Emotion and Disease

"People I saw with chronic disease of all kinds--from malignancies or autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or ulcerative colitis to persistent skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis, and neurological disorders like Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS), multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and even dementia--were characterized by certain unmistakable emotional life patterns.  Among these was the chronic repression of so-called negative emotions, especially of healthy anger, ...an overriding sense of duty, role, and responsibility; an undue concern for the emotional needs of others while ignoring one's own; and, finally, a core belief--again, often unconscious--that one is responsible for how other people feel and that one must never disappoint others."  -Dr. Gabor Mate.

This quote comes from the article I wrote about a while back.  There's a link in the right margin if you want to read the whole thing.  It's truly mind-bending.

What Dr. Mate calls "emotional life patterns", I call "emotional structures".  Otherwise, this quote is exactly what I have learned about how emotions affect health.  Specific ways of processing our emotions lead to specific diseases.  Later in his article he says, 

"Lou Gehrig, the baseball great after whom ALS is named, embodied self-abnegation to the nth degree, as do all people with ALS I have ever treated, interviewed, or read about--or have been described in medical papers.  His famous record of consecutive games played was not about his indestructibility, but about his unwillingness to surrender his self-identity as invulnerable, with no needs.  He suffered injuries like all other athletes:  All his fingers had been broken at least once; some more often.  He would play even when wincing with pain and sick to the stomach with the agony of it, but his dutifulness would not allow him to rest."

Essentially, how Lou Gehrig thought about himself, which is based in an emotional structure, is what caused his disease.  Almost any disease you can think of could be caused by how we process our emotions.  But, at this time, Western medicine doesn't understand this.  So, there are no studies about it.  And I can't see how there will be any time soon.  The complexity that would have to be involved with drawing up a study that would have any chance at getting to the truth will prevent science from understanding this for a long time to come.  But despite that, there are patterns that can be seen.  And those patterns show that any time we choose an emotional structure instead of emotional health, we are putting our lives in danger.  So what's the answer?  The answer is to remove emotional structures from our lives, one by one.  Find ways to align our behavior with health.  Not only will we reduce our chances of developing a dread disease, but we will also live happier lives.