been warned by the other professionals on staff to “watch her boundaries.” That’s a trigger point for social workers who, as a group, have been known to go the extra mile for patients and clients. This has become an “issue” for the profession as it has grown over the years and tried to maintain its status along with psychologists and physicians. What the well-meaning advisers meant was that she would be facing horror and that she needed to “detach” and “not bring it all home with her.” The real meaning: don’t get involved.

Those were their words. People warned me the same way when I started out.

I have been a psychotherapist and crisis counselor for nearly 30 years. I have worked with rape victims, survivors of war, children who had been abducted by drug lords, parents who were abused by their own offspring, addicts who had been lost and left to die on the street, and a full retinue of the mildly neurotic. I have stared into the abyss with friends and colleagues at Ground Zero and had to breathe the acrid smell of death.

But what I have learned is that there are boundaries and there are boundaries. Some should be zealously guarded and some not so much. And whenever I have made a real difference I have absolutely become involved though not in the way you may imagine or some may fear.

I will explain through her story.

As the baby was being treated, she called the proper authorities, as was legally required. She watched as the mother and boyfriend were carted away. And she stood nearby as the baby, broken and battered, moaning in pain, was gently set to rest in a small bed in PICU.

She was told to go home, that she’d had a hard day, and to have a glass of wine. There was nothing more to do.

But something inside her rebelled at that: there’s nothing more you can do.

And, against all the advice of authority, against all the warnings, she went into the PICU and sat with that little girl, breathing gently with her, resting her own fingers carefully in the child's small hands, smoothing the downy hair on the little girl's head, the one place that had gratefully been spared from the brute’s rant. She sat with her for hours until the little one was able to rest. She talked to her. She sang to her. She hoped for her. And then she reluctantly went home.

The case moved on from there and she doesn’t know what happened to her or the family. But there she was in my office, years later, wondering if she’d done something horrible by not letting go, by not listening to the advice of the nurses and administrators who told her to detach, to not take it home. “Did I make a terrible mistake?” she wanted to know.

Through tears as I listened to her and through tears as I write this, I said “No. You did everything right.”

She didn’t understand how she could be right and feel pain that way and disobey the warnings she’d been given. But I did. And I have found that when you do the right thing, there is often no way to sidestep the pain and sorrow that is common to us all. Nor should there be.

Suffering and Professional Boundaries

Social workers’ boundaries are important, but not in the way we might think.

I think there are actually two separate questions in this larger issue and it is a far more complicated topic than people might imagine.

Boundary Question One: How do we face suffering and not get lost in it? How do we help people in pain without absorbing it? How do we have empathy and compassion without becoming the patient? What do we do with suffering if we can't fix it?

Boundary Question Two: How do we treat people in a clinical setting and keep our focus on them rather than using the session or relationship as a way of working out our own lingering issues? How do we stay clear-sighted about the pathology and vigorous in our pursuit of  health and the well-being of our patients?

These are two separate issues and I believe that we often confuse them in clinical practice.

I hope I can answer them both briefly and simultaneously by drawing on my experience and explaining what I think is necessary in any healing relationship.

Over the years, despite accruing more and more “tools” for my clinical tool bag, despite learning more and more techniques and styles, I have actually simplified. One of my mentors in graduate school told me, “Learn them all well so you don't have to use any of them.” I didn’t know what she meant then, but I do now. She also told me, “Don’t for a second think it’s you doing the healing. It’s the love.”

So, the distillation is this:

• Presence and Pacing

• Compassion and empathy

• Seeing someone fully without bias and without projection

• Spiritual context

Presence and Pacing

Presence is paramount. It is foundational. The ability to be fully present in the moment with whomever is there, with whatever situation confronts you, is to be adaptable, available, and genuinely healing. It addresses both Question One and Question Two in that being in the moment (as opposed to the past or the future) allows you to feel fully, be ready to do what is needed, and then move on to the next moment. When you are in the moment truly, you will be more adept clinically. You will know the situation at hand is not about you and that it will not last. You can fully feel and know that when you go home you will be fully present to the joy and life that is there.

This is not easy and it has taken me many years to learn. Being present has a caveat. It means we are there for all of it—the pain, the glory, the defeat, the sorrow, the loss, and the redemption. All of it.

