Crushing Doubt

In this segment of our How To Series, I focus in on the details of one way to channel anger, as I so often say can be useful in the power column. Stemming from one of my sessions, I realized the specific power of the word determination and what it means for you. I explore how, instead of being stuck with anger and having it grow in that frustration, you can use every ounce of it as fuel to keep you better motivated to make progress.

Whether in relation to symptoms or not, problems will require a significant level of determination and I talk in this video about learning to anticipate the call to give up the fight — from depression, doubt, fatigue, or running out of gas. Another aspect of the how of it all is the different sources of motivation and energy. While intrinsic motivation can be fleeting, and self care (as important as it is) takes time and thought, anger is readily available as fuel virtually all the time.

In the end, the main thing we get to in this video is this: It is a huge factor in getting better from mind body symptoms to be sure you win the battle against doubt and that is going to take a lot of work and determination. But you can do it and you can multitask by finding something productive to do with your anger, relieving it as such, and using the energy that is contained within it.

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, Eric has a question for Dr. Dan about the things men try to do to increase self esteem that end up backfiring. Dr. Dan shares that anything that genuinely makes you feel good about you, and aligns with who you are, will always increase your self esteem. But the doc notes that there are plenty of efforts to do this that stem from false motivations or are designed to defend the self against bad feelings. These are the things that are actually harmful to self esteem, even if they were initially meant to help.

In Old News, the Brothers look at some statistics on women earning higher wages than their men and explore how this tends to impact men in their feelings about themselves. The group recognizes that certain societal constructs can often drive expectations men have for themselves, preventing them from operating more flexibility within this space. This brings us right into Breaking the Mold, where we look at another way that men can feel boxed in and having to pretend something that runs counter to the true nature of most: our love of romantic comedies. All three Brothers validate the idea that we love these types of movies, even if we might get teased about it (ridiculously so, as it is totally natural to love these imaginings). And yet, Edgar still has not seen The Princess Bride OR Say Anything!

And, finally, in our most profound segment on each show, Eric Walks the Walk, sharing a hugely influential experience in his life in finding out his ex-girlfriend was seven months pregnant with his child and lost the baby in a car accident. Eric shares how this affected him so deeply that he decided not to have kids and Edgar and Dan are there to support him, help him see what a good dad he might have been, and to know his full value comes in who he is as a person, regardless of his choice to be a parent or not. 

In this Crushing Doubt interview, I got to sit down with Dr. Mark Lumley, the chief research partner in Dr. Howard Schubiner’s research on pain and the various practices to use to retrain the brain to get rid of it. Mark and I talk about how important it is to the scientific and logical endeavors of chronic pain and other mind body suffering that we can show just what is going on and what it actually means for treatment.

Mark and I also discuss the importance of disclosure for patients, both in their ability to entrust us with what is going on for them emotionally, but with respect to their ability to trust the genuineness of the treatment provider. I express appreciation for the research happening out there, as I note that not everyone is as drawn to this area of the work, despite how important it is.

In fact, as we explored what got Mark into the mind body field, he shares a story of the first time he came to be aware of his own mind body process and how far it went. I marvel with him about the scientific mind he had even back at nine years old and how he continues to apply these skills in ways that benefit the entire mind body community and the sufferers who so badly need our help.

We have reached the fourth and final session of my Three Columns mind body consultation with Diane, which has been an absolute pleasure. Today, we focus on the concept of action steps and apply it to each of the three columns. The central idea of action steps in my program to alleviate mind body chronic pain and other symptoms is to see new ways of thinking as an ‘action step’ that can change your moment to moment physiology through changed thought patterns.

Each consultation has a life of its own and a different rhythm, and Diane and I found that the power column was a particularly active one for her awakening and ability to start to master her symptoms. We have seen some symptom reduction, but also a big change in the way she views herself and the different actions she takes because of this new thinking. We used my action steps as a template to begin to craft what will be her own plan for dealing with symptoms, under the umbrella of my system.

Among the changes that might most apply were accepting that she has had actual trauma )as she hadn’t seen it that way in the past), learning to empathize with herself about that experience, using the core narrative as an emotional mantra, and evaluating each situation to make the most powerful choice that she can. We even found that she was able to make more self aligned choices both before and during the session. We plan to keep in touch as needed for her to continue making progress.

