Crushing Doubt

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 this episode of Brothers in Arms, the brothers are back to look at some of the most difficult to explore topics — today, toxic masculinity. Eric brings the research, as always, and we find out where the term toxic masculinity comes from in the first place (shout out to the 80s). One of the most enlightening moments comes in our exploration of how men can be toxic to themselves, as they feel tied into preconceived notions about what it is to be a man. We also consider the effects this can ultimately have on others, as these men can take that toxicity and bring it to each other in groups or to women in violence.

In Breaking the Mold, the brothers discuss actor Terry Crews having had the courage to report a production executive for inappropriate sexual touching and how he must have had to get past caring what people might think of him as a big, strong man. We talked about the bravery of breaking the mold in any way and that this is one of the keys to getting away from toxic thinking — to be yourself and be aligned with yourself no matter what people might think of who you are.

This is also a special episode because Edgar, Eric, and Dr. Dan take a step back to take stock of how they have grown together in sharing some of their hardest experiences. This segment shows, more than any other, what men learning to talk to each other for real support can reveal about who we are and who we can become.

Dani and I sat down to talk about our respective mind body recoveries and journeys and we continued our bond over the power column and how important it has been to each of us. As we both note, power is something that must be addressed on a moment to moment basis, but is always available to anyone to make an adjustment in their lives that can help them.

We start out by exploring Dani’s mind body history that hit a crescendo in 2015 with the most typical TMS symptom of back pain — crippling, scary, and deeply frustrating in the confusion of it all. She and I also share a very similar story of recognizing ourselves in the works of Sarno and this cementing our belief in what he was saying, but then wanting more on how, exactly, to go about doing the work.

Dani’s conquering of her pain, which included getting herself used to movement again, and her interest in yoga has led her to create a program for pain sufferers of all kinds (not just back pain!) to learn how to calm their central nervous systems, learn trust in their bodies, and regain functionality. But, as she and I noted together, it is in the growth as a person — whether in understanding our emotions, reducing our doubts, or in finding our powerful path — that we get the most out of living. It was a pleasure to see her continuing to make gains and know how she is helping others in our community.

When trying to get better from mind body symptoms, the key is having the right information and feeling clear on what is happening in your mind that is helping you or harming you. In this episode of our How To Series, I distinguish between two types of questions — ones that come from a genuine desire to understand more and find advancement in the work and ones that, unbeknownst to the asker are driven by fear and doubt and are designed to get you even deeper in trouble with symptom life.

I name these A and B questions so that we can start discussing this concept and how it may be affecting your ability to get better. A questions are the ones that come from a motivation to understand things better. You might think that all of your questions are like this, but this is one of the ways that doubt finds a way to bite you — by hiding in a question that really doesn’t have an answer and is only designed to create confusion, fear, and a dead end. These types of questions are B questions.

We all ask both kinds of questions, but it is vital that we learn to recognize when our questions are serving doubt and not ourselves. What we end up doing with these questions is also totally divergent, so the distinction is crucial. B questions are not to be taken seriously, because they actually have no good answers (by design, in fact…the more baffling they are, the happier doubt is with having this question on your mind), and aren’t even questions, really. What they are is worries, fears, and doubts. Learn to ask the A questions and you will always make headway in your understanding, because that is their goal.

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.

I continue to connect with as many people in the world of mind body practitioners as I can, in an effort to unify our message about these important issues. I would be remiss if I did not include Dr. Bob Evans, a therapist in New Jersey who trained with Dr. Sarno and Dr. Feinblatt, as they pioneered the TMS treatments in the early days.

Much to my surprise, I found out that Bob did not get into mind body work because of his own suffering, but more because of proximity to NYU Langone and running into Dr. Sarno. But his interest in spirituality, mysticism, and buddhism ended up fitting very well with a psychological approach that incorporated the body and a sense of holistic work.

Bob and I noted together how each clinician has to fold our understanding of the mind body work into who we are as therapists and talked about the ways that this unfolded for him. We consider the direction of the field and what we find to be important as things continue to expand.

In this episode of our How To Series, I concentrate on how to think about symptoms when the primary profile the sufferer experiences is through the lens of not being able to stop focusing on the symptoms. This video will help you make the crucial distinction between a focus on the symptoms that is driven by obsessional thinking and the same presentation being driven by fear. I note that the pathway to getting the symptoms to recede is different in these two cases and lay out a plan for each.

Mind body issues present in a variety of ways, but I have been getting a lot of questions, of late, about these issues of attending to the symptoms and not being able to move forward. When the focus comes from an obsessional personality, you need to use your emotions and power columns to refocus your thoughts in a more productive way. But when it is fear based, it is purely the work of the doubt column and the specific doubt needs to be articulated and contradicted with science and logic.

Each column has its function and can help you to locate the nature of your particular struggle within the system. While attentional mind body issues have a doubt origin, the solution is quite different for different presentations, and these ideas should help you to distinguish between varying types and choose appropriate action steps accordingly.

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 this episode of Brothers in Arms, we’re back to the three amigos. We jump right into Old News, focusing on some celebrities who have been accused of thinking in narcissistic ways and discuss what makes someone an actual narcissist. Dr. Dan sheds some light on narcissism as more of a developmental issue than a built in flaw of the person, but also notes that it is very unlikely for these people to get the full help they need because they can’t recognize their problem and are motivated, in fact, to not even question it.

In Breaking the Mold, the brothers revisit the idea of mani pedis and note that it really did bring up some surprising, uncomfortable feelings in Dr. Dan and Eric that indicate what goes on in our expectations of ourselves as typically gendered beings.

Finally, in the segment that is the heartbeat of this show, Dr. Dan walks the walk again, talking about a very difficult experience in therapy with a psychoanalyst who proved to be threatened by him and abusive in some reality bending ways. Edgar and Eric show up, as always, to support and understand this process that Dr. Dan feared would not be understood by others because it isn’t as obvious a struggle, but Eric highlights how much of a violation it is to have a therapist fail you so badly that you are left doubting your own worth.

Today’s interview features Dr. Liz Croton, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, who has caught on to mind body treatment and incorporated it in her work. Liz has practiced as a GP for fifteen years, but it is only in the last 6 years that she has folded mind body experience into her work, after learning about it with our Crushing Doubt friend, Georgie Oldfield.

Given the short amount of time any GP has with their patients — Liz notes that she usually only gets ten minutes with each — it becomes all the more imperative that doctors understand how to assess what is going on for people from an emotional angle, particularly if we are going to stand a chance at getting people diagnosed correctly and set on a course for the right treatment.

Dr. Croton is a fine example of what can happen in our society when a good practitioner continues to think scientifically and logically and even change their whole practice if required to do good work. She notes that it often felt scary to make such changes because it ran counter to so many of her colleagues, but she expresses being glad she did it and optimistic that it is helping those with whom she works.