Superhealing: Engaging Your Mind, Body, and Spirit to Create Optimal Health and Well-Being (ARC) (8 page)

The release of excessive levels of stress hormones affects the immune system by depressing the production of antibodies and interfering

with other physical functions. But if we face stress with a positive attitude, we enhance our natural restorative capacities.

Most interesting, , is that there is such a thing as good stress. Stress is a response that helps the body to maintain its homeostatic balance in the face of perceived danger. On a short-term basis, this is helpful to us. Selye documented that stress differs from other physical responses by producing the same systemic changes whether we receive

good news or bad news, whether the impulse is positive or negative.

However, in an effort to distinguish the two, he called negative stress
distress
and positive stress
eustress
.

When we are stressed, we can move from an alarm state to a re-

sistance state and to an exhaustion state, depending on our reser-

voirs of energy to cope with stress. Despite the frightening statistics, the truth remains that
chronic stress has no power over you
. The only power it has is the power you give it. If you respond in your own

mind to the stressors in your life, approaching them with a positive perspective instead of a fearful, helpless, or guilty perspective, your physiology will dramatical y improve.

Superhealing involves consciously deciding to express emotions

in an honest way, instead of repressing them, and maintaining a

positive and self-aware outlook. These are critical, potent factors in creating optimal health. Nothing can replace these decisions.

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37

PERSONALITY, STRESS, AND

HEALTH: ADAPTABILITY TO LIFE

I’d been in private practice for a couple of years when one day,

while running errands, I crossed paths with the granddaughter of

one of my patients. This particular patient, an elderly woman, had numerous medical problems, including heart disease, diabetes, and

high blood pressure. In response to my question of how her grand-

mother was doing, the young woman quickly replied, “Grandma’s

fine. She only gets sick when she gets upset.” That astute and timely observation struck me as a tremendous revelation. It made me consider my other patients in a new light of understanding.

When we are il , how we respond to the illness greatly affects how well we feel. Hippocrates said, “I would rather know the person who has the disease than know the disease the person has.” Studies have found that personality traits have an effect on long-term cancer survival. In a study to predict survival rates in terms of remission, the researchers found that personality classification could predict medical outcomes in 88 percent of the patients who had a rapidly pro-

gressing cancer. The most important characteristic was the “inability to relieve anxiety or depression.” Only 46 percent of people with a poor inability to cope went into remission. Of those with a “fighting spirit,” 75 percent experienced a positive outcome.7

At the turn of the twentieth century, William James
wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”8 Since then, numerous studies have found that personality patterns appear to play a role in the regulation of the immune system and have shown that they can

lead to the development of specific diseases. I discovered an interesting study from as long ago as 1937 that evaluated the coping styles that lead to disease. In this study, Harvard researchers found that 38

PART ONE:
Your Superhealing Mind

individuals who typical y handled stress and strain in an “immature way” became ill four times more often than those who didn’t. Their chief coping style, projection—unconsciously disavowing their conflicting thoughts and feelings by identifying them in the behavior or statements of others—was like that of children.9

From 1947 to 1964, Caroline Bedell-Thomas and Karen Rose con-

ducted a study of essential hypertension and coronary artery dis-

ease, charting its occurrence among 1,300 students at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.10 The researchers were most intrigued by what

the study revealed about the link between personality and illness.

The subjects of the study who had been emotional y distant from

one or both of their parents for more than thirty years had unusual y high rates of mental illness, suicide, and death from cancer.

Part of Bedell-Thomas and Duszynski’s study consisted of giving

students the famed Rorschach inkblot personality test. Students who developed hypertension, who had heart attacks, and who developed

malignant cancers at a much higher rate had described the inkblots using “morbid” words. Those who later committed suicide had used

cancer-related descriptive words fourteen times more often than

their healthy counterparts had.11

Bedell-Thomas and Duszynski wondered, Could “unconscious

dreads and morbid fears, which, in some individuals, are ever-present stresses, undermine the biological guardians of general resistance?”12

During my own medical school education, there was a lot of buzz

about the type A personality. This personality style describes people who are obsessed with time management and are high-achieving work-aholics, rigidly organized, and status-conscious. The three major emotional symptoms of this personality type are free-floating hostility, triggered by even insignificant events; impatience from a heightened sense of time urgency; and a highly competitive drive, which causes stress.

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At the time my colleagues and I were buzzing about the type A

personality, it was believed to be a significant risk factor for the development of heart disease. A long term study by cardiologists of

men ages thirty-five to thirty-nine estimated that the risk of coronary heart disease was doubled in those with type A behavior pat-

terns.13 For the first time in my medical education, I learned that personality could influence disease.

Years later, I would discover that the only real disease-predicting aspect of type A personality is hostility. Follow-up research determined that anger, hostility, aggression, a general y resistant and stub-born attitude, and defiance of authority have been found to be positive predictors for developing disease. Other traits of the type A personality may be related to heart disease but are not shown to directly cause it.14 “The consensus is real y that it is not all aspects of type-A behavior, but just the hostility component” that causes coronary heart disease, said Redford Williams, the director of the behavioral medicine research center at Duke University School of Medicine.15

Researchers have determined that hostility, independent of its

contribution to unhealthy behaviors, contributes to the development of heart disease through increased blood pressure, erratic heart rate, fat accumulation, and abnormal platelet function—which means

that it plays a role in the clot development that causes a heart attack.16 Studies reveal that besides hostility, anxiety, depression, and low levels of social support also may be risk factors in the development of cardiovascular disease.17

It is true that we still do not know exactly what role the mind plays in maintaining strong immunity and preventing the progression of

most diseases. However, considerable evidence has shown that the

mind matters when fighting cancer. Research by many scientists is

contributing to a growing body of information about the dynamics

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PART ONE:
Your Superhealing Mind

of the psychological, emotional, and social factors that affect the progression of cancer.

