All Is Well: Heal Your Body With Medicine, Affirmations, and Intuition (21 page)

with your emotions—to tune in to them in a new way. Practices

such as meditation can teach you to calm your mind. They can

help you create a more stable relationship with your feelings. They

can also help rewire your brain so you learn to control your emo-

tions and not react so extremely to their presence.

Another practice that can help in regulating the effects of

your dramatic emotions is to create a time-out structure. Look

at your past emotional outbursts and try to determine why they

happened. What triggered them? How did you feel leading up to

them? What was the tipping point? If you are able to identify your

triggers and your body’s reaction to them, you will learn to rec-

ognize an emotional takeover in the moment—and not let it hap-

pen. This won’t come naturally at first, but it will come. Once you

recognize the signals of overwhelm occurring in your body, you

will be able to react in a more constructive way. You will be able to

take a time-out—whether this means physically leaving a heated

situation or simply stepping away mentally to let your emotions

become a little less intense. As you make mindfulness and positive

thought patterns a part of your daily routine, you will find that

you have to step away from your emotions less frequently.

These actions and affirmations will help you move toward

a more emotionally balanced life. If you want to have healthy

lungs, you need to learn to express your feelings in a calmer, more

controlled way. It’s possible to be calm, controlled, and in charge

and still be exciting and emotional—the life of the party. Learn

to balance your emotions with the needs of the important part-

ners in your life, and watch your health in the fourth emotional

center improve.

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From the Clinic Files: Lung Disorders Case Study

My client Mary, 60 years old, describes herself as a “tornado

of human emotion.” She has always been thin-skinned, and her

mood shifts depending on her relationship status, how much

money is in her bank account, and even the weather. Mary says

that she can be laughing one minute and crying the next.

Passionate at her best, and emotionally volatile at worst, Mary

never does anything halfway, and that includes how deeply she

feels each and every emotion. Mary’s mood swings are exhausting

for her friends, who never know what to expect from her behav-

ior—there always seems to be a new drama. Mary started therapy

to find out why she had so little control over her emotions. She

was diagnosed with bipolar II (a less manic form of bipolar disor-

der) by one therapist, and borderline personality disorder by an-

other. Neither the diagnostic labels nor their treatments were able

to help Mary maintain stable relationships or keep a job.

Mary had suffered from asthma since puberty and noticed

that her moods got worse when she had to take steroids to treat

the most severe episodes of respiratory distress. By her late teens,

even though she knew it was bad for her lungs, Mary took up

smoking because it seemed to be the only thing that helped calm

her mood swings. After one particularly tough breakup, she began

smoking more than usual. One evening, she couldn’t stop cough-

ing and ended up in the emergency room. The doctor who treated

her warned her to quit smoking: she was in the beginning stages

of emphysema, or a lung disease called COPD (chronic obstructive

pulmonary disease).

Mary had two medical problems, her mood and her lungs, and

she had to address her moodiness in order to create pulmonary

health. So that’s where we began.

Mary wanted to know the name for her mood problem. Was it

major depression? Was it bipolar II? Was it borderline personality

disorder? Modern psychiatry has done much to ease our emotional

suffering but unlike other medical specialties, it does not utilize

blood tests, CT scans, MRIs, or other objective tests to give a person

a definitive diagnosis. Instead, a psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse

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practitioner, or other caregiver will look at the symptoms and

signs the client has and try to match these patterns with a condi-

tion listed in the
DSM-V,
the guidebook for psychiatric diagnosis.

So there are no laboratory data to support or disprove a diagnosis.

That said, since Mary received three different diagnoses from

three different psychiatric professionals, what was important for

her was getting her mood treated adequately.

Mary finally committed to treatment with a psychiatric team

that supported this focus and deemphasized her diagnostic label.

Their main concern was to put together a plan with clear treat-

ment goals. With the help of her counselor, Mary made a list of

her emotional symptoms. Here’s what she found:

• She had unstable moods every day.

• Her moods varied depending on what was going on

around her, whether it was a “bad hair day,” heavy

traffic, or a crabby boss (called affective instability).

• She had problems with overeating, oversleeping,

fatigue, low self-esteem, concentration, and

hopelessness (called mild depression, or dysthymia).

• She experienced impulsive moments, including

episodes of “road rage” and a couple of times when

she became enraged and punched her spouse.

• She found that most antidepressant drugs have no

effect on her symptoms.

• She experienced moments when after someone

abruptly left, she felt like killing herself but the bad

feelings quickly passed (transient suicidal thoughts).

Mary’s treatment team quickly got her engaged in an emotional

skills training class called dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT).

Based in Tibetan Buddhism and mindfulness, DBT helped Mary

learn techniques to stabilize her moods and regulate her daily ac-

tivities so she was less prone to overeat and oversleep. She also

learned to transform her rage and handle her transient suicidal

thoughts through crisis chain analysis. In this process, she learned

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to break up a seemingly overwhelming crisis into understandable

parts, identify the emotions associated with each part, and soothe

herself through each step. She took weekly two-hour classes and a

one-hour, one-on-one coaching session to introduce her to these

very powerful methods.

