Conscious Choice: The Things We Tell Ourselves

November 2002 | Choice Books

The Things We Tell Ourselves

by Mark Harris

More than a decade ago I went through a prolonged period of chronic fatigue syndrome. Never in my life did I feel more challenged than in those days. Never did I feel more fear and despair. Day after day, month after month, I would wake up with trepidation, dreading the uncertainty of the day. I can tell you it’s a demoralizing experience to wake up exhausted, despite a solid night’s sleep.

If I wasn’t careful and tried to do too much or became too stressed, I could easily find myself on the brink of what would feel like imminent collapse. My heart would race and my breath become unsteady, and I would fight the blinding anxiety that could fall over me like a shroud.

Shrouds can be hard to see through, blocking the light as they do, and I often had trouble seeing the light in those days. Even on a day when I wasn’t feeling physically depleted, I found it hard to let go of the worry, believing it was only a matter of time before that shroud of weakness would once again appear.

In retrospect, I can see that I had certain core thoughts operating in me. Like, "Given half a chance, your body will betray you. You can count on it!" Talk about a message error on the operating system! Set to default, no less. I remember, once early into this struggle, sitting in a crowded restaurant, consumed with the sense that my health was failing me. Looking around the room, I thought, what a miracle it was that everyone here was functioning...that more people were not dropping like flies! I mean, there was just so much that could go wrong with these complicated human bodies of ours!

Obviously, I was a little loopy in those days. You could also say I had a problem with trust.

As I started to recover physically, I found that learning a day at a time to trust, to just have faith in the increasing stamina I was experiencing, was a key challenge. So I used to meditate on this idea, telling myself a different message — "Given half a chance, your body will work for you. Take care of your body, and it will know what to do." It all came down to having faith. Having faith in the profound strength, intelligence, and miracle of the life force that moved within me.

Attitude, Belief and Language

The voice of healer and teacher Barbara Hoberman Levine understands this process. She is the author of Your Body Believes Every Word You Say: The Language of the Body-Mind Connection, a very fine book on the role of attitude, belief, and language on the course of health. Your Body Believes is also her story, sharing with readers her fascinating account of a long, 15-year struggle with a non-cancerous but potentially life-threatening brain tumor.

As Levine describes, her story actually began in 1966, when both of her parents died within ten months of each other of heart disease. They were both only in their early 50s. It was a shock and a trauma, and one she had not adequately grieved by the time her last child was born four years later. Soon after she developed a weakness in her voice caused by a paralyzed left vocal cord. She also became deaf in her left ear. For a long time doctors blamed a mystery viral condition, and it took four years before tests revealed that Levine actually had a rare type of brain tumor. She was only 32.

At the time surgical removal was difficult, but the tumor was non-malignant, so Levine set about learning to live with its unsettling reality, pursuing a healthier lifestyle as she lost weight, gave up smoking and exercised more. She also searched for a cure.

In 1985, the author was finally able to undergo an effective surgical procedure to remove the tumor. The operation was successful but also devastating, leaving her disabled and facing months of recovery. But gradually she did recover. Two years later more surgery helped strengthen her voice. It was a good thing, too. Levine had acquired in the course of her long challenge the voice of a healer and teacher, one she was sharing now with the world and whose work was far from finished.

Levine recalls how while working on her Master’s degree in communication in the late 1970s, she’d been struck by a paper she’d read in the Co-Evolution Quarterly, "Language, Thought, and Disease," by W. C. Ellerbroek, M.D. In it the author explored the role of language as a connecting link between mind, body, and emotions. Levine was intrigued. She soon enough found herself embarked on what would become a life-long interest in the mechanisms of mind-body communication. She became the intrepid explorer into the ways our thoughts and the language we use to express them influence or correspond to physical and emotional conditions. Later, she coined the term "seedthoughts" to describe those core beliefs or internal dialogues we engage in that so forcefully, if frequently unwittingly, influence our health. She also began to look more closely at effective techniques to help herself and others plant more positive, health affirming seedthoughts in their psychic subsoil.

