how telling your story can help you heal

 

It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to understand how hearing or reading just the right story at just the right time can help with healing. For example, you might gain a new perspective on an issue that has been troubling you. Perhaps you've been struggling with guilt after a friend committed suicide. You pick up a book like "The Ticking Is the Bomb" by Nick Flynn whose mother took her own life. His story looks at suicide differently. He considers the inevitability of it given the course of his mother's life. After reading it, you might see things a little differently. Maybe it wasn't your fault your friend found life unbearable. Perhaps you didn't miss the clues because there were none. A layer of guilt falls away.

Healing.

"The book I read after my mother died,

the how-to-deal-with-trauma book,

had failed to say when change could resume,

when one could go on."

~Nick Flynn~

~"The Ticking Is the Bomb"~

 

Or maybe your friend has been diagnosed with cancer, and it doesn't look good for her. You have no idea what to say or do for her, no clue how to help. Then you pick up a book like "Talk Before Sleep" by Elizabeth Berg, and you learn all the ways you can comfort and encourage her and even bring a touch of humor to the situation. 

 

Healing. 

 

It may be a bit harder to grasp the idea that telling or writing your own story can also be a healing practice. But it is.

 

Maybe for you, anger sometimes erupts without provocation. Perhaps you feel anxious even when life is going well. Maybe despair blankets everything you do for reasons you don't understand. Or a particular song always brings you to tears. You can't help it. Why?

 

"We don't write what we know.

We write what we wonder about."

~Richard Peck~

 

Intrusive thoughts and feelings are the shadows of traumatic memories. Remember the time your father hit your mother in a fit of rage? You were so angry you wanted to hit him back, so scared you didn't dare move, and you couldn't run away. You felt helpless as a child, and now you feel worthless as an adult.

 

Perhaps, in your family, you never knew when the front door would open and your father would come home drunk, and even though you were already in bed, he'd find you there...

 

Maybe that was the song you listened to so you didn't have to hear your parents argue.  

 

Your anger, or sadness, or fear needs to find a time, or a place, or a name to explain it. You need to know its identity, its source, and its setting in order to renegotiate your relationship with it.

 

Telling your story puts you in control. It helps you think about what happened. It helps you understand why. You get to decide how it ends. And that can help you heal.

 

 "At any given moment

you have the power to say,
'This is not how my story is going to end.'"
~Christine Mason Miller~

 jan

 

make me care

The art of storytelling is as old as the spoken word, and it's just as powerful. It entertains, informs, and connects mankind across culture, race, and creed. It has the power to heal, and in medicine, it can be a life-saving skill.

Most people enjoy reading or listening to stories at their leisure. The health care provider, on the other hand, listens to stories all day long because it's part of his job. This is how he obtains the "history of the present illness," perhaps better described as the "story of the present illness." It forms the basis of all that follows: performing the physical examination, tracking down the diagnosis, and formulating a treatment plan.

The clinical encounter begins when the health care provider takes the patient's history. He listens for specific details that lead him to the diagnosis. If the problem is pain, the provider wants to know where it's located, and whether it's sharp or dull, steady or throbbing, constant or intermittent. He wants to know how long the patient has had the pain--for a day? For a month? For years? What makes it better? What makes it worse? These details guide him through a maze of possibilities.

"The shortest distance

between a human being and the truth

is a story."

~Anthony de Mello~

The problem is that patients don't know what the provider needs to hear. They don't arrive at the office prepared to rattle off a list of relevant signs and symptoms. It's the provider's job to ask about them, but he only has so much time to get to the bottom of the patient's problem. Nowadays, the written or dictated clinical note has been largely replaced by the electronic medical record (EMR), so rather than listen to the patient's history, the provider navigates his medical record with a series of clicks that pull up an array of bulleted lists, complicated charts, and sketchy details. This is intended to expedite what has been ruthlessly abridged to a ten-minute office visit.

Because time is limited, doctors often redirect the patient who appears to be getting off track or is slow coming up with answers. In fact, one frequently quoted study found that physicians interrupt and redirect the patient when they are as few as 18 seconds into the interview. Frequent redirection leads the patient to believe that what he wants to say isn't important or relevant, so details go missing.

