Today begins the first of my four session consultation series with Diane, who is already known in our Crushing Doubt community for her kind words and wisdom, as she responds to comments and encourages others in their healing, as well as sharing about her own. Diane has suffered from migraines, sciatica, and numerous other symptoms, on top of having had to deal with an autoimmune issue that led to a liver transplant — all for helping a sick fellow passenger on a plane.

This four session consultation shows how each person can fill out their individual columns on their mind body map so that they can understand the role of emotions, doubt, and power in their chronic pain or symptoms, as well some specific action steps the sufferer can take to create their own program to get better, using my overarching system. I was so appreciative that Diane showed the bravery and openness 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 first session, I orient her to the mind body map work and we began to develop her emotional themes, so that she can recognize the broad, high stakes, but specific experiences and feelings that can lead to the onset and uptick in symptoms. Among the themes we hit upon were the toxicity of one of her family members, feeling dismissed and under appreciated in her family, and feeling unworthy and not measuring up. We talked about how she will feel so much better and with significantly more hope once she understands the mind body experience and how it works inside and out.

This is the first of four meetings with Diane, which will allow you to 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. I look forward to carrying this process forward with her and hope it is of value to you all to see how the process works!

In this episode of the Mind Body Connection Series, I develop a short hand for how to think about how to operate the three columns on a day to day basis. Where other systems seem to suggest that you endlessly explore your emotional life to get to the heart of things, the three columns system offers more organization and specific nuance.

The emotions column, while seeming to be solely about self awareness, is actually the place where you can turn the system on and off, depending on whether or not you are experiencing the onset or uptick in symptoms. The doubt column is meant to always be in the on position, but at a low hum, as I put it, meaning that you stay vigilant about doubt generally and turn the column up to high when combatting a specific doubt.

Lastly, the power column is the column that is always on high. There is no reason to ever switch it off because feeling powerful happens when we are feeling good and when we don’t feel good, power goes down. This is why we live in the power column — it is the column that should never be dormant or in low gear. Let’s see how this shorthand works out for you all!

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 the third episode of Brothers in Arms, Edgar, Eric, and Dr. Dan continue to discuss how we all can do a better job talking to each other — as men, and otherwise — but the show is also rounding into forms with new segments defining parts of the exploration. After a brief catch up with everyone, the guys finally make sure to let Dr. Dan introduce what he does, since some of the feedback from viewers focused on wondering this very thing.

After the check in, we move on to Old News (Maybe From Yesterday) and discuss Cosby being let out of jail after his conviction was overturned on a technicality. The guys discuss how hard certain topics are to even begin to explore, what this would be like for the apparent victims of the abuse, and how Cosby could possibly move forward in any way with comedy.

Next up, in Breaking the Mold, all three men deal with the aspects of typical manhood in which they do not fit well and the show focuses on how this does not change who they are as men in any way. Both serious and hilarious observations are made here.

Lastly, on Walking the Walk, Eric finally takes his turn, telling Edgar, Dr. Dan, and the audience of a time in his life — following the death of his father — when he came to the end of his ability to cope with things and knew he had to get help. We talked about the strength of this decision, as well as in sharing it with our audience.

On this week’s How To, I delve into the tremendous importance and power of inclusion. I begin with the concept of things that are high stakes and what it is that determines what is a high stakes experience versus not. One of my main points today is that the earlier the need in life, the more intense and important it will loom for all of your days. Well, what is more important than feeling loved? In this episode, I will help you consider why it is so crucially important to err heavily on the side of being inclusive and welcoming, since not feeling welcome can be devastating to a person’s sense of belonging and self worth.

Like it or not, through the lens of a child — and even of a baby — we are constantly measuring whether or not we are wanted. The world is full of confirmations and, unfortunately many more disconfirmations of our being wanted. As a community, we can help each other live happier lives and even prevent depression and suicide if we just remember to take the extra time, sometimes in little gestures, to make people feel included, accepted, and welcome.

The bottom line is that we can all start to feel quite powerful, in the best way possible, when we recognize the impact we can have on others. This way of thinking about things simplifies things, so that you can go the extra mile, in a relatively easy way, and make all the difference in the world to someone. Because what is more powerful than feeling that you are valid and wanted?

In today’s interview, I got to sit down with Dr. Andrea Leonard-Segal, a board certified rheumatologist who not only worked collaboratively with Dr. Sarno for over twenty years, but even wrote one of the chapters in his masterpiece, The Divided Mind. Andrea is a staunch supporter of Dr. Sarno, not only in terms of the way he helped hundreds of thousands people, but also in his manner as a person.

Andrea shares her personal and professional memories of Dr. Sarno and how his culture of mutual respect made such a difference for her and her patients. But we spent a good deal of time exploring what it was that allowed Dr. Sarno to be so able to focus on science and rational thinking so that he could see past what the rest of the medical field could not.

Andrea and I also explored the issues patients can face in rheumatology with respect to mind body experience and her tremendous expertise and wisdom that has helped countless other people. It was a pleasure connecting with Andrea and getting to relate how her chapter helped me personally as well.

Edgar and I met for the fourth session in our mind body consultation series, focusing on the various action steps he can take — mainly in the realm of thinking differently — to change his physiological and emotional experience. We noted together how far he has already come in changing so many of his perspectives and he shares how much it has all made him think about things. We reflected back on what he has experienced so far and got into more detail about what he can actually do when he becomes aware of the themes that are affecting him in the moment.

Among the things we discussed was the idea of not trying to make the feelings he has go away and, instead, letting himself sink into them more. We also discussed some power column solutions, such as remembering to always be in his own journey in the world, so that he does not let others decide on his value as a person or in his choice to do comedy.

Overall, we talked about this as a process that will require further work and we both expressed happiness that we get to continue our journey together in our new show Brothers in Arms.

Susan was kind enough to give us insights into what she experienced in the mind body seminars, as she works to recover from back pain, other musculoskeletal pains, acid reflux, panic attacks, and more. She shares that she got a lot out of the system, organizing things for herself and gaining a real sense that she can get better. 

She highlights the unique aspects that helped her, including hearing from others in their suffering and feeling less alone as a result. She shares that things clicked for her and we noted together how this really did manage to crush doubt for her. Among the things she said she gained were a sense of simplification in the science and logic that made things very clear to her and moment to moment thinking, to help her feel empowered to change her symptoms at any time.

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 the second episode of Brothers in Arms, Edgar, Eric, and Dr. Dan team up again to talk about what makes men tick and what adjustments we need to make to enhance our capability to change, thrive, and live happier lives. We talk about the pressures that come from the outside world and all of the judgment that can be found there.

In their effort to ‘walk the walk’, Edgar opens up about the loss of his mother and how much it hurts him and Eric and Dr. Dan are there for him with support and well timed jokes. Dr. Dan then reveals a unique story about understanding himself in a way that he felt no one else could get and how it took him years of staying true to himself to be able to tell the story as he wanted to. Eric will get his turn in the next show and we plan to revisit the old themes, since they make us who we are.

One of the things that stands out in this show is the willingness to explore some uncomfortable emotional experiences. It is important for viewers to recognize the messiness of the process, rather than expecting a finished product where each belief is settled before we even start. That is part of the beauty of Brothers in Arms, as we find our way towards being more true to ourselves and, as such, being better, and fuller, human beings.