Crushing Doubt

Today, I got to sit down with Patty to discuss her recovery experience through her work in the seminars with me. She shares that she has engaged in decades of TMS/mind body work and has gotten certain symptoms to go away, but has struggled with others. We talked about her journey and how she decided to make the leap and take my seminar. In this video testimonial, you will hear how she managed with the large amount of information people get in the seminars and she wisely points out that you have to trust that the information will come together in time as they let it wash over them.

One really fun aspect of this interaction for me came from how this video came to be, since it was serendipitous. Patty had emailed me with a brilliant thought she had about the three columns system and compares TMS, through my lens, to the Wizard of Oz. The Tin Man needs a heart (the emotions column), The Scarecrow needs a brain (the doubt column), and the Cowardly Lion needs the power column. All the while, Dorothy has the resources within her to get home and to safety and all it takes is exposing the all powerful Oz (TMS) as a fraud.

In having her on to tell the story, I was not only happy to see her direct, vibrant telling of the analogy, but to hear about how she worked through the information in my system and in the seminars. She points out another valuable piece of the seminars, as well, in the observing of others asking their questions, getting settled about things, and making headway. It was a pleasure hearing from Patty and knowing the work had made such a difference to her after years of not feeling like she had entirely the right information.

In this episode of the Mind Body Connection Series, I cover the topic of judgment and how it can impact your recovery adversely. When looking at the themes of the emotions column, it is of paramount importance that you learn to do so without judging yourself. As I now say regularly, the emotions column needs to be a ‘judgment free zone’.

This video looks at the potential consequences of judging ourselves for themes that we did not choose for ourselves, continue to operate the way they do whether we like it or not, and, when you look more closely at them, have no inherent reason to be judged anyway. We look at how to recognize when you are judging yourself, because it can be a very slippery slope towards judgment with the slightest bad feeling about yourself.

After learning to identify judgment, you will need to turn your attention to that ever-important question with respect to what to do next: How do I stop myself from judging? I go over my way of thinking about the emotional themes you develop and how and why you can set those judgments down and never look back. I hope this proves useful in your recovery process, as I know it can make a big impact on the using the emotions column much more effectively.

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 welcome Momo Rodriguez to the the show. Mom lost his mother to Covid this past year and Edgar and he bonded over having had the same thing occur to him and a very similar experience of these tragic events. We begin with Eric providing some research numbers, including the fact that men are more likely to die of Covid and, even more so, when they fall in the age rage of 40-59. Edgar, Eric, and Dr. Dan explore with Mom why men tend to put themselves in vulnerable spots out of stubborn pride, and more, but the group settles on their being less likely to talk about vulnerabilities as the centerpiece of the risk.

In Breaking the Mold, Momo blows the doors off of the segment, sharing his unabashed love of romantic movies — and how they inform writing more than other genres — and he and Edgar bond further over getting mani-pedis. While Eric and Dr. Dan can’t personally relate, all four applaud letting something fun and positive into their lives if it feels good to them.

Momo walks the walk this week and tells the story of losing his mother and needing to put off the grief so completely to get through that he ended up sinking into his acting role as Steve to the degree that ‘Momo’ wasn’t really there. The Brothers consider how mourning processes work and the key way that others can help, not with empty words, but by being able to stay present, with or without words.

In this interview with mind body coach Fred Amir, I got to enjoy a taste of Fred’s effusive spirit, logical mind, and engaged planning as we hear the tail of his recovery from 25 months of full body suffering during a bout with mind body issues. Fred shares that he did need to find the right information to begin getting better and that he did so in Dr. Sarno’s work, just as I did, but we also agreed that there are other aspects of the healing that require people to find their own system to make it work.

One of the main things on which we bonded was the now laughable notions of structural theories, as they do not fit with even the most basic observations we can make so easily. Fred shares that he got a lot of what made him better simply by asking himself to find joy and excitement, rather than fear and worry. His nine step process that he crafted for himself can now be found in book form, as he, in his own words, became an ‘accidental author’.

Fred’s ideas on how to get better have freed up hundreds, if not thousands of people to get better, and his sense of humor, along with the inspiration of Rocky soundtracks helped him make rapid progress once he understood the mind body process. His system shows that it isn’t always what you do, so much as what you come to believe from what you do. It was a pleasure having him on and I look forward to more time with this energetic mind body coach.

In this testimonial, Marc R. shares how he was able to get better from his latest mind body suffering using the Crushing Doubt Podcast, alone. Marc has recognized his mind body experience many times over and is even a veteran of Sarno reading and book cures, which makes it all the more honor that he sees the added value in my system. As he discusses here, what he can often find missing in the rest of the mind body literature is an organized way to understand what is happening.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise that a long time veteran of the Air Force — with the military’s penchant for precision and organization — took so well to my system. But Marc also showcases many of those great qualities that can also lead us into some difficult places. His goodist tendencies, his empathy, his intelligence, and more had left him with too much information and not enough information, as I often say.

