Tag Archives: healing

TWLOHA’s MOVE Conference Reflection

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A happy monday fellow healthians,

This weekend I attended To Write Love On Her Arms‘ MOVE Conference. It was a two-day informative lecture/conversation amongst two speakers, two coordinators, and about 40 attendees which touched on heavy/personal topics such as Addiction, Depression, Anxiety, Self-Injury, Eating Disorders, and Suicide. I participated in the conference in support of a friend. She had come to me about a month ago that she eagerly wanted to attend and, since we have shared many conversations in the past regarding our perspectives of personal healing and growth, she pretty much said you’re coming and I won’t take “no” for an answer. She didn’t have to twist my arm at all really because I had an idea of what I was getting myself into with my familiarity with TWLOHA’s mission; having “worked” with the organization in the past as a musician and through the friendships I was able to build from sharing an awareness of health. But my awareness only went so far when it came to these topics because I had yet to be thrown into a room with real people who have dealt with and are still dealing with real problems. I found myself being smacked in the face with a reality I have only read about and have reflected generalized philosophies upon. I knew I was in for a treat the moment we began going around the room stating our name, story, and purpose.

I went into the conference thinking that the participants would be those who are dealing with the issues, those who are seeking answers for themselves, those who are in search of aha-moments to get themselves on a better track towards healing. I didn’t read up on the conference beforehand so I had some assumptions going into it and, while that general mindset held some truth, I didn’t expect that I would be in a room with people just like me… young professionals who have gone through their own tough times reality and have now come out on the other end with the approach of I’m going to use what I have learned in my worst-of-the-worst to help others in their paths towards happiness. And the most inspiring part? Everyone was real. Everyone had real stories, real obstacles, real battles, real experiences, real emotions, and everyone was dealing with their own reality all-the-while learning more about the realities of others for one common goal: to help. It was rather humbling to be in a room with therapists, with counselors, with speakers, with help-line workers, with undergrads, with graduate students, with mothers, with adults… with all different walks of life in one room who have been through it and who just get it. That is actually one of the main purposes of the conference – to find someone that just gets it – amongst the slightly more obvious reasons like raising awareness of such hush-hush topics, educating the educators, inspiring the inspired, comforting the disturbed, and disturbing the comforted. To find someone who you can relate to is such a milestone in the world of healing because we have all gone through our own shit and you damn-well know that it certainly helps to speak to someone who understands and relates through their own trials to what you are going through. We all have different experiences, but we def-def-definitely share the same feelings of hurt, pain, shame, or unhappiness (as well as happiness, ease, comfort, or success).

It is my understanding that these symptoms umbrella under and manifest as a result of a greater cause. To extremely over simplify that greater cause, I chalk it up to unhappiness. This mental state can be caused by many factors and we all manifest its symptoms in various ways, but I do believe that the foundation exists as a lack of happiness with self and the experiences of self, i.e. what you understand to be your reality through your own [influenced] filter system (thoughts, beliefs, conditionings, perceptions, habits, knowledge, ignorance, diet, digestion, stressors, sleep patterns, priorities, et cetera).

Yet, the conference didn’t really hint on any sort of generalization. There were times in the conversation where we saw commonalities for treatments or fine lines between diagnostics, but it still resorted back to this is this and that is that. It focused on each symptom as its own entity and that one must “treat” each realm accordingly. An addiction counselor should not treat a self-injury patient because, from what I gathered, they are not the same. I ask why? If we’re approaching this holistically, the body’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health fall under one cyclic/complimentary umbrella so why can’t our symptoms? It just doesn’t make sense to me. For example, self-injury is mainly the act of inflicting pain or cutting one’s skin, but how is cigarette smoking not a form of self-injury, as well? Both involve an awareness of the action and its consequences, both inflict pain in exchange for euphoria and a quick-fix result only to come back again because the thrill wasn’t enough and the underlying cause/relief structure still exists. Also, each are forms of addiction and, perhaps, can be a result of depression, too. Of course, I was in a room with trained professionals whose experiences on paper far exceed mine so perhaps I do not have much room to speak, but I do not think that limits my platform to question the approach or to raise an awareness of more foundational-based ways to do things.

