More on Disease and Loving it Away

I want to go on about compounding from last blog. I stated that we can pretty much tell the depth of neurosis and addiction by noting how the basis of addiction can begin in the first months of gestation which then gets compounded by trauma and lack of love as the child develops. Imagine now, that if a therapist does not focus on gestational life how on earth is she going to cure addiction or even know about its depth? She won’t. The same is true for both neurosis and psychosis.

But there are several new studies that state that we can pretty much love away pain; and that is true. Even reverse it, which is also true. But there is more to this story.

One study was of babies who had amniocentesis at age 17 weeks in the womb. And then they were measured with cognitive tests at 17 months after birth. Those babies who were high on stress hormones during gestation did least well later on, not so surprising. “Children showing ‘insecure attachment’ to their mothers had high cortisol/stress levels in the womb. In other words, the babies were already preprogrammed to be afraid, not outgoing and also not social even before they were born. WOW! Oh la la, as they say in France, my adopted country. So you see how early it all starts. What went along with this was ADD a shorter attention span, and in my view, anxiety states, all before life on earth had a chance to intervene.

Now here comes a good mother months and years later to give the child lots of love. And that love can reverse a lot of these deleterious symptoms and behaviors. So you can love neurosis away? Not so fast. What we can do is love the child enough to bring the stress level down below its manifestation level. That is, bring down the inner latent stress below where symptoms begin showing. This can begin to reverse some of the effects of trauma in the womb and afterward. But we cannot erase memory entirely because it has been registered all over the system not just in the brain and not just in the stress hormones. It is an organic, systemic event imprinted in the blood, bones, muscles and nerves. But still it is very important to lower the overall load, but we don’t want to be bereft of our history; to be history-less.

Children with love do improve in their concentration, memory and attention span. But let us not equate that with reversing the imprint. It is still there, a stealthy enemy always waiting to pounce the minute there is more stress that brings one over the symptom level producing overt problems. Certainly, we cannot be memory-less. Otherwise we would be robots living only in the present. But when we are talking about cancer it is very important to get this straight. That is one reason when cancer appears later in life and is well treated, the patient still has to wait five years to see if it returns.

Symptoms in my scheme are the result of overload; too many powerful feelings to integrate, and they slop over into headaches, high blood pressure, diabetes and ultimately, when the imprint is powerful and early enough, into cancer. The deeper the imprints the more devastating the results when they start to come up, which is why we must follow evolution closely and not let the patient drop into heavy feelings too soon. We can avoid it; we have the techniques. But when a childhood trauma comes up there can be a transient headache which soon passes, but if first line, loss of oxygen at birth comes up too soon there can be terrible migraines which do not pass away soon. What has been triggered are powerful imprints way too early. One way to measure all this is what the study cited above did; they measured stress hormone levels. This can be downloaded from the mother’s placenta or can be manufactured by the baby all by himself. The result is high stress levels and a propensity and vulnerability to serious symptoms later on. Medical doctors and shrinks need to pay attention to all this and begin to focus on generating sources of behavior and symptoms. In short, to stop only tinkering with symptoms to the neglect of causes. Yes symptoms must be addressed and treated, but it is a never-ending process. And unfortunately that is the practice of therapy today. We have to know that there deep imprints and that there are ways to access them.

In our therapy we see every day patients who has had bad therapy previous to their coming to us, with a history of overload and symptoms. Feelings need to be titrated; otherwise they can dredge up first line powerhouse feelings that arise prematurely and cannot possibly be integrated. Hence symptoms, transient, but if it goes on month after month and year after year I am not surprised if it results in cancer something we rarely see in our therapy.

There is just so much the body can do to absorb and integrate feelngs; and after that it gets sick, and then treatment is a bitch and very difficult. It is no longer, preventive, our work, but post symptomatic, others’ work. Bad therapy, therefore is dangerous, and some mock therapists, in the absence of science in their work are warm and kind to their patients, thinking they can love neurosis away, while taking away the curative part, “ I need to have a kind father who can love me.” It is the imprint that saves lives and prevents cancer in therapy, not love, strange as that seems. So let us get this straight. Love can ameliorate the effects of trauma but cannot totally erase memory. Love from parents in childhood is crucial but not the whole story. Love in therapy is too late; we have to feel that it was not thre early in our lives. Pain is imprinted and leaves an enduring memory and its by-products--symptoms. Pain is where hope lies; it lies in the feeling of hopelessness, not in giving false hope to patients. You can get sick from false hope. It is not real and you end up not dealing with your inner reality.