To go along with her emotional skills training, a psychiatrist

prescribed minimal amounts of medication that could help her

stabilize her moods. Mary took Topamax, a mood stabilizer, and

the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL, which helped her fatigue and

concentration problems as well.

Next we turned to Mary’s lung problems.

In asthma, the trachea and bronchial areas become very “irritable”

for a number of reasons—allergies, side effects of medicines, mood,

anxiety, and of course, cigarette smoke. When Mary’s wheezing, short-

ness of breath, and coughing started to affect her, she learned (like ev-

eryone else) to pull out the classic inhaler with the stimulant Albuterol

or Ventolin. A puff for relief. When that temporary relief didn’t last,

doctors upped the ante with an inhaler that has both the stimulant

and a steroid that puts out the allergy/autoimmune fire underlying the

asthmatic response. Mary tried a number of these enhanced inhal-

ers—Advair, Pulmicort, and Flovent—but at times even these weren’t

enough.

By her bedside, Mary had a longer-acting inhalerlike device

called a nebulizer that drove the medicine deeper into her respira-

tory tree. During particularly difficult times, Mary took oral ste-

roids to put out the allergic fire in her body, but as she learned soon

enough, these medicines have side effects, including moodiness,

irritability, osteoporosis, and weight gain. Soon Mary began talk-

ing leukotriene inhibitors such as Singulair to help her asthma by

knocking out yet another part of her immune system. Although

these medicines all have side effects, they helped save her life be-

cause, at that time, she had no other options.

However, when Mary used mindfulness and affirmations in

addition to her medicine, she was able to calm her anxiety and stop

smoking, which greatly alleviated her asthma and lung problems.

Mary continued monthly—and then yearly—checkups with

her pulmonologist. She also visited an acupuncturist and Chinese

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herbalist who helped her regulate her breathing problem with

a variety of herbal blends, including respiryn extract, Crocody

Smooth Tea Pills, Andrographis, and Bronchial Care remedy.

Even after Mary’s official DBT classes ended, she kept up her

mindfulness practice. She also used the affirmations for general

lung health (I take in life in perfect balance); lung problems (I

have the capacity to take in the fullness of life. I lovingly live life

to the fullest); emphysema (It is my birthright to live fully and

freely. I love life. I love me); respiratory ailments (I am safe. I love

my life); COPD (I have the capacity to take in the fullness of life.

I lovingly live life to the fullest); and breathing problems (It is my

birthright to live fully and freely. I am worth loving. I now choose

to live life fully) to help herself fully heal.

Mary changed her lifestyle, addressed her anxiety, and faced

her negative beliefs to create a life without the pain of respiratory

problems

Breast Problems

Women—and men—who have breast issues such as cysts,

lumps, soreness (mastitis), even cancer, nurture and mother oth-

ers often to the point of being overbearing. These people are much

more comfortable solving other people’s problems and comforting

others’ pain than handling their own. They hide their own emo-

tions so they can keep stable relationships at all costs. In extreme

cases, they’ll never bitch, never moan, never complain. They are

seemingly happy at all times.

If you are a nurturer by nature, it is hard for you not to take

care of people in need. We’re not saying you should give up being

who you are—a loving, caring, involved human being. But you

do need to examine why you are a compulsive nurturer of others

and worry so little about yourself. You might also examine
how

you nurture and find slightly less imposing ways of caring for the

people you love. So what is the prescription to bring a little more

balance to your life?

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As always, if you have an acute concern such as a lump or

pain in the breast—especially if you have a close relative who has

had breast cancer—see a doctor immediately. But you must also

focus on your long-term breast health, which means changing the

thought patterns and behaviors that are stressing your body.

Let’s jump straight into Louise’s affirmation system. Breasts

have to do with mothering and nourishment. But nourishment

has to go both ways—in as well as out. A good general affirma-

tion to remind you to strive for equilibrium in this area would be

“I take in and give out nourishment in perfect balance.” Specifi-

cally, breast problems have to do with a refusal to mother yourself

because you are putting everyone else first. To counter this imbal-

ance in the way you nurture, try repeating the affirmation “I am

important. I count. I now care and nourish myself with love and

with joy. I allow others the freedom to be who they are. We are all

safe and free.”

Part of achieving balance in the fourth emotional center is

giving voice to those thoughts that have been lingering beneath

the surface. You may have no problem facing the emotional highs

and lows of another person, but you can’t address your own nega-

tive emotions such as fear, sadness, disappointment, depression,

anger, or despair. So how do you learn to express these emotions?

The key is to start slowly. Now that you know that voicing your

emotions—good and bad—can be lifesaving, you can start to

break through your wall of emotional stoicism, starting right this

moment. And the best way into this is twofold: assess your own

feeling about people in your life who show their less happy selves

from time to time, and find yourself an emotional midwife.

The first of these steps is a hard realization for a lot of peo-

ple. Assessing your feelings about others will help you get a bet-

ter grasp on the reality of relationships. Your always being happy

isn’t the reason that people like you. They like you because you

are you. And they accept that you are human. When your friends

are experiencing disappointment, you want to help them. They