A recognition of the link between the emotions and cancer dates

back to ancient civilizations. Hippocrates, whose approach focused on holistic methods and incorporating the healing power of nature, encouraged his fellow physicians to support and not interfere with the body’s ability to heal itself. Around 170 ce, the prominent Roman physician Galen said that melancholic (sad) women suffer from cancer more frequently than sanguine (cheerful) women do. Although

many of Galen’s conclusions have been proven false over time, his

sense of a connection between personality and cancer was astute.

In 1926, psychologist Elida Evans published
A Psychological Study
of Cancer,
a book based on research into the link between depression and cancer. She advised that cancer is a signpost in the road of life cal -

ing for change.18 During the 1960s, psychologist Lawrence LeShan

conducted interviews with hundreds of cancer patients and found

commonalties among them, including emotional repression, low self-

esteem, long-term suffering, and the experience of personal loss.19

During clinical rotations in the hospital, I often heard my attending residents remark, “Only the nicest people get cancer.” My observations confirmed what they said. Cancer patients, more than oth-

ers, are usual y extremely agreeable, pleasant, and solicitous. Why? Is there such a thing as a cancer personality, a type C?

Psychologist Lydia Temoshok did a study of cancer patients to ex-

plore the mind-body connection. When her results were released in

1987, she was accused of “blaming the victim” because she found a

correlation between cancer and an extremely emotional y repressed

coping style that involves appeasing others, denying one’s own feelings, and conforming to social standards.20 Type C patients were

devoted to pleasing their spouses, clients, siblings, friends, and co-

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41

workers. Their core identities seemed to hinge upon gaining the acceptance of the significant individuals in their lives. This coping style seems to weaken the immune system’s defenses and can render a

person more vulnerable to cancer progression.21

What Dr. Temoshok was pointing to was a characteristic known

as
other-directedness
. Sociologist David Riesman coined this expression in his 1950 book
The Lonely Crowd
to describe the psychological effect of always adapting oneself to another person. People who are extremely other-directed are out of touch with their own emotions and needs and typical y look outside themselves for acknowl-

edgment and direction. Unfortunately for them, physical health can be compromised by routinely repressing their important needs. As

Dr. Temoshok noted, this type of person “is not aware that he or she is in distress while focusing on others. Since this pattern develops in childhood as a means of survival, during adulthood this pattern can make some social relations easier, but at a cost to the individual.”22

Seeing how hard it was for people to change this pattern of behav-

ior, Dr. Temoshok developed a program called Type C Transforma-

tion for cancer patients and for healthy people who want to prevent disease. Her program involves “gradual, stepwise alterations in the person’s automatic responses, which facilitate transformation on cognitive, behavioral, and emotional levels.”23

The emotional responses that are believed to predispose a per-

son to the progression of cancer are prolonged depression, impaired emotional outlets, and rejection or abandonment by a parent or another significant person. Patterns of excessive denial, avoidance, repression, defensiveness, and rigidity of thought are associated with compromised immunity. This does not mean that emotional repression will cause cancer in every case, only that this behavior pattern is a risk factor for cancer and impedes the chances of recovery.

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PART ONE:
Your Superhealing Mind

The three basic elements of transformation that type C patients

benefit from are social support, personal empowerment, and emo-

tional expression. Dr. Temoshok found that patients who underwent

transformation surpassed their doctors’ expectations for physical

recovery. 24

CONTROL AND HARDINESS STUDIES

When exposure to stress is prolonged, or when several sources of

stress exist concurrently, it’s hard for the body to return to a normal, healthy state of balance. Animal studies, as unkind as they are, have borne this out. In one, animals were implanted with tumors and then repeatedly shocked with electricity, a highly stressful event. If the animals could end the shocks, they were more often able to reject

their tumors.

How does this translate into the stress of ordinary daily life for human beings? Ellen Langer, a Harvard research psychologist, determined that residents in a nursing home who felt no control over their daily lives, in terms of choices, experienced a much higher rate of death during the study than those who made choices. When the

residents in her study were allowed to choose their meals and when they made telephone cal s, their rate of dying dropped a full 50 percent within eighteen months.25

In the 1970s, Salvatore R. Maddi, a University of Chicago profes-

sor of psychology, read an article in the popular consumer magazine
Family Circle
that warned, “Stress can kill you, so you need to stay away from it.” He wasn’t certain of this assertion, because he’d previously conducted research that determined that stress could some-

times have a positive effect by stimulating creativity in those who didn’t seek to avoid change. His research—different studies conducted in the last thirty years—has proven that stress can be beneficial

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when it’s treated as a challenge. People who handle stress well share key personality traits, which Dr. Maddi cal s “hardiness attitudes and skil s.” 26