This is a problem. Healing, or failing to heal, occurs in the context of a person's relationships with his family and friends, his surroundings, expectations, and perceptions, as well as his emotional, psychological, and spiritual life. If the patient is denied the opportunity to tell his whole story, part of him may never heal.

"Healing yourself is connected to

healing others."

~Yoko Ono~

Let's say, for example, that the patient presents with abdominal pain. He answers all of his doctor's questions. The pain has been present for four days. He describes it as constant. It started in his upper abdomen, but now it radiates into his back. Eating makes it worse. In fact, the patient says he hasn't been able to keep anything down for the past twenty-four hours. After a focused physical exam and a few tests, the physician correctly diagnoses the problem as acute pancreatitis. But that doesn't explain why the patient develops a headache, has trouble keeping his balance, and becomes confused the day after he is admitted to the hospital.

What the doctor doesn't know is that the patient has been drinking heavily because his wife walked out on him recently. In fact, he blacked out a couple of days ago and woke up on the floor next to his bed. He didn't mention it because he was busy answering the doctor's questions about his abdominal pain. So, the doctor missed the small subdural bleed his patient sustained in the fall until days later when he had his first seizure.

This scenario highlights an important problem. Obtaining an accurate and thorough medical history takes time. Given the imperative to see more patients faster, the provider may have little time to explore the details of the medical history with every patient. Perhaps he's running behind schedule, or an emergency interrupts him. In some cases, the patient can't bear to disclose the sorrow, or fear, or shame that underlies his symptoms, so he doesn't mention it. It takes time to invite, enable, and encourage some patients to share the story that brings them to the office in the first place.

"Storytelling is the essential human activity.

The harder the situation, 

the more essential it is."

~Tim O'Brien~

When the patient is constantly redirected in order to satisfy the provider's agenda, important parts of the story may be overlooked. This reinforces the importance of hearing the patient's full narrative. When we reach into their cholesterol laden hearts to understand why they are poisoning themselves with food, we need to know more than what they are putting into their mouths. When a patient is noncompliant, we need to consider what he is afraid of, or angry about, or grieving over. When we allow the patient to speak, we may discover that the reason for this one's fatigue, or that one's intractable headache is end-stage disappointment, or anger, or shame that has festered for years.

Only then can we help them heal.

"The greatest story commandment is:

Make me care."

~Andrew Stanton~

jan

why you should take this test

 

Rotsund, Norway

The last time I saw my primary care physician for my annual wellness exam, I was handed a clipboard and instructed to answer page after page of questions. They included updates to my demographics, my insurance information, my family medical history, and a "health risk assessment" that included questions about lifestyle (exercise, diet, smoking, and alcohol/drug use), about my mood and stress levels, current and previous health conditions, dementia screening, recent falls, and my ability to perform daily activities such as feeding myself, dressing, and bathing. It may be annoying to fill out the same questionnaires year after year because it's time consuming and redundant...but it makes sense from a health maintenance perspective. This line of questioning helps the physician identify problems that predict poor health outcomes. It provides information he can use to institute preventive strategies, as well as timely interventions to correct or compensate for developing problems. 

"A facility that asks you to fill out

a health screening form is a sign of one

that really cares about its members."

~Kathi Davis~

Back when I was in practice, we didn't use screening questionnaires like these very much, but now they're considered an important part of the patient's medical record...which makes me wonder why the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Survey is not included in the paperwork we submit to our health care providers. This questionnaire addresses childhood trauma and its effect on the development of chronic disease in adulthood.  

A growing body of evidence supports the link between childhood adversity and the development of physical disease and mental health disorders later in life. Childhood tauma includes physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, physical, verbal, and emotional neglect, living with a depressed, mentally ill, or addicted parent, witnessing domestic abuse, and losing a parent to separation or divorce...among others. Chronic adversities like these actually change the architecture of the child's brain, altering the expression of genes that control stress hormone output. This triggers an overactive inflammatory response that leads to adult disease states, notably autoimmune conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, and PTSD-like anxiety and reactivity.

You can take the quiz here. Answer yes or no:

Before your 18th birthday:

1.      Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you, or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?

2.      Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you, or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

3.      Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way, or attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?

4.      Did you often or very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special, or that your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?

