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Parkinson’s

444

444

Peer Supporter
Hey Plum, I just started working with a veteran who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years ago. He had surgery where devices were implanted in his brain to help with the disease.

He also had severe neck pain and was fused on several levels, but still has some pain in his neck.

I shared with him my healing story (low back pain) and the work of Dr Sarno, but wasn’t sure if this could be applied to Parkinson’s. In searching about Parkinson’s I found your comments from 2018 about your husband and was wondering how he is doing now.

As I keep digging into this topic I am continually blown away by the impact of stress on the body. Chronic pain, autoimmune, neurological degenerative diseases, cancers……WOW!!!!!

It wasn’t that long ago doctors recognize the relationship between the mind and body, but it was lost, and we have paid a heavy price for that loss.

Anyway, would love to hear any updates about your husband if you’re open to share.

Thank you for your work on this forum along with all the Grand Eagles.
 
Hi @444 , let's tag @plum and see if she sees this - she's been on a forum break for a while, but I know she keeps an eye on things when she has a chance.
 
@444, you asked me in a DM about Parkinson's resources. I limit my communications to the public forum in case there are others who can benefit or want to respond, so with that in mind, here are two resources I found by simply googling "Gabor Mate, Parkinson's". I started with Dr. Mate because of his extensive body of work in the field of chronic emotional distress and its link to serious conditions. You can also try searching on "Parkinson's and Stress" and I'm sure you'll find a lot of hits. While we do not encourage consulting Dr Google about symptoms, the fact is that the internet is a fantastic resource for finding a ton of authoritative and helpful information about the mindbody connection. Too much, really, but on specific topics like this, check it out.

http://www.outthinkingparkinsons.com/articles/chronic-stress (Chronic Stress and Parkinson's Disease — Out-Thinking Parkinson's)
https://drgabormate.com/culture-good-health/ (Healing from Disease: Building a Culture of Health by Dr. Gabor Maté)

When The Body Says No was the third book that saved me back in 2011/12, after The Divided Mind and Hope & Help for Your Nerves. Dr. Mate is a wonderful and compassionate author.
 
Thank you Jan. That’s a good point about keeping the messages public.
I’ve read “When the Body says No”. His latest book, “The Myth of Normal “ I’m halfway through (500 pages) but very good. I don’t think either has mentioned Parkinson’s specifically, only dementia and Alzheimer’s. But, certainly Parkinson’s falls into that category. I will check out Hope & Help for your Nerves.

Thank you for the articles and your thoughts.
 
Some incredible excerpts from the OutThinkingParkinsons.com. article (which is essentially applying Mate's theories to PD):

"The book especially focuses on how relationships and emotional problems, especially those which affected childhood, can result in certain inappropriate coping styles or behaviours, which in turn can drive us towards chronic illnesses. The author details how these self-stressing, emotionally repressive coping "strategies" can and do affect the hormonal/neurotransmitters of our brain and body, causing chronic imbalances in our chemistry. These chemical imbalances in turn disrupt the normal operation of our Nervous System and impact on the immune system, so when sustained over many years, those negative coping behaviours can and do make us prone to chronic diseases."

"... the book uncovers a very hard truth. The very parts of ourselves we consider so strongly to be our "self-identity" and we may even be quite prideful of, are not inherent personality traits at all, but what Dr Mate refers to as "inappropriate coping styles". These coping strategies include patterns of responses learned through emotional or physical trauma, especially in early life, which at the time did exactly the job they were designed to do, and allowed us to survive. However, because we humans tend to get stuck in the events of the traumas and can't move forwards, we also got stuck in these high stress patterns of behaviour.

Continued onwards into adult or later life, these trauma induced coping styles become inappropriate to the context, causing us to live our lives almost perpetually in fight-flight-or-freeze stressed states. These coping styles are what make us lose connection with the present, to have little sense joy or aliveness in the now, turn our relationships toxic, cause addictive and obsessive-compulsive behaviours, feelings of shame and guilt, etc., thus contributing greatly to our susceptibility to idiopathic chronic illnesses. The books most disturbing revelation is that people with such illnesses tend to have a super-strong, rigid sense of self, that we feel pride in and hold dear, but is part of the problem. According to Dr Mate, the very "personality traits" by which we define our prideful strong sense of self, are actually, precisely, the behaviour patterns of the inappropriate coping strategies or maladaptive survival styles we learned through getting stuck in trauma."

"If you have a chronic illness, or know a close friend or family who does, this book is an absolute, if at times upsetting, "must read", and once read, "must action". If you are a parent or are thinking of becoming a parent, or a teacher, this is also a must read, and will help to break the invisible cycle of emotional trauma which may have passed down to our own parents from our grandparents."​
 
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