In this episode of our Mind Body Connection Series, I consider how viewing mind body symptoms through a developmental lens can reduce doubt, shed light on the nature of the symptoms, and allow us to receive the communication within the symptoms more fully. This video came from my observation that many people who become less difficult over time (through therapy) tend to develop mind body pain right around that time, which suggested a very real connection. As it turns out, there is a major connection, and this can help us understand the meaning and function of mind body symptoms all the more.

I describe how we can see development in three phases: 1) The part of life in which we are learning to manage the conflicts between external demands and our internal needs; 2) When our internal setups won’t function well enough anymore, and we begin to get more in touch with certain dissatisfactions, leading to the emergence of symptoms; and 3) The stage in which we receive the message of the symptoms and can now live without chronic symptoms, but with a more fully developed and adaptive sense of self.

Even though it is very hard to have symptoms, it becomes a lot easier to see them as temporary when you understand their developmental nature. No matter what the symptoms, they are an intermediary step between who you had to be to get by and who you want to be to thrive.

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.

Edgar, Eric, and Dr. Dan continue to find ways to talk openly about all kinds of difficult topics and to pinpoint what opens doors or closes them off. In the roundtable discussion, after some fun joking to loosen things up, the Brothers in Arms take up the conversation about vaccinations and the judgments people make about the people who make different decisions and all three men agree that having less judgment in the discussion would allow for people to talk more freely and make better decisions.

The group then returns to some of the surprising statistics on domestic violence against men and Eric brings up some even more surprising ones. They consider what these statistics mean, but Dr. Dan highlights that the numbers show, in part, how much shame there is in talking about certain issues, since the perception is so different than the reality.

This is the perfect lead in to a follow up on Edgar’s harrowing and traumatic experience with his ex-girlfriend over 14 years ago. The group helps Edgar process what this all means for him and he shares how much thinking he has been doing about the impact of these events on him in ways he hadn’t fully considered.

In this interview, we hear the fascinating story of a mind body recovery related to the circulatory system, as Irralee was able to use Wim Hof’s cold water immersion techniques and breathing exercises to stop a decades long experience of cold hands and other symptoms associated with the condition. The fact that she was able to change her thinking about the cold in such a way that changed her physiology is another strong piece of evidence for mind body experience and the incredible power of changing our mindsets.

Irralee’s story is all the more compelling because of how much she hated the cold and how miserable it always made her. She took her personal experience changing her symptoms and found her way to SIRPA training with Crushing Doubt friend, Georgie Oldfield, in England and now helps others recover from their mind body symptoms.

As we continue to gather personal and professional stories of recovery — especially from such a wide variety of symptoms — the evidence becomes stronger and stronger, which should help our community have less and less doubt.

Today, Diane and I met for our third session of an actual consultation right here, in the moment, on the podcast. I am so appreciative that she showed the courage and generosity to engage in the actual process with me so that we can bring to all of you a direct view of how the work goes and what it looks like. In this session, we look, in depth, at the power column and how it affects us all in how we relate to ourselves, others, and our symptoms.

You’ll get to see Diane and I build her core narrative and begin to discuss how she can utilize this emotional mantra, of sorts. From the broad, high stakes central emotional experience of her life to the specific way it impacted her, we use the information to create a goal with respect to what she can do about this enduring experience. I also help her to articulate and highlight the ways she can feel out of power in her interactions with herself, as well as exploring certain relationships with others. Finally, we explored whether the symptoms still feel in control of her or not and stated our goal of reversing that experience, as she learns to understand the flow of her emotional life into symptoms, reduces doubt, and becomes more powerful feeling in his own right.

This is the third of four meetings with Diane, so that you can see the full mind body mapping process, how it works, and why. She and I will continue to get her emotional themes articulated, polished, and honed, until she is able to understand each symptom onset or uptick through this lens, giving her the tools to disable the mind body pain process from these acute moments of suffering. We will also continue to get all of her doubts articulated, so that I can help her get answers to them to her satisfaction. Now, we add in her thinking about power in different situations, so that she is more able to make a powerful choice for herself in many different areas. Next week, we turn to the action steps for the four columns. I look forward to carrying this process forward with Diane and hope it is of value to you all to see how the process works!