I do think that this is a book which can change someone's life.
I can't say that I am a person who doesn't know how to say No ( I even think that I am quite good at it and to be honest I am also quite proud of it). But I have friends and I aware that they don't care about themselves enough (not even close), So one year ago I made a Canva presentation to show them what stress can cause.. obviously this presentation was based on Gabor Maté's book "When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress".
“When we have been prevented from learning how to say no,” I wrote, “our bodies may end up saying it for us.”
And then all our sacrifices, all our Yes, all our denials of ourselves, all subjugating of our own wants or needs in order to get approval will come back as wolves and will eat us alive.
The author gives us examples, gives us stories and names of people who never said No, but their body did.
Research showed that bottled stress can cause different diseases, quite often multiple sclerosis is caused by it.
Natalie- she has a husband who doesn't care about her, who betrays her..
“If somebody needs help, I have to do it”- says Natalie and I think that the main problem with this phrase is the fact that SHE HAS TO DO IT not that SHE WANTS IT.
"I knew within forty-eight hours of being diagnosed with MS that Bill would not be there for me.”- two question comes in our mind: IF YOU ARE ALWAYS THERE FOR OTHER PEOPLE, WHO IS THERE FOR YOU?! WHY DO YOU STAY IN SUCH RELATIONSHIP?!
and the author gives us an explanation:
"Just like laboratory animals unable to escape, people find themselves trapped in lifestyles and emotional patterns inimical to their health."
But if you ask me, the saddest thing in such stories is that sometimes people don't learn from there own mistakes (let's not even dream that we can learn from someone's else) and they keep pushing themselves: “Five years down the road, and I still have not learned that I have to pace myself. My body says no to me frequently, and I keep going. I don’t learn.”
Veronique
sometimes we have to understand why we treat ourselves so poorly, would we treat other person in the same way too:
“-You had numbness and pain from your feet to your upper chest and you didn’t tell anybody? Why is that?”
-I didn’t think it was worth telling anybody. And if I told somebody like my parents, they would be upset.
-But if someone else had numbness and pain from the feet up to the mid-chest, would you ignore it?
-No, I would rush him to the doctor.
-Why were you treating yourself worse than you would another person?"
Also sometimes we have to let our "heroes" die, I know form my own experience that it's unbearably painful, but it's also not as bad as a disappointment; and also the question is do we really need a Hero?!
“ I’m glad you feel close to your dad. But you may wish to find yourself a new hero—one who can model some self-assertion. In order to heal, you may wish to become your own hero.”
“Why Are Patients with ALS So Nice?”
Characterizing the personalities of ALS patients are relentless self-drive, reluctance to acknowledge the need for help and the denial of pain whether physical or emotional.
Unlike someone whose human characteristics emerge spontaneously, the individual seems trapped in a role, even when the role causes further harm.
In almost every case, victims were either classic over-achievers or chronic workaholics....”
Another serious health problem which is caused by bottled emotions (mostly by bottled anger) is breast cancer:
“Extreme suppression of anger” was the most commonly identified characteristic of breast cancer patients in a 1974 British study.
ANNA
“If you ask me why I got cancer, I would tell you it’s because I allowed myself to be so destroyed in that marriage. I was this close to suicide more times than I ... “I didn’t have enough self-respect. Am I good enough yet, could you love me yet? I married my mom. He was exactly like my mother. I was never good enough."
“This study concluded that dependent men were more likely to develop a number of diseases, including prostate and other cancers”.
“So you see yourself as being controlled. How do you feel about that?”
-I’m resentful.”
-And how do you deal with it?”
-I hide it.”
-You don’t tell her that you don’t like it?”
-No. I don’t.”
-What does that remind you of?”
-My childhood? Exactly.”
Also we should understand that maybe we didn't have a dreadful childhood, maybe we didn't have to experience objectively traumatizing events (like death of parent, rape, physical violence..) , but it doesn't mean that we were not traumatized:
“These persons suffer not because something negative inflicted on them, but because something positive was withheld.”
The generations are boxes within boxes: Inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandfather’s violence, and inside that box (I suspect but do not know), you would find another box with some such black, secret energy—stories within stories, receding in time.”
Such book must give answers too, maybe it can't solve every problem, but this book gives us an answer to a very important question: what should we change?!
the author says:
"We need to foster emotional competence in our children, as the best preventive medicine.
Emotional competence presupposes capacities often lacking in our society, where “cool”—the absence of emotion—is the prevailing ethic, where “don’t be so emotional” and “don’t be so sensitive” are what children often hear, and where rationality is generally considered to be the preferred antithesis of emotionality. The idealized cultural symbol of rationality is Mr. Spock, the emotionally crippled Vulcan character on Star Trek."
"Although with human beings anything is possible, it would be hard to accept that Gilda’s mother, Henrietta, truly did not want her daughter to exist, or that Leslie’s mother ever consciously wished to make her son responsible for her happiness, or that Alan’s parents wished to convey to him that he is only lovable when he is not angry. Most parents feel unconditional love for their children, and that is what they hope to get across to them. That is important to know, but it is not what matters. What matters are the child’s unconscious perceptions, based on his innermost interpretations of his interactions with the world."
he also says that we should not be worried that our children will be angry with us, we should be worried if they won't be angry enough.
He also shows us that we should not be afraid to go in the depth of our mind (unconscious level) and hear what "Monsters" tell us, why they are here and then it will maybe be easier to get rid of them:
"Do we recognize stressors? Do we magnify or minimize potential threats to our well-being? Do we perceive ourselves as alone? As helpless? As never needing help? As never deserving help? As being loved? As having to work to deserve love? As hopelessly unlovable? These are unconscious beliefs, embedded at the cellular level. They “control” our behaviours no matter what we may think on the conscious level."
And he literally gives us ways for healing :)
The Seven A’s of Healing:
1. Acceptance
“I would hold someone else’s hand to help them say no—but I wouldn’t hold my hand to help me say no.” “And if they didn’t know how to say no, you’d still accept them. You’d say. ‘Look, I understand that it’s really hard for you—you’re not ready.’” “But I don’t say that about myself—I get angry at myself.”
"Being this harsh on yourself takes up a lot of energy.'
2. Awareness
All those seeking to heal—or to remain healthy—need to reclaim the lost capacity for emotional truth-recognition.
3. Anger3. Anger
4. Autonomy-people suffer when their boundaries are blurred.
"My saying ‘let me go’ would not have meant to let me die, just ‘stop being so overbearing. Let it go. Let me do what I’m going to do.’ It’s my life. I’ll make my mistakes, but my mom has got to let me do that. Being diabetic and having somebody else try to control me has been such a large part of my life.”
5. Attachment
Seeking connections is a necessity for healing.
6. Assertion
declaration to ourselves and to the world that we are and that we are who we are.
Assertion challenges the core belief that we must somehow justify our existence.
7. Affirmation
When we affirm, we make a positive statement; we move toward something of value.
The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create.
“What is in us must out,” wrote Hans Selye, “otherwise we may explode at the wrong places or become hopelessly hemmed in by frustrations.
If you are interested in this book, you can email me (kh.nebulishvili@gmail.com) and I'll send the PDF version of this book :) And I also suggest this interesting documentary about the wisdom of trauma:
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