Crushing Doubt

It is always a thrill to get to talk with someone I have helped feel better in their physical experience, but many times this also takes on the form of their bodies bringing new wisdom and insights to help the same sufferer become more powerful and energized in their own lives. On this next testimonial of mind body experience, my friend Scott comes on to recount my sharing the works of Sarno just in the nick of time to avoid back surgery.

Not too long after I had discovered Sarno for myself and got better from my eight year long bout with back pain — and after I had begun to see patients under this speciality — Scott mentioned to me that he was having significant back pain that was getting worse and worse. I didn’t want to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong, but I also felt that my choice was to let him suffer or to gently try to give him some information that could alter his life immensely for the better. This is the story of how quickly the information helped him get better and change course and highlights many aspects of the typical TMS/MBS/PPD sufferer.

One of the wonderful things about these testimonials is how different each one is, illustrating different aspects of the work. Some end up highlighting the importance of emotional awareness, others show doubt and its central importance — as well as its craftiness — and others let us focus on the power in self relationship. In this case, we get to see it all. My hope is that it helps to illuminate some things in the journey of each viewer. But one thing is certain: these testimonials can not only allow people who have healed or are healing to tell their very important stories, but they can give hope for resolving symptoms to countless people.

On this episode of the Mind Body Connection, I take a closer look at the doubt column and how to think in ways that can help you articulate the doubts to which you may not have full access. As you’ll see in the video, the key element of the work is to begin asking questions of all kinds that pertain to anything that leaves you with the slightest wondering about things. I show why doubt is the fuel that mind body symptoms look for to spread and take hold.

Among the information in this video are the three types of doubt that we usually encounter — doubt about whether you have a mind body issue or a structural injury or illness, doubt about whether mind body symptoms can actually be cured, and doubt about whether you, yourself can get better. I see, time and again, people who can more easily come around to the ideas that they have a mind body issue (again, this means it starts with an emotion or thought process and becomes completely realized in the body), and even believe it can be cured, but have doubts because they do not believe in their own ability to get better or think that their symptom profile is too severe or daunting to be overcome.

I bring up sample doubts to show how asking one question can often unearth another, so that you can bring your doubt out in the open. We also cover the various types of doubt, including garden variety lack of certainty, any questions that remain, confusion of all sorts, and the emotional aspect of doubt: fear. It is by exploring your questions in each realm that you can bring doubt out to be explored and that is the way you will be able to lay each problem to rest and crush doubt entirely. I put particular emphasis on the fact that each of you has a unique mind and, as such, you need to get all of YOUR questions answered to YOUR satisfaction. Find the sources that can do that for you, and count me in as one of them who can try to help you in this cause.

This is a live Q&A about mind body symptoms with Crushing Doubt host Dr. Dan Ratner. If you have chronic pain or other physical symptoms that haven’t been able to be explained or helped by medical doctors or other alternative treatments, this information can change your life. By changing the way we think and feel, we can change our actual physiological processes to relieve — or even cure — many symptoms, from head to toe.

On our How To Series, we turn, today, to understanding mind body symptoms that manifest mainly (or exclusively) during the night. Each sufferer knows their own pain and symptoms profile and patterns quite well and many have asked me about what it means when they do not tend to have symptoms during the day, but frequently — or always — do at night.

The first distinction I make in this video is that nighttime poses a different set of variables to deal with and, at some level, we know what is coming. Sleep is a time of separation from others and having to cope with our problems all by ourselves. Furthermore, it hearkens back to whatever this time was like in our childhoods, making it a time of particular vulnerability for everyone, even if many are not consciously aware of it. I talk about the connection to mortality issues and how it is a time that is also closer to unconscious processes, both of which contribute to the intensity and symptoms of this time of day.

In addition to outlining the differences between daytime and nighttime symptoms, I offer a number of thoughts on how to use this information to have an easier time with nighttime symptoms. Included in this are the ideas of taking some time at night to focus on themes of the day or the major themes of your Emotions Column, bringing your intellect into your unconscious process more, understanding dreams, and knowing which kind of themes tend to apply to sleep.

Each installment of the How To Series is designed to give you insight into another aspect of mind body living, including strategies to employ with this new level of understanding. I hope you all get a lot out of it and please put your comments below.

Dr. Dan Ratner sits down with Curable's CEO John Gribbin. The talk about the mind body connection and how John got into the Mind Body world.

Philippe came to see me in relation to a stubborn symptom after having resolved a number of symptoms through the work of Dr. Sarno. He had heard me on Eddy Lindenstein’s The Mind and Fitness Podcast and felt that I could be a particularly good fit for him in working things through. As it turns out, we hit it off right away, bonding over one of my core ideas in power.