5.      Did you often or very often feel that you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you, or that your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?

6.      Were your parents ever separated or divorced?

7.      Was your mother or stepmother often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her, or sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard, or ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?

8.      Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?

9.      Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?

10.  Did a household member go to prison?

Add up your "yes" answers. This is your ACE score. If yours is greater than 0, you should be concerned.

The bad news is that the higher your ACE score, the more likely it is that your health and well-being are under assault. People with an ACE score of 4 are twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer than someone with a score of 0. Each "yes" response increases the likelihood of hospitalization for an autoimmune disease by 20%. Someone with an ACE score of 4 is 460% more likely to face depression as an adult than someone with a score of 0. An ACE score of 6 or higher shortens an individual's life-span by almost twenty years. This is a big deal. 

The good news is that these early changes in the brain, and their subsequent effect on inflammation and the immune system can be mitigated. Epigenetic changes are reversible. There is a path to healing. 

Some of the practices that have been shown to promote epigenetic healing include:

• writing to heal
• drawing
• mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation
• tai chi, qigong, and yoga (moving meditation)
• dietary changes to promote a healthy microbiome in the gut
• guided imagery
• hypnosis
• neurofeedback
• EMDR

The problem is that childhood trauma is notoriously shrouded in secrecy, and very few healthcare providers are aware of these associations so they don't ask about them. Most physicians see several patients with high ACE scores every day, but all too often the underlying trauma that plays a role in the patient's illness goes unidentified. The opportunity to intervene therapeutically is, therefore, lost.

If you're interested in the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and their effect on health outcomes in adults, I would recommend you check out the book, "Childhood Disrupted" by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, or visit her blog online at www.donnajacksonnakazawa.com.

If you're curious about the role of epigenetics in illness and healing, check out "The Biology of Belief" by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD.

At the top of the list is "The Body Keeps Score" by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

"As the ACE study has shown,

child abuse and neglect is the single most common

cause of drug and alcohol abuse,

and a significant contributor

to leading causes of death such as

diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide."

~Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.~

It is a shame to withhold this vast body of knowledge from patients when it offers an effective pathway to healing that has, so far, been largely ignored.

jan

unspoken forces at work

  

Hippocrates is the one who advised physicians, "First, do no harm." Cicero proclaimed, "The safety of the people shall be the highest law"...lofty principles that, to this day, both challenge and inspire health care professionals.

It was Paraclesus, though, who declared, "The physician should speak of what is invisible...He becomes a physician only when he knows that which is unnamed, invisible, and immaterial, yet has its effects." He was speaking, of course, about the impact of the patient's thoughts, feelings, and emotions on his experience of injury and illness. These include his fears, expectations, and hopes...all invisible, all immaterial. 

"O, what an untold world

 there is in one human heart."

~Harriet Beecher Stowe~

In his book, "The Wise Heart," Jack Kornfield reminds us that the key to healing has to do with the patient's understanding of his illness. What is he fearful about? Why? What does he think will happen to him? How will he support his family? Who will take care of her children? It turns out making the diagnosis is sometimes the easy part. Uncovering the patient's hidden fears can be harder.

"You'd be surprised

what lengths people will go to

not to face what is real and painful 

inside them."

~Rae Earl~

For example, let's say a patient presents with breast cancer. She is forty-four years old, the same age her mother was when she was diagnosed. But her mother died following surgery and a full course of radiation and chemotherapy. This is what scares her. She jumps to the conclusion that this is her fate as well, despite the fact that her mother's cancer was far more advanced when it was detected. Despite the fact that treatment has improved in the twenty years since her mother's diagnosis. The patient's initial reaction to her diagnosis may be to give up right then and there...her unnamed, invisible, and immaterial thoughts, feelings, and emotions left unchecked.

"Your body hears everything

your mind says."

~Naomi Judd~

Or let's say the patient is a middle-aged man who schedules a ten-minute appointment with you so he can get something for his heartburn. But he isn't simply experiencing indigestion. He describes symptoms that suggest he is having angina, and it's getting worse. He has convinced himself that it's just his stomach because the thought of a heart attack scares him. His brother had one last year and ended up with a defibrillator. His ten-minute appointment includes an EKG and blood work, and it stretches into a forty-five-minute dialogue about unstable angina and the need for hospitalization. He tries to laugh it off, but beneath his cavalier manner, he fears for his life. His family. His business. All of it unspoken, invisible, immaterial.