I really found this intriguing because this is the habit of our society. We like to label things… every-things. And, in the medical/health field, people can lose their identities or any mindset of who they are because their names can be replaced or associated with a specific disease, disorder, or mental state. This replacement can come from the doctor’s vocabulary/perspective or can even be adapted by the patient. The nice guy named Bob becomes a Drug Addict. Why the heck is Bob a drug addict in the first place? Some sort of shit in Bob’s life culminated, made him freak, and he turned to drugs. Can labeling Bob as an addict make him more unhappy? Why can’t we just say that Bob is unhappy and retrace the steps to where/why Bob became unhappy? He’s still the nice guy he’s always been, but people may not identify him as the nice guy anymore because we label. And when we label, we segregate by default. And when we segregate by default, we impose stigma by default. And stigma is an imposed reality which we seldom take the time to step back from to look at the bigger picture – what truly matters in a universal reality. It’d be nice to look at things objectively rather than subjectively. Then again everyone tends to have their opinion and we all know the saying about opinions… It’d also be nice to get away from labels but I don’t think it’ll ever happen. Really, we just want to belong. Even if it means we belong to a negative connotation, at least we belong to something.

One final thing I’d like to note is a shared story from one of the speakers. The speaker’s father did not allow the use of Neosporin within their household. If you are not familiar with Neosporin, it is a healing agent that can be applied to small cuts or scrapes to speed up the healing process and to prevent the formation of “ugly” scars. The father wasn’t a doctor, but he knew a thing or two about the healing process. Neospiron is promoted as a quick-healer and offers a good-as-new look. That’s cool and all, but while the skin on the outside may be “healed,” the wound underneath remains open and prone to infection because the body is not meant to heal as such a rapid pace. Hey, at least it looks good and my date tonight won’t think I’m a zombie freak, right? When we give the body time to heal on its own time at its own pace in its own natural environment, the wounds mend accordingly. The same can be said about our emotional and mental states. We can take all of the medication we want, we can try all of the quick-fix protocols we come across, but they will never truly heal until the underlying cause is addressed and fixed naturally through being honest with self, yielding compassion for self, having patience with self, and, thus, gaining a greater awareness of self.

I learned a lot from the conference and I’m very glad I was given the opportunity to go. If you are not familiar with To Write Love On Her Arms, please check out their website, blog, and calendar to verse yourself in the awareness and the hope that they spread.

Thanks for stopping by, folks.

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jdperryhealth@gmail.com

Life’s energy reserves

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Throughout Selye’s book, “The Stress of Life,” he refers to a type of “energy reserve” with which each person is born. This so-called “Adaptive Energy” serves as a reservoir that can support and adapt to whatever life’s daily wear and tear from stress may bring – individually-speaking, of course. He places a theoretical limit on this reserve, “It is thought, at birth, each individual inherited a certain amount of adaptation energy, the magnitude of which is determined by his genetic background, his parents. He can draw upon this capital thriftily for a long but monotonously uneventful existence, or he can spend it lavishly in the course of a stressful, intense, but perhaps more colorful and exciting life. In any case, there is just so much of it, and he must budget accordingly.”

When I first came across this only 65 pages into his 306-page book, I had my eyebrow raised in intriguing fashion with this new, yet familiar perspective. As I read further about his General Adaptation Syndrome theory, his experiments with stress hormones, and the removal of organs or glands to “fix” a stress-related disease I began to question if his hypothesized limit for Adaptation Energy really held ground because, and I may be bold here, the scientific solutions of his lab-based experimental problems were merely fixing the symptoms, not the cause. He focused on the internal responses and symptoms of stress-induction. His mechanisms to support his theory were rather limited because he had to prove that stress was a real thing and that it had a physiological effect on the body via specific stressors. While he was successful in proving his theory, there are many grey areas that can be found between the fine lines.

Now would be a good time to provide his definition of Adaptation Energy: “The energy necessary to acquire and maintain adaptation, apart from caloric requirements.” The ending is what has me pump the brakes on the limits of Adaptation Energy. If we were to run off of absolutely zero caloric energy, we would die. Yes, we can fast (go without food and live solely on water) for an extraordinary amount of days, but it is my understanding that this can only be done with a well-rounded reserve of nutrients, glycogen stores, muscle tissue, and fat stores; that is, a reserve of energy stored and then converted from calories. In a state of caloric deficiency (aka stress), the body will release stress hormones which can tap into stored “energy” to maintain life (adrenaline to use up stored sugar/glycogen in the liver and muscles, and cortisol to convert muscle tissue/proteins/amino acids into sugar). So what if we didn’t have those foundational stores? What if the caloric energy was comprised of non-nutritious foods that created more of a stress environment? What about external factors such as climate, relationships, personal happiness? How is energy created if there’s nothing to create it?