Illness and Spiritual Growth

Levine writes convincingly of the spiritual transformation contained in her journey toward physical healing. You might say the growth in her head precipitated another, more enveloping kind of growth, one metastasizing as a deeper level of mind, body, and spirit awareness. "I remembered the fears I began to experience when I first lost my voice and hearing," she writes in her book. "I wondered which came first, the thought,‘I lost my nerve’ or the loss of the physical nerve energy that resulted from the constriction by the tumor. At first I believed that my physical disabilities led to my fearful outlook. My physical condition was — literally and symbolically — an unnerving experience.

"Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that my physical condition encouraged me to feel the hidden emotions and fears already within me. It enabled me to witness myself being afraid, and with this external dramatization, to realize how fearful I had been for a long time. In other words, the only way I was able to feel my suppressed fears was when they were expressed by way of the nerve damage."

As Levine comes to learn, experiencing intense fears and phobias, personally "losing her nerve," as was her initial response to a puzzling and worsening condition, threw a spotlight on her deepest spiritual fears, and what she needed to learn in order to heal her suffering spirit.

"The strength of your growth will be your belief without proof," Levine’s husband had said to her one day, when her own feelings about the future seemed especially uncertain. He was right. Levine slowly and steadily built her life on a new foundation, one rooted in a deeper faith in herself and her abilities, faith in her body and mind, and in her relationship to a God she came to perceive as loving. Faith coupled with right action had become her mantra for living. If she couldn’t walk, she would practice whatever maneuver the physical therapist had taught her, like how to stand up. But with conscious and deliberate awareness, she would also visualize the new maneuver in her mind — working.

Thoughts Mediate Immunity

"This is breaking my heart," we say to ourselves about a certain situation. But does this mean we’ll soon be sitting in the cardiologist’s office? Not necessarily. But as Levine documents we do know that our thoughts can cause chemical changes in the body. How a person interprets stress and their ability to manage it can affect the immune system’s functional capacity, mediated as it is through cellular receptors linked to the brain. It only stands to reason that the better we maintain our emotional equilibrium, the more confident and hopeful we stay in the face of various life or health challenges, the better our immune system will rally to protect and defend us and keep us healthy.

Of course, Your Body Believes Every Word You Say does not imply that every thought always finds direct, literal translation in some body symptom. Nor does Levine argue that if we get sick, we’ve necessarily been amiss in taking care of ourselves, or thought the "wrong thoughts," as some New Age line of reasoning might suggest. Yet how many of us have known the beleaguered soul who felt as if she carried "the weight of the world" upon herself, who then ended up at the chiropractor’s office with shoulder or back pain? How many of us have been this beleaguered soul?

If your body can be a faithful companion to your thoughts, it’s also judicious not to get paranoid about your thinking. Blaming yourself for "weak" thoughts is a harsh, useless game. Being human is going to mean experiencing moments of fear or doubt. But learning to pay closer attention to the core messages you’re telling yourself, the pattern of your attitudinal thinking, is smart self-care. It may be particularly critical when you’re ill or otherwise vulnerable (and when are we not vulnerable!). Believing in yourself and your body’s ability to heal just opens doors for positive change.

Your Body Believes Every Word You Say is a book that has been around a while, though it only recently came to my attention. After reading it I also think it’s worth bringing to your attention. The book will be especially helpful to anyone living with a chronic illness. The new edition includes a section on dreams and drawings by the well-known health advocate, Bernie Siegel, M.D., as well as a resource guide and dozens of exercises in visualization, writing, and other self-help techniques. It all adds up to a rich, thoughtful, and objective exploration of some essential holistic wisdom.

But Your Body Believes Every Word You Say is also something more. It is one woman’s personal story, told with compassion and insight and a gentle reverence for her experience. In these pages Barbara Hoberman Levine offers us a prayer to life, actually, one learned and recited under sometimes difficult circumstances.

But then who ever said life wasn’t difficult?

Your Body Believes Every Word You Say: The Language of the Body-Mind Connection, by Barbara Hoberman Levine, with a section on dreams and drawings by Bernie S. Siegel, M.D. (WordsWork Press, 2000), 301 pages.

Mark Harris is a Chicago-based writer. Visit his Web site, A Writer’s Voice.

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