Pacing is a term coined by Milton Erickson, M.D., the greatest hypnotherapist in American history. It  is also a technique I focus on quite a bit when I teach Verbal First Aid to first responders, medical personnel and clinical professionals. It means to "move with" or "walk along." It can include mirroring (to some extent) but I use it mostly to stress the act of being with another person. When a person is in pain and we are hoping to move them to a state of greater comfort, we do what is called pacing and leading. We pace their pain (I can see your wound and your discomfort…) and then lead them, sometimes one tiny step at a time, to healing (…so as I hold your arm and apply this bandage, you can rest more comfortably and stop the bleeding). Without the pacing, there can be no proper leading.

Pacing requires presence. Presence implies pacing. It is an emotional and spiritual partnership that may last anywhere from a few seconds at an accident scene or at an ER or go on for years in a psychotherapy setting.

Compassion & Empathy

This is not the same thing as taking on another’s pain. It is a communion, an experience of commonality, not a sympathy or an absorption. It is also NOT a projection of our own feelings onto them and this is where our skill must be honed and refined over and over again. Sometimes it means feeling what someone else is feeling, but that doesn’t mean it’s ours. It is a subtle difference, but an important one.

Many of the patients that come to social workers have been hurt terribly. We may in fact be the first person in their lives to genuinely feel them. (S.W. Recall: Winnicott’s “The Good Enough Mother.”) This can be in and of itself enormously healing.

What I have come to both believe is that feeling is not the problem. Over-interpreting and/or ignoring feelings is the problem. And that’s where we—as healers—can get into serious logjams.

In fact, it is the social worker’s ability to feel fully (and know what to do with those feelings) that is the hub of all clinical work. If we can’t do it, how do we expect our patients to do it?

Seeing Fully

When I was in school for classical homeopathy, my teacher used to warn us, “If you can’t see your patient, you can’t heal him.” He spent five years talking to us about the power to see.

I think this is true in any clinical setting. We open the door, a patient comes in and sits down. What do we see? What do we want to know? Can we see the hurt? What’s broken or bruised? What still works? How does it still manage to work?  These are the questions we want to ask and have answered.

Seeing someone truly may also entail some detachment, but not in the way it is used colloquially, which is to “not feel” what our patients are feeling. To see the truth means not get beguiled by façade. Most patients will come to us with a well-practiced façade in place, a mask they use to get through their lives—to hide pain, to forestall an accounting, to deceive and manipulate for one thing or another. We have to see past those deceptions, both conscious and unconscious. We have to see past the acquired skills and into the recesses of a person’s heart. We have to observe carefully. They may say they feel fine, but they can’t stop biting their nails. They protest over much about how calm they are, but their feet don’t stop tapping, they sigh repeatedly, or their eyes twitch.

As healers we are observers. Both of ourselves and our patients.

Spiritual Context

I cannot imagine doing this work at this point without two backups: One is the homeopathic philosophy and Materia Medica of Samuel Hahnemann and the second, most important one, is God. Suffering is intolerable (our own or anyone else’s) without some context within which we can hold it. Suffering or pain without meaning in a purposeless, random world is utterly intolerable. When there is meaning and purpose, even the worst pain becomes manageable.

Over the years, my work has become more about serving God (this is not about proselytizing by any means) than adhering to an agency code or a diagnostic manual, more about being present and truly healing than politically correct for the moment, more about truth and love than techniques.

I explained it to that young social worker that while others may not have understood what she did for that baby, God did. And the baby did. I am as sure of that as I am of the nose on my face. That baby heard her soothing voice, felt her calming breath and heartbeat, rested in her loving hands. Is there a better “technique” than that? I don’t think so. Those few hours she spent with that child may have changed the trajectory of her entire healing process.

I no longer aim for detachment, though I respect it. I no longer aim to fix every broken thing that is presented to me, though I very much want to alleviate suffering and disease. I no longer aim solely for technical skill, though I love learning.

What I am for is this: I aim to be present. I aim to see the truth. I aim to serve. Doing this work for so many years has required that I become more like a tube than a vessel. I do not “hold” other people’s pain, but I allow it flow through me and then up to God, Who can do with it what must be done, whatever that is so that peace and health and love are restored.

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