"Our study confirmed a positive and clinically relevant effect of FR(functional relaxation) and GI(guided imagery) on total serum IgE levels"
Ok so I'm doing all this research on inflammation in the body and brain which seems to be at the root of a large portion of illness and also seems to be deeply relatied to hormones which seem to be deeply related to emotional stress and trauma.
We need more research on these kinds of therapiesbut I truly think they will have genuine application.
Something about yoga: I've seen people with mental illness get worse. I saw a correlation between both people having mental illness and being attracted to exotic esoteric spiritual practices and people who didn't seem all that messed up get so obsessed (insert fanatic diet, movement therapy,yoga, random philosophical jargon) that one has to wonder if they weren't implicitly seeking to INCREASE or even CREATE a manic state that wasn't already there.
When I say this: I'm thinking along the lines of "crazy like us". People have x pathology--- they are looking for a way to present symptom sets such that they can be seen. I think people tend to intentionally albeit subconsciously CHOOSE activities that will increase a mentally ill state in an attempt to present to the world that they need support.
One theory as to why the placebos are helping people with mental illness MORE now than they used to is the change in the amount of service, support, and attention that people participating in the studies are given. People need to be seen, and they need to be seen at the specific level of the root of pathological problem. (I'm not going to bother looking for a more appropriate term and assume you get what I mean.)
You can over stimulate the "spiritual" areas of the brain to complete mania and the reality is that is actually the goal of a lot of the esoteric practices.
My point with all this is that I believe that people can bring themselves back into a balanced state. And when I say that, I mean even from extreme conditions. I think that MOST books on this subject are over reaching-- IE they get overzealous with positive results and write books saying, "You can fix your genes with meditation!" when this is a pretty wild claim (albeit one I believe worth researching)--- that has NOT been verified.
It's akin to telling someone in a hospital who can't walk, "You CAN walk, you just have to believe and you have to push yourself and it going to hurt but you have to do it."
On the one hand-- this might actually help the person walk. On the other hand, if the person can't walk-- you're torturing someone.
And on the ... er... third hand... if the person could walk but they need other interventions, you may have just prevented them from getting better support by pressuming they just need to "exert their will more forcefully".
One thing I've really been getting into is research on the nature of how supportive people in life-- meaningful relationships, etc etc--- have a protective factor in physical and emotional health. If that process has been disrupted in early life, it doesn't just get fixed when you add supportive people.
There's something to knowing that ultimately if you really need people they will disappear that changes you. People can say, "Sure, I'm here" but if you know, "Yeah but if I was helplessly dependant (a child) you wouldn't be there." and it changes how you relate to people.
The reason this is relevant to me is that a fundemental tenant of the self help industry (american style) is that all you need is yourself. I don't believe that is true. I believe that truly genuinely, for real health we need meangingful relationships, we need to believe there is an external reason for continuing through a painful existance, and in general, that kind of purpose usually comes from being needed/wanted/appreciated in a meaningful way by the external world. We also need to know on some level that if we fell apart there would be someone to carry us.Most of us don't fall apart in a permanent debilitating way.... so therefore most of us can have a sense int he back of our minds that "people are there for us" simply because that is how it worked in our lives. When we really truly were in need, we found someone.
For people who found themselves really truly in need of meaningful compassionate empathy and support and found the world bone dry--- creating that "false" pressumption that "people will be there for us if we really need them" is particularly difficult, because we know it isn't true. When a therapist tries to convince a person to trust the world--- they fail because they are being paid.
It's fundamentally NOT a case of someone agreeing to be there for you if you fall apart. It's a case of a person doing there job and tolerating your presence and giving some research based feedback because they want to be paid.
i'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm working on it. : )
I'm totally with you, sister!
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