It happens all the time. Let's take a look at an example in an ordinary life: If you are embarrassed, pointed out and laughed at, blood would flood the capillaries in your cheeks, your heart rate would probably increase, gastric juices would rise, adrenaline would probably be released. That's quite a marshalling of physical responses to a couple of words.
With this perspective on the body-mind connection, it is all the more easy to understand how in some cultures it was considered an act tantamount to murder to embarrass someone. They believed that the 'blush' was akin to a mortal wound.
Consider another example everyone has at one time or another experienced: If you have a frightening dream, which consists of little more than images in your mind, you might wake up sweaty, your heart palpitating, your muscles tired and twitchy. Indeed, a special chemical is required during sleep to paralyze us so we don't physically respond to our dreams as if they were actually occurring.
The point: What we think, see in our mind's eye, the images we form in response to the words we hear have very distinct physical consequences.
In situations of trauma or where there is danger, the likelihood of an image or thought eliciting a strong physiological reaction is even higher. People who are frightened are highly suggestible and are looking for guidance from a trusted authority figure. And if you're the one helping, you're the authority figure for the moment. What you say will most definitely have an impact on that person in ways you might not have ever imagined.
Some people have likened this response to herd instinct. A herd leader (either lioness, gazelle, or horse) that senses danger will run in a particular direction or take a specific action that the rest of the herd will follow by scent trail. For humans, words take the place of scent. While an antelope may emit certain pheromones that scream, "Hey, this way," a human will express himself verbally.
A person in pain, fear, and trauma most often wants and needs the same thing. Biological processes can be marshaled towards a person's survival and healing when we know what to say and how to lead them.
MINDBODY EVIDENCE
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said "A patient who is mortally sick may yet recover from belief in the goodness of his physician." Our perceptions were included in the healing process as long as two thousand years ago.
In 1919, in The American Review of Tuberculosis, Dr. Tohru Ishigami found that the prognosis for a TB patient depended more on what the "patient has in his head than what he has in his chest." He was watching certain patients follow rather predictable paths to recovery when some suddenly became severely ill. What he discovered upon examining their histories was that those who died had almost all experienced some kind of trauma-a loss, a crisis-gone into despair and given up.
In 1971, a striking example of the power of mental images was documented by Dr. Carl Simonton, a radiologist at the University of Texas. He was treating a patient with advanced, terminal throat cancer. He weighed 98 lbs. and his odds for survival were only 50%. Weak and severely ill, he still needed radiation. But Simonton knew that it was very unlikely that he would survive it. Desperate, he turned to visualization, asking the patient to "see" or form a mental image of his immune system as white blood cells successfully attacked the cancer as he received the radiation. The patient saw it as snow covering a black rock. The result was a complete remission.
The anecdotal evidence, both from the literature and personal experience, is virtually endless. What we think and feel, the images we see in our minds, the things we tell ourselves (and hear others tell us and believe) have a profound impact on our bodies.
How does this work?
Some physicians, such as Dr. Dabney Ewin, have speculated that in shock, injury or illness, a patient's left brain function is over-ridden. We don't need to analyze, we need action to survive. When a person is scared, they tend to be more pessimistic and to rely more on the immediate impact of right brain input, specifically imagery.
With the right words and intention, our voice, in essence, becomes the substitute for the left brain, guiding, through its authority and proper use of positive imagery, the patient into the recovery process as much as possible.
Other researchers, like Candace Pert (the co-discoverer of endorphins) pursue the notion that there is an intelligence in all of us that is NON-LOCAL. Some, such as Dr. Joel Elkes of the University of Louisville, believe that this intelligence is the immune system. He calls it the "liquid nervous system" and says it seems to operate in and through the body as an additional sense.
J. Acosta is a writer and practicing clinical psychotherapist. She has written two books: THE WORST IS OVER (2002, Jodere) and THE NEXT OSAMA (2006). Her third is due to come out some time next year and she is currently in the middle of her fourth.
She has her practice in New Mexico with her canine therapeutic assistants. She has worked with anxiety and fear in patients for twenty years. She has watched it, felt it, wrote about it, and helped heal people from it. As a result, she has learned a few things about fear, particularly that growing epidemic she calls VIRAL FEAR.