Marc also makes the crucial point that he did not get my system right away. He had to work it through, keep asking questions, and give himself time. But I am extremely gratified to see that he was able to use it to conquer his latest symptom which had taken hold with a stronger level of doubt than previous ones. I am grateful to him for sharing his success story so generously highlighting my work in such a positive light.

If you aren’t making the breakthrough the way Marc did, fear not! There are many ways to get the system to click. Just keep asking your questions and get them answered to your full satisfaction.

On this episode of our How To Series, I help you consider how depression can be seen like any other mind body symptom, as long as it isn’t attached to major psychological catastrophes or medical conditions. The columns work, thankfully, can be a big help when you are feeling depressed because its application to this other kind of symptom does all of the same things — bringing the full emotions into consciousness so that they do not manifest as symptoms, reducing doubt by cutting through faulty narratives we have with or about ourselves, and increasing power by breaking us out of one of the least powerful positions possible: the state of depression.

One of the things I cover in this video is how we can think of our own psychologies as having a structure — the consistent things that are always true — versus the moment to moment experience which dominates most things. Depressed thoughts try to fool us into thinking things are permanent and ‘structural’ just as doubt does with triggers about physical symptoms. People are always looking for what makes sense and depression will attach to any plausible explanation it can and hide out there. Once we’ve ruled out a big, present day explanation for feeling depressed, we can attack these seemingly plausible ideas and expose them for what they are: illogical, nonsensical self-attacks.

Depression derives much of its power by being seen as a different, harder to manage symptom than most. But this proves to not be true when we apply mind body thinking. It is our doubts that it can be managed this way that, at times, stands in the way.

This very special episode of Brothers in Arms brings on our first guest, comedian Nick Alexander. Our theme today relates to his Walking the Walk segment, as both he and Edgar lost a mutual friend to suicide one year ago — an event that turned out to be the biggest thrust of the creation of this show.

We start with questions for Dr. Dan, including Nick wondering about how to deal with resentment, which ties into his experience of losing his good friend and having to try to operate normally after that. Eric brings up the numbers on suicide which helps the Brothers discuss this issue, including the impact of trauma and feeling that there is not way out.

After a brief interlude in Breaking the Mold, where we find out about Nick’s favorite romantic comedies, Nick shares a deeply personal story: his struggle with suicidal ideation and tremendous anger that left him not feeling remotely like himself. The loss of his friend changed him dramatically, but the Brothers reflect back the very positive aspect of Nick’s response, in which he listened to his soul to guide him towards the kind of listening and connection he needed to get through.

In this Crushing Doubt interview, Adriana Bucci joins me to discuss her growing expertise as a life coach, helping her clients get free from toxic relationships, with a particular focus on narcissism. She and I cover a lot of ground, noting the similarities between the gaslighting and confusion that narcissists render in a very similar manner to which doubt works in symptoms. We talked about the importance of absolute certainty that is needed to stay clear on what is happening, not fall prey to fear, and be able to keep the right boundaries for yourself to not be harmed by such people (or by doubt!).

In this Crushing Doubt interview, Adriana Bucci joins me to discuss her growing expertise as a life coach, helping her clients get free from toxic relationships, with a particular focus on narcissism. She and I cover a lot of ground, noting the similarities between the gaslighting and confusion that narcissists render in a very similar manner to which doubt works in symptoms. We talked about the importance of absolute certainty that is needed to stay clear on what is happening, not fall prey to fear, and be able to keep the right boundaries for yourself to not be harmed by such people (or by doubt!).

This interview can help you to recognize the signs of a narcissist and it is important to note that they do not usually start off toxic, but, on the contrary, quite charming and beginning a cycle that leaves their victims confused and afraid so that they can keep getting narcissistic supplies from you in your suffering. She outlines the cycle of love bomb, devalue, discard, and repeat that leads to people falling into these cycles with them and we both note the tremendous suffering that comes from such abusive behavior. One other important fact to note is our conviction that you must see that they know exactly what they are doing when they perpetrate these abuses, so that you don’t feel guilty about getting them out of your life.

On this testimonial video, Dorisa joins me to tell her story of recovery from numerous mind body symptoms. She shares that she got better by cobbling together a number of different sources that made sense to her in certain ways and we get to hear her horrific journey through multiple symptoms that became truly crippling at various points.

What became clear, as Dorisa and I talked is how her confidence in the diagnosis and the wide range of experience that explains what she sees and feels in her own body continues to grow. We talked about enjoying this journey and how it relates to my power column work.

Dorisa is another example of a success story and she shares how her awareness of her emotional life was a huge factor in getting better, but that my focus on doubt and power work enhances what she can know about herself and how to get better.