they can cure anything with positive thinking alone. An intelligent approach to self-healing integrates social, biological, and cognitive components with conventional, complementary, and alternative care. The key is balance.
As the medical community continues to debate the statistics, a growing number of medical and mental health professionals believe there is definitely something to the concept of a self-healing personality. Dr. Joseph Schippa, a clinical psychologist in Tarrytown, NY finds that some patients actually refuse to heal, taking refuge in their disease instead because it meets such secondary needs as avoiding unpleasant tasks (taking out the garbage), work, and social obligations. “In contrast, someone with a self-healing personality is not afraid to look at himself. He is willing to take a risk and find out how he is contributing to the disease,” he says. “He is not afraid to look at his resentment towards his own injury or illness and learn from it.”
Another cognitive impediment to healing can be an obsessive relationship with exercise. When Anthony Fallucci developed tendinitis in his left shoulder, his physician told him to stop working out until it healed—no exceptions. But like most of us with an exercise habit, Anthony found it hard to stay out of the gym. Instead of focusing on how important it was to rest and allow his shoulder to heal properly, he obsessed about getting back to his workout schedule and resumed strenuous exercise too soon.
The result? He now suffers from recurring shoulder issues that will likely dog him for years to come. “Weight lifters, joggers and bodybuilders tend to be compulsive athletes,” observed Dr Dempsey. “Some have healthy, self-healing personalities and are willing to suffer a few weeks without their workouts so they can avoid chronic problems later on. But many others are so compulsive about training that they will work out even when doing so actually damages their health.”
Remembered Wellness and Helpful Self-Talk
The good news is that it’s possible to develop and strengthen personality traits that will promote and accelerate the healing process. Dr. Robert Benson, who pioneered the mind-body medicine movement with his groundbreaking research into meditation as an antidote to the harmful effects of stress hormones, believed that activating our memories of what he calls remembered wellness can give a cognitive boost to our bodies’ natural healing abilities.
Accessing a remembered wellness experience is as easy as letting your mind take you back to a moment when you were in optimal health. Perhaps you were “in the Zone” on the ski lift or tennis court. Or you can remember the exhilaration of taking a long walk along the ocean or through the woods. When you find that memory, mentally step into it again, as if it was happening around you now. Allow yourself to see what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel what you felt.
Since all emotions are stored as molecules in the brain’s limbic system, stepping into a remembered wellness moment will release a cascade of those wonderful molecules so that your body will be flooded with what it’s like to be in an optimal state of health.
This, in turn, can give the immune system the boost it needs to regenerate healthy new cells. If you can’t remember a time of optimal wellness, think back to a moment when you knew you would recover from a cold, broken bone, or a childhood illness. Follow the same sequence: Mentally step into that moment again as if it was happening around you know. Feel what you felt, see what you saw, and hear what you heard. Let yourself re-experience that tingle of knowing that you were going to recover.