Perception Creates Reality
“Perception creates reality”: we hear that phrase a lot nowadays in reference to our politicians. I personally find the statement extremely deceiving when used in connection with the shaping of our public policies, but it definitively rings true when it comes to our health.
We have all heard about the “placebo effect”: if you strongly believe it is going to help you, a dummy sugar pill may indeed “appear to have helped” improve your blood pressure or whatever other objective you are hoping to achieve. But the minute you are told the truth about the pill, its benefits will disappear; it only works as long as you believe, because it is the belief alone that induces the outcome.
The flip side of the power of our emotions over our bodies is that, just as much we can benefit from positive emotions – even if rooted in deception and dishonesty on behalf of the Doctor (for example: the Doctor has heard your pain, and you have been prescribed a powerful medicine which is going to help you), dwelling on negative emotions can destroy us.
I have long been interested in Dr. Hamer’s approach to disease, and particularly to cancer. On August 18, 1978, Ryke Geerd Hamer, MD, at the time head internist in the oncology clinic at the University of Munich, Germany, received the shocking news that his son Dirk had been shot. Dirk died in December 1978. A few months later, Dr. Hamer was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He wondered if his son’s death was the cause of his cancer. Subsequently he investigated and documented over 15,000 cases of cancer and found the disease to be always linked to an unexpected traumatic shock for which we are emotionally unprepared. The trauma manifests itself simultaneously on three levels: psyche, brain and the organ linked to the trauma by subconscious association.
Obviously, the idea that solving an emotional conflict is the first step to healing disease did not sit well with the official cancer establishment, who makes a living by recommending drugs, surgeries, and conventional treatments, and Dr. Hamer was persecuted.
But now it is well documented that when stressed, the body responds to physical, mental, or emotional pressure by activating the sympathetic nervous system, which will release stress hormones (such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine). These stress hormones increase blood pressure, speed up the heart rate, and raise blood sugar levels, all of which can improve our chances of survival in the event of a stressful encounter which requires an immediate “fight of flight” response. Under chronic stress however, this system is “turned on” virtually all the time. In this state, adrenaline and noradrenaline-stimulating mechanisms alter the genetic code. This genetic alteration can lead to a number of pro-cancer processes including the activation of inflammatory responses as well as the inhibition of immune responses and the DNA repair process.1
I think that the proper approach to disease is neither entirely psychological, nor solely physiological. Even Dr. Hamer suggested that when we are in a stressful conflict that is not resolved, the emotional reflex center in the brain which corresponds to the experienced emotion (e.g. anger, frustration, grief) will slowly break down and that this breakage must be addressed with the appropriates substances.
That said, there is no doubt in my mind that negative emotions have to be dealt with as an integral part of understanding the root of a disease and its cure.
As certified psychoanalyst Jane Goldberg put it: “The word ‘cure’ comes from the Latin word ‘cura’, meaning care and concern. But it also means trouble, anxiety and sorrow. The etymology of the word suggests that cure is an active process of bringing care and concern to the trouble, anxiety, even sorrow that is the constant companion of illness”.2
REFERENCES
1- The sympathetic nervous system induces a metastatic switch in primary breast cancer Cancer Res. 2010 Sep 15;70(18):7042-52. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0522. Epub 2010 Sep 7 .
2- The Deepest Meaning of “Cure”, Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D