The Great Pain Deception: Faulty Medical Advice Is Making Us Worse by Steven Ray Ozanich

Author:Steven Ray Ozanich
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780615462219
Publisher: Silver Cord Records, Inc.
Published: 2011-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

12

Symbolic Attacks

The part of your body where you have stored your anger is the part that has to express it. — John Lee, Facing the Fire160

TMS author Fred Amir writes, “I hated commuting, so my subconscious found a way to get me out of it: numbness in my right leg—the leg that presses on the gas pedal!” He continues, “I have seen this phenomenon in so many people: the professor who coughs and has to take breaks from her lectures, so that she can rest; the programmer whose hand hurts and cannot work.”161

In Basic Principles of Psychoanalysis, A.A. Brill, MD, writes of a woman who had developed a pain in her arm. The medication she was given didn’t help. She sought out a psychoanalyst who discovered that she was deeply in love with a man who hadn’t proposed to her. Her family had disavowed him and warned her to never speak of him again—to forget about him. Internally she was wrought with turmoil, trying to determine whether he truly loved her. She told the analyst, “He pressed my arm.”162 Apparently, the last night she saw him, he had held and pressed her arm. At that very moment, she thought he was going to propose to her, but he didn’t. When the momentous words were never spoken, her internal anger was converted into pain—her focus and anger now riveted on her arm where he touched her.

In the early 1890s, Mark Twain had had enough of writing. He was totally burned out and had vowed only to write for himself. Unfortunately, his continuous bad business ventures left him bankrupt. Twain fell from being one of the country’s wealthiest people during the Gilded Age, to being unable to pay his bills. He decided he had to write yet another book in order to get back on his financial feet. The book was eventually entitled The American Claimant (1892). He hated writing it—despised having to do what he d(id)n’t want. Id rebelled and he soon developed severe pain in his writing arm. The pain was so severe that he could no longer write with that hand, and so he switched to his left, but the pain shifted to that arm soon after (the symptom imperative, it seems, has been around for awhile). Twain eventually finished the rather unsuccessful book using phonographic dictation, the first author ever to use the device. So much for doing what you don’t want to do.

I had a professor in graduate school who once told me that every time he had to give a speech in grad school, he would lose his voice (he actually knew where it was, it just wasn’t functioning properly). The vocal cords are symbolic of the ability and necessity to express. His brain chose that area, in which to silence his disdain.

182

Chapter 12: Symbolic Attacks 183

One of my favorite examples is in Healing Back Pain. Dr. Sarno describes a man who got a rash under his wedding band, but when he separated from his wife the rash went away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.