In this discussion, Philippe and I look back on his history of feeling boxed in and overly responsible to authority figures in his life, yearning to break free and blaze his own trail. I enjoyed this update on his life and thinking about power very much, but you’ll hear how these ideas inspired him to make some real and large changes in his life that are moving him towards greater fulfillment and realization of his true self.

Included on this new path of power is his new podcast, Hunter Gatherers, which takes an anthropological look at ‘developed’ societies versus ones more ‘in the wild’ that have radically different values.

We connected this way of thinking to power and noted together how so many in different cultures can often live happier lives because of the freedoms that come with their values. We made plans to talk again to continue tracking this fascinating example of a young adult coming into his own power and sense of self — all driven by his original symptoms and the body telling him not to betray his core being.

Stories like these can bring hope and inspiration and I hope that by sharing them I can give the people who got better a platform in which to feel heard and valued, while giving others a number of examples of the pathway to symptom relief.

In our latest installment of the Mind Body Connection Series, I look more closely at how you can begin to develop your Emotions column to be of the most use to you. I’ve referred to the need to develop emotional themes in the right way so that you can call to mind the right ideas that may be leading to the onset, or uptick, of symptoms. But how do you recognize and develop those themes? Find out here.

The emotional themes that matter share certain characteristics, which is how you can learn to recognize areas in which to develop them and the specific way to develop them as well. This video outlines what types of broad themes tend to lead to symptoms — examples include lack of safety, invalidation, feeling unseen or unheard, injustice, denial of abuse, and many more. All of the themes that cause emotionally driven mind body symptoms are high stakes within you. You just need to figure out of what those high stakes experience consist.

Using the timing of the symptoms, an understanding of mind body psychology, and your knowledge of you, you can get broad, meaningful, but specific areas of your life in which to look for a stressful experience that could lead to a mind body issue. Start learning how to utilize the Emotions column here, just as you might in sessions with me. Put your comments and questions below if you need more help or want to see videos expanding on any aspect of this work.

This is a live Q&A about mind body symptoms with Crushing Doubt host Dr. Dan Ratner. If you have chronic pain or other physical symptoms that haven’t been able to be explained or helped by medical doctors or other alternative treatments, this information can change your life. By changing the way we think and feel, we can change our actual physiological processes to relieve — or even cure — many symptoms, from head to toe.

In our How To segment this week, I take a look at insomnia. We’ve all been there countless times, lying awake and wondering why we can’t get to sleep on that given night. Why does it happen and what can you do about it?

Insomnia is, essentially, a restlessness of the mind. Even though you think you are ready to go to bed, somehow your mind is not. This video gives tips on how to deal with insomnia in the first place, such as remembering to enjoy lying in bed, letting your mind go where it needs to, or thinking about something enjoyable. But when these things still don’t help, then it is time to understand the nature of your restlessness that night and how you can work with it.

The causes of restlessness are varied, but some include: feeling stuck focusing on an external conflict (remember that this could be conscious or outside of your awareness), having an internal conflict about something (again, you may be aware of it or not, but insomnia is a sign of conflict), active anger, or an unfulfilled wish around the basic human needs of eating, thirst, sex, or aggression. If you can’t get to sleep, you may need to identify the source of the insomnia, which is, at base, yet another mind body symptom. But you will then have to figure out your individual coping style that can work best for you.

Choose from some of my options or develop your own, but a few of the ideas that can help are: 1) Go ahead and get up from bed for a while, even letting yourself work if that’s what you need to get your mind at rest; 2) Change the modality of your experience by giving something to yourself; or 3) Make some sort of progress in resolving conflict, whether by an actual discussion, a letter that you won’t send, or getting a decision settled that has been gnawing at you.

Whatever you decide to do with it, remember that insomnia is not random, and if you can make sense of it, you’ll stand a much better chance of dropping off to sleep right away.

In this interview, I am joined by Author, Podcast Host, and mind body expert, LCSW Nicole Sachs. Nicole’s warmth, knowledge, confidence, skill, and expertise resonates with so many people nationwide and around the world and we were lucky enough to get some good time with her. She shares her own journey of healing and how she faced some uncomfortable truths within herself, ultimately leading to her developing Journalspeak -- her program of journaling to access painful, but important emotions.

We also talk about another topic that comes up so frequently on Crushing Doubt — the experience of becoming more powerful after listening to the message of the body. Not only that, but she and I see eye to eye on doubt, even if she approaches it in her own way, as she recognizes the importance of giving pain sufferers absolute certainty when we know it is a mind body process.

Increasingly, the mind body field needs these sorts of conversations to provide some sense of a unified stance on so many issues to make for a clearer path to recovery for people struggling to get better and it was my pleasure to link up with Nicole in this way. Come check out this interview to hear about Nicole and my shared idea that pain sufferers have to feel their mind body process as their real truth in order to get better.