Many of you will be familiar with the name of Hans Selye. If you’ve bought and read my Diet Wise, you’ll certainly know of him (chapter 7). If you’ve never heard of him, Selye was an Austrian physician who ended up finally residing in Montreal, Canada, working at McGill University and ultimately Montreal University. He is famous for a theory about stress related illness called The General Adaptation Syndrome.
But what got Selye started, he tells us in his classic book The Stress Of Life (first published in 1956), is observing sick people while he was a medical student.
He noticed that whatever the disease, patients all had the same symptoms: not THE symptoms, that defined the specific illness, but general symptoms, that seemed to be present in ALL diseases.
The young Selye was flabbergasted that this was never mentioned or taught by the professors. They seemed to ignore these remarkable common symptoms of being unwell: the patient “looked ill”, felt ill, had a coated tongue, complained of more or less diffuse aches and pains, and with intestinal disturbances, of loss of appetite. Most had a fever (sometimes with mental confusion), an enlarged spleen or liver, inflamed tonsils, a skin rash and so forth. It was all screamingly obvious to Selye, yet professors, he says, “seemed to attach very little significance to any of it.”
What Selye had spotted could be called the sickness of being sick, or stress related illness.
In contrast, says Selye, “The “characteristic” signs, which might help diagnose a specific disease, were either absent or very difficult to elicit.” Yet his teachers were insistent that without these specific signs, not much could be done. Without them it was impossible to know precisely what the patient suffered from, and hence it was obviously impossible to recommend any efficient treatment against the disease.
It was clear, says Selye, “That the many features of disease which were already manifest did not interest our teacher very much because they were “non-specific” and hence “of no use”, diagnostically, to the physician.1”
You can see where Selye’s thoughts were going with this and eventually he evolved a whole theory of “being sick” (not just the sickness).
These pioneer observations led to his description of the effects of “noxious agents” as he at first called this. He later coined the term “stress”, which has been accepted into the lexicon of most other languages. However Selye later remarked that he actually meant “strