The link between emotional distress and health disorder

As human beings, we experience some stress in our daily lives, whether it’s arriving on time, paying our bills, dealing with work, maintaining a relationship, raising children, or driving in traffic. Fortunately, we can cope with and adapt to most of our usual, momentary, and expected fears. We find solutions as we go through life and create ways to meet our vital needs. Most of our stresses are chronic, but not acute enough to threaten our survival. Because we can create solutions relatively quickly, we can recover emotionally; therefore, our bodies can recuperate biologically under the control of what is called the parasympathetic nervous system. After we eat, rest, and sleep, our body and mind regenerate, and we start another day as we continue our existence on the planet.

Unfortunately, sometimes our level of stress can exceed the threshold of what we can humanly bear, such as the death of a loved one, a divorce or separation, the loss of a job and security, or a betrayal.

The Consequences Of Unmanageable Stress

New findings in Europe have sparked a revolutionary approach to illness, especially cancer, which can now be seen in a different light. When we experience a peak level of stress, our subconscious brain evaluates our situation as dangerous, even if the conflict involves emotional stress in our personal life, such as a painful separation, being fired from a job, or the loss of a loved one. Our brain reacts to the environment from a primal perspective, thus activating the sympathetic nervous system when the “fight-or-flight response” is required.  While in a period of acute stress, we will not be able to sleep; we will lose our appetite, lose weight, and feel cold. When our psyche cannot find a way out of the problem and instead dwells on it day and night in order to resolve it, the stress persists, thus signaling to our subconscious brain that we are experiencing a situation of danger.

We can easily foresee the consequences of not sleeping or eating during acute stress. After a certain amount of time, we could die of exhaustion or inadvertence (lack of awareness), since our attention span is limited to looking for a solution to the conflict we are compulsively thinking about. We could also be at risk from environmental dangers, such as cars or buses, which replace the archaic dangers we faced throughout evolution. Such high stress needs to be alleviated so one can prolong survival.

A momentary solution through cellular changes

Our autonomic brain makes choices from moment to moment, which aim to increase survival. The human brain can only trigger adaptive changes within our biology but not the environment itself. For instance, it cannot remove a “tough boss” from the office, whose actions are perceived as indigestible by an employee, or bring back a child from death to a woman who is experiencing a profound feeling of loss. The brain can act on our biology and change how cells function to increase or decrease an organ's function. It can also express a biological response by blocking or unblocking a function. When no solution is found early enough by the conscious mind to resolve unmanageable stress, the brain transfers the conflict from the psychological sphere into the biological domain where a temporary "solution" can be expressed, until the emotional stress gets resolved.

It is often when stress reaches a peak level that a new program is expressed biologically, matching the meaning of our “felt experience” perfectly. Illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, stomach ulcers, skin disorders, and a myriad of other ailments can represent a solution to one’s emotional distress metaphorically. Our perception of an experience awakens our primary visceral maps, which connect internal sensations to their corresponding organs. We might consider an experience to be “disgusting”(which corresponds to the colon),“suffocating” (lung), “staining” (skin dimension),“stinking”(sinuses), “indigestible” (stomach), and so on.

The Bio-Response

In essence, each organ has a function and is connected to a specific group of neurons in the brain, which monitors the cells within that organ. A traumatic experience can engage three levels simultaneously: the psyche, the brain, and the organ. The stress is alleviated as soon as modification starts in the "target organ", which metaphorically permits the expression of the conflict.

Perception

Diseases are not triggered by circumstances but by how we perceive them. Each of us gives meaning to our experiences in different ways, even though we all experience the world through the same five senses. As someone might feel unable to digest the way they were treated after being fired and trigger a stomach disorder, another person might see it as a blessing and welcome the challenge of looking for another job opportunity. Our psyche, brain, and body do not operate independently but in synchronicity, whether triggering illness or resolving it.

Healing

Emotional healing can be elicited through two distinct pathways. The first pathway, called the “practical solution,” relates directly to a change in the environment that creates a context where the conflict no longer exists. For instance, in one of the examples mentioned above, we could imagine the “tough boss” no longer works for the company and the employee’s conflict is resolved because the external problem is now removed!

The second pathway towards emotional healing is through “the surpassing solution,” which can manifest when an individual is able to find a liberating solution to the distress through a change of perception, without being dependent on others or environmental changes. For instance, the person who lost a loved one may find resources within themselves through a new awareness about life and death, in order to attain emotional peace. Emotional healing can be stronger when one knows how to meet their needs, no matter the circumstances.

Ideally, one reaches a state of physical health through one of the above solutions (preferably the second), which involves transforming the individual himself.

What is illness after all?

Illness is a survival mechanism that prevents the body from expiring quickly from unmanageable stress. Health disorders can be understood as biological emergency measures that increase or decrease an organ's function in response to an unresolved emotional crisis.
This discovery about disease does not constitute a cure. It is a set of findings that could help overcome illness. More and more scientists and researchers accept the idea that the cells of our bodies are affected by our thoughts. If we modified our approach to illness, we could further develop a new style of mind therapy and incorporate it into traditional medical practice. This would result in a form of treatment that would respect the laws of nature and promote emotional as well physical health.