I do back the theory of Adaptation Energy as a form of reserve energy which the body can tap into in times of [great or average] need via stressful situations (dietary, exercise, emotional, mental, etc.). However, I do not full buy into the concept of a defined limit with which we are born and must “use wisely” throughout our lifetime because once it’s gone then sayonara life. The body is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant machine, so-to-speak, in the sense that it has the power to rejuvenate and recover itself under the most wild circumstances because of its ability to, in the words of Gunny Highway, “improvise, adapt, and overcome.” But those very mechanisms it uses to adapt to such situations are ever-so precious and must be built upon a sturdy foundation to take on anything – that foundation, as I see it in my current understanding of health, is a combination of hydration, nutrition, rest, and mental strength. I wish it were as simple to say it’s just caloric energy, but that would overlook the incredible importance of sleep and mentality; how creating energy is parallel with expending energy (yin and yang) and the mind-body connection, respectively.

Selye does come around at the end of the book to chalk one up to possibility, “Still, we have not fully excluded the possibility that adaptation energy could be regenerated to some extent, and perhaps even transmitted from one living being to another…” Given his theories were published in 1956 and new perspectives have since developed, it doesn’t write off the fact that Seyle was onto something universally important and has left a solid foundation for understanding the mechanisms of stress, wear and tear on the body, disease, and possible underlying causes.

 

If you’d like to discuss this perspective along with other health-related insights, please contact me for a FREE Conversation.

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jdperryhealth@gmail.com

Everyone has a doctor within them

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Everyone has a doctor within him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.

(Hippocrates)

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The struggle effect via John Kim

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…neither having developed the love nor attainment of mastery in life, it is commonplace for people to struggle rather than to experience effortless flow. Without the natural flow, it is easy to struggle and suffer. When focused on struggling and suffering, it is easy to lose mindfulness. Without mindfulness, the way to developing insights to one’s own issues becomes limited. Without insights, it is easy to repeat one’s mistakes over and over again.

Tao of Healing: The integral way of healing
John Kim, MD

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Define: Addiction

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  • Addiction is a form of control, but what leads to that control?
  • Addiction is a symptom to an underlying cause, so we must define our true pain that we are suppressing or escaping.
  • On the outside, addiction involves reflective escapes – food, drugs, alcohol, sex, anger, depression, exercise, etc.
  • Deep down, addiction involves an escape from self – self-shame, self-sabotage, a lack of self-responsibility, a lack of self-awareness, and, ultimately, a lack of self-love.
  • We can overcome addiction when we become aware of what we are escaping and take responsibility for our actions.
  • We can overcome addiction when we see the value in what releasing that addiction can bring.
  • We can overcome addiction when we stop running away from ourselves, others, and our self-made problems, boundaries, expectations, boarders, shames, pains, or walls.
  • Addiction is an external attempt to find internal love.

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jdperryhealth@gmail.com

It’ll Come With Practice

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I was in a text conversation with a good friend of mine earlier this week. She had recently moved to the West Coast to pursue her career and is now faced with reality of applying to jobs, “selling herself” through her resume/cover letter, and is also dealing with the anxiety of internal/external expectations and personal judgements. After a few perspective exchanges we came across the concept of practice…

Just like it took you years of practice and understanding through “doing” to get to this point, finding a job that’s right for you may take that same concept of practice and understanding. Do your best, be true to yourself, and have confidence that what you give will return the same.
Thank you :) Yeah, living in the present has been a major challenge for me, but continuing to… bring myself back [to the present] every time I start to panic has proven to be helpful. Sounds like a such a simple practice, but I guess a lot of things are easier said than done.
It’ll come WITH practice :)

At that point, she sent the following video…

I had never seen this video, so it was a pleasant surprise for two reasons…

1) It’s so genuine and uplifting
2) The boy must be no more than 5-6 years old and “gets it”

Everybody,

I know you can believe in yourself.
If you believe in yourself, you will know how to ride a bike.
If you don’t [know], you just keep practicing.
You will get the hang of it and I know it.
If you keep practicing you will get the hang of it, and then you will get better and better at it if you do it.

This boy learned how to ride a bike by

  • Setting a goal – Dreams, desires, the end of a chapter
  • Creating a path towards that goal – Consistent practice
  • Understanding that little things go a long way – Subtle efforts bring big results
  • Believing in self that he will succeed – Self-empowerment, Self-Confidence
  • Not placing boundaries for success – Time, expectations, judgments, & ego do not let a moment “be” at it is intended (he’s 5, he doesn’t have time for all of that self-destructive crap)

All we can ask of ourselves is to be at our best within the present moment. With each passing experience we have the opportunity to learn, to understand, and to use our past experiences to our present advantage. We can all learn from him by applying these simple life concepts to our built-up-to-be-not-so-simple life.