The mind has strange ways of helping us cope. In continued toxic circumstances, some of us need the support of drugs, food, alcohol or other substances to deal with the emotional toxicity. The toxicity could come from a personal relationship, at our workplace or even in our own business. Sometimes, many of us are unaware of this toxicity but are absorbing it at a subconscious level. The signs of it are pessimism, poor hormones, low energy, headaches, constipation – because there is blocked energy – and poor quality of sleep or insomnia.
But when we free ourselves from this negativity, the mind adapts, becomes stronger and helps us live a more fulfilling life. When that acceptance happens, we heal, like Laurence did.
Laurence Nossein is 53, and lives in the suburbs of Paris. She is one of the 50+ people I interviewed for my book, ALIVE!
For 25 years, Laurence was on antidepressants. After being diagnosed for anxiety following a dizzy spell, the doctor gave her a low dosage and asked her to continue taking it.
Laurence didn’t have a good marriage but couldn’t walk out because she had two young daughters and her husband was suffering from multiple sclerosis. As years went by, she began to feel more stifled. When her daughters were 16 and 18 respectively, Laurence finally decided to leave her husband. “My health in the relationship was suffering and my husband’s health has been deteriorating because of his condition. I was not happy in the relationship but had stayed on because I felt guilty about leaving a sick man,” Laurence confessed. “But the fear of our daughters not having even one parent to fall back on in case they underwent some kind of a crisis, finally made me gather the strength to take this decision,” she admits, adding, “For the first two months I cried every day. I felt I had split the family, destroyed it. I was very guilty. Six months later it became better. I don’t regret it.”
But something incredible happened after Laurence was done with the crying. She quit taking the antidepressants and never felt the need to go back to them. Twenty-five years of dependency vanished in a moment. Because she quit the reason she took the anti-depressants.
Till now, everyone has told you that if you eat right you will not get diseases. If you protect your immune system, you will be able to avoid or overcome COVID-19 better. If you strengthen your immune system, you can avoid cancer or overcome it faster. But no one has told you that your thoughts can make you unwell. And when you are unwell, your immune system packs up.
The role of the immune system is linked to everything we do and yet, treatment is piecemeal. Have this symptom, take this tablet. Let us take a step back to understand what we mean when we say, “Strengthen your immune system.” Every day your immune system destroys a cell that would have become cancerous if it lived. The five things that influence this process are – what your skin absorbs, what you ingest, how you breathe, how much you move and most of all – what you think.
The power of choosing our thoughts doesn’t come easily to everyone, it only comes to the brave. Particularly those of us who make that choice, to nurture our immune.
What Laurence experienced was negative energy from her spouse which created toxicity and need for antidepressants. But the positive energy from her children gave her the strength to walk out and live her life. Energy, then, is both a function of what you absorb and how your mind reacts to it. The moment the negative energy vanished from Laurence’s life so did her dependency on antidepressants.
There have been so many documented cases of caregivers or family members contracting serious physical illnesses after the person they were caring for passed away. They absorbed the negativity, experienced compassion fatigue and this manifested physically in the form of illness. Diseases have a physical manifestation but the genesis is in the mind, something that’s been proven by researchers at the University of Virginia School Of Medicine, who determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.
So be careful what you eat, and be more careful about what you think.
Remember – your body is listening to you.Excerpted in parts from Alive! Lifestyle changes to it proves your mind and body by Rachna Chhachhi, Harper Collins India, order your copy here.