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 week’s How To Series, I look at a major breakthrough you can have in your power column: the power of aloneness. When you feel lonely or alone in a bad way, it obviously doesn’t feel good. But the upside of aloneness comes when you are living in the power column.

When your core narrative is in place, you will understand who you are at your essence and you’ll remember that no one else has a say in any of it. Through having that fully formed relationship with yourself, you can unlock a great power: you are on your own journey and no one else is in charge of anything!

In a sense, this is true self-empathy, because you recognize that only you CAN be fully empathic to yourself. You are the only one who knows it all and, don’t forget, it’s your body that knows and represents it best of all. Your body is never wrong about your journey!

Today, I sit down with Barbara Kline, a licensed clinical social worker who just recently retired after helping countless people recover from mind body issues over the course of her career. Among the many topics we discuss, Barbara and I agree that our symptoms are a communication even more than they are a distraction and she found this to be true personally.

Barbara shared her experience talking to Dr. Sarno and getting help from Dr. Andrea Leonard-Segal. She notes that these doctors helped her turn things around with one of my favorite phrases: ‘it might hurt, but it won’t harm you’. We talked about working through triggers and the way progress moves along in this ‘last stop on the train’ intervention for pain.

She and I also saw eye to eye on the power column and how society tries to make us doubt our own ability to craft a life that is exactly as we want it to be. Barbara’s story of a patient getting in touch with the fullness of their anger also resonated deeply. It was a great pleasure connecting with her and I can see why she has successfully helped so many people get better with her warmth, clear thinking, and inner strength.

On this episode of the Mind Body Connection Series, I look at one piece of logic that reveals how we’ve gotten to where we are with MRI and other imaging techniques and why we are so far astray: we seem to have forgotten the unbelievable power of our own brains. When we look at technology and what it can do versus the brain, we can see the illogic in underestimating the mind, making doubt about a mind body connection seem downright silly.

Think about it: your computer can barely function for more than a day without needing to reboot, it becomes obsolete in five years, and it has literally no emotional intelligence at all. The brain, in the meantime, is managing millions of times more functions than a computer, unconscious and conscious alike.

All of this is to say that we have thousands of reasons to believe, without a doubt, that our brains are not only capable of generating mind body symptoms, but it would be strange if they couldn’t, given the functionality already being there physically and the brain having such immense power, adaptability, and functionality.

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 my How To Series I look at how to distinguish between a true injury (one that heals!) and a mind body one (one that drags on chronically). When you get hurt, there is the physical component of it, but also the psychological one. You can understand the difference with some telltale signs based on science and logic.

The main distinction really does come in the fact that all tissue that CAN heal, DOES heal. But there are other factors as well, such as the fact that movement related ‘injuries’ are mind body ones right from the start. Identifying and deconstructing triggers is crucial in getting better from mind body experiences that began with a true physical injury, as well.

Focus on the timeline of your recovery and you can see that the science and logic ends up pointing in the direction of mind body experience as long as you have been cleared by a medical doctor from damage to internal organs or from a full blown life or death medical issue.

Today’s interview is with Licensed Mental Health Counselor Liz Wallenstein, who studied with Dr. Sarno and developed her own practice in mind body therapy. We talked about her own experience with mind body symptoms and the various aspects she has found to be contributing factors in her patients and in herself.

We talked about the state of the mind body field and our hopes for where it will go, including what it takes to accept a mind body diagnosis. Liz specializes in the single population and the Jewish community as well. We connected over the aspects of therapy, in general, that can get brought into mind body work more fully.

Liz and I talked about the importance of getting rid of doubt in the diagnosis and in our experience, as well as how people, so frequently, become more powerful as they master their symptoms.

Barb and I met for the final session of four consultation meetings, this time focusing on action steps within the emotions, doubt, and power columns. One of the main advantages of three column work is how much more specifically it identifies what is going on for each person and how their symptoms profile.

Barb and I recognized that a big part of what can now help her to feel better is to use power to crush doubt. By recognizing when she is out of power — with herself, her symptom, or others — she can now challenge some ways in which she can make more powerful choices and align with her true self.

As always, I am so impressed by, and grateful to, the people who share their stories on Crushing Doubt and with our community. I know we all wish Barb well in her recovery and I am pleased to see it heading in the right direction so well.

In this episode of the Mind Body Connection Series, Dr Dan Ratner discuss' self-judgment. Where does it come from? How do you get it to lessen? The key, as is usually the case, is in understanding it fully. I identify the various sources of self judgment and self criticism and then we turn to how to stop it.

The first step in stopping nearly anything psychological comes in awareness. Knowing when you are doing it will help you be able to make different choices. Next, you need to look at why you are making those choices and challenge them where they are not necessary. Very frequently, you will find that the things into which you feel locked are not ways you have to be or things you have to do.

Self judgment is a prison of our own making and, by understanding, you can set yourself free.