"A physician is obligated to consider

more than a diseased organ,

more than even the whole man.

He must view the man in his world."

~Harvey Cushing~

Clues to the unspoken forces at work in the patient's life include refusal of, or noncompliance with treatment. Denial, anger, impatience, or resistance. Reticence. Despair. 

As providers, we should handle these patients with special care. We should ask about their fears, expectations, and perceptions. We should confront whatever misinformation they may have picked up on-line. Whenever possible, we should offer hope.

We have to explore what we intuit to be unnamed, invisible, and immaterial before healing can begin.

"Anything will give up its secrets

if you love it enough."

~George Washington Carver~

jan

a vision for healing

The Northern Lights in Reine, Norway

It has been said, 

"We touch heaven when we lay

our hand on a human body."

~Novalis~

As healthcare providers, this reminds us there is something sacred about the study and practice of medicine. Something that has been sacrificed in favor of speed, power, and profit among our corporate taskmasters. After all, we invoked all the gods and goddesses as witnesses when we took the oath that sealed our commitment to healing:

THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH

We pledged:

"I will comport myself

and use my knowledge in a godly manner."

The ethical, moral, and humane practice of medicine is our sacred duty. As Stephen Cope puts it:

"Sacred duty is the thing that,

if you don't do it,

you will feel a profound sense

of self-betrayal."

~Stephen Cope~

I was reflecting on this recently in view of the unrelenting onslaught of cruelty, injustice, hatred, and suffering that are all around us. War. Gun violence. Racism. Human rights violations. Climate change. Sexual misconduct. The anger and sorrow we bear. How hopeless things appear. How helpless we sometimes feel...at work, at home, in our communities, and in the world at large.

And then the answer appeared. A vision for healing.

If you do not read anything else in your lifetime, hop online right this minute, and order this book:

You don't have to read the whole book, unless, of course, you're interested in somatic psychotherapies, grounding vs. transcendence, and the nature and practice of embodiment. But if you're interested in how to survive in this world, just read the last chapter, "Call to Action!":

"Your sacred purpose maybe be subtle and calm...

or it may be the fiery path of the activist."

"We need you to endeavor to make

our medical system more heartfelt and wholistic."

"We need awakening men to rise up defiantly

and stand down those men still locked inside patriarchal 

and sexist ways of being."

"Don't be fooled by the shopping mall, 

the suburban malaise,

or the numbing addiction 

to our phones, screens, and virtual realities."

"It's one thing to pray, meditate, dream, and visualize

the sacred possibilities for our planet;

it's quite another to ground our expansive intentions

in lived action."

"It should not be women's work, alone,

to shift patriarchal paradigms--

men must boldly rally for their female counterparts."

As healthcare providers--doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, EMTs and first responders, and therapists in every field--we are called to live out our sacred calling every day. Indeed, as human beings we are all compelled to seek the truth, and to defend our right to live according to what we learn. In this book, Jeff Brown encourages us to confront our sacred purpose consciously. He teaches us to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from discerning our unique calling in life and to live according to our own deep truth.

He suggests we ask ourselves:

What am I here to learn?

What am I here to overcome?

What am I here to offer?

What does my authentic face look like?

Who am I beyond the inner static of inauthentic voices?

jan

 

an existential crisis

Moskenesoya, Norway

Something shifted this week. After a month or so of stubbornly cold, gloomy weather we awoke to clear blue skies and temperatures that soared into the eighties. Suddenly everything turned green. The air was thick with the fragrance of honeysuckle and lilacs. I had just received a message from my daughter with a video of my granddaughter receiving an award at school (she's in kindergarten) citing her for being mindful, hard-working, kind, helpful, and inclusive. I was sitting on my deck watching a couple of deer in the woods out back, enjoying the sound of birdsong and the acrobatic antics of the squirrels, thinking to myself, "This is a perfect day." Then I received a second message from my daughter. 

She is a Child Life Specialist which means she supports children and their families when they come into the hospital where she works. Using age-appropriate language, she educates them about what they can expect to happen, and she uses calming and distraction techniques to help them through it.

This message described a child she was seeing who had been admitted with RSV a few weeks earlier but didn't seem to recover completely, so her parents brought her back to the ED. She was displaying some behavioral changes which led them to perform an MRI of her brain, and there it was: a massive midline tumor with hydrocephalus and metastatic spread all the way down to her lumbar spine. BAM!

She is six years old. My award-winning granddaughter is six years old.

How does anyone process this? One child happy and healthy, the other doomed to pain, fear, and suffering that herald an early death. In a few months. On an otherwise normal day.

How can we hold space in our hearts for both of these children? For their parents and siblings? 

How would you? 

"Hope is the last thing ever lost."

~Italian Proverb~

I ended up on a path through the woods. This is my "go to" refuge when I need to think things through, when I need peace, or strength, or insight. A walk in the woods serves as the perfect metaphor for the duality that sometimes throws us for a loop. One minute it's warm and sunny, the next it's cloudy and cold. One minute the path is straight and smooth, the next it's stoney and steep. One minute the air is quiet and calm, the next it's windy and wild. One minute you know the way; the next minute, you're lost.

Like life.

"Of all the paths you take in life,

make sure some of them are dirt."

~John Muir~

The child my daughter supported during her MRI will be transferred to a medical center that is better equipped to treat her. My daughter will never see her again. Nor will she ever forget her. 

Nor will I.

"At the end of the day

people won't remember what you said or did.

They will remember how you made them feel."

~Maya Angelou~

jan

no mud, no lotus

 

Gimsoya, Norway

If you are a healthcare provider in any field, or the caretaker for someone you love, you are well aware of the duality that permeates every aspect of reality...the coexistence and contradiction between joy and sorrow, between kindness and cruelty, between life and death. We feel this deeply every day in our work, but never more acutely than with the care of our patients. 

If you are writing about your experience, you may feel the push and pull of duality in your narrative.

First there's the story you have pictured in your mind...and then, there's the process of translating it into words on a page. It can take you from soaring with enthusiasm to slogging through the muck. You may find yourself stuck.

"No mud, no lotus."

~Thich Nhat Hanh~



Inspiration wanes, fatigue sets in, and the story line languishes. Self-doubt creeps in. And even though the end is in sight, like a desert mirage, it fades away the closer you get to it.

"What makes the desert beautiful

is that somewhere it hides a well."

~Antoine De Saint-Exupery~



This is a lonely place for writers. Your memoir or manuscript isn't polished yet so no one else has seen it or commented on it. Therefore, you don't get to enjoy the inspiration that comes with an exchange of ideas, weighing in on suggestions from writing partners. You need a fresh infusion of incentive, like the energy that emerges when composing a query letter or submitting to an editor or agent. But you're not there yet. This is just hard, lonely work, day after day.



How do you cope with it? 

Sometimes I'll take a little time out to dash off a piece of flash fiction, a short essay, or, like today, a blog post. It's like indulging in a little snack when you can't wait for supper.

 

Sometimes I have to tear myself away from the keyboard and polish off a few necessary chores before I can concentrate again. For example, when there's no food in the house, or I run out of clean underwear. I mean, priorities do change. Writing sometimes has to wait, especially at this time of the year. There is spring cleaning to think about and yardwork to do. Storytelling may have to take a back seat for a while.

What can you do in the meantime?



When I'm stuck for an idea or unsure how to put one into words, I'll pick a random passage to edit and revise, backtracking a bit until I'm sure I'm on the right path again.

"Real writing begins with rewriting."

~James A. Michener~



It also helps to read something by another author on a similar topic. A couple of my go-to favorites are:

"Memoir as Medicine" by Nancy Slonim Aronie

and

"Still Writing" by Dani Shapiro

Right now, I'm reading "Good Writing--36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences," by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott. Next will be "Dharma Dog," by Stephen Cope when it comes out later this year.

Just the process of reading beautiful writing invites the mind to get in on the action. 

Do you ever get bogged down in the middle of a project? What do you do to recharge? To move ahead? How do you get it all done?

"Many of life's failures

 are people who did not realize

how close they were to success

when they gave up."

~Thomas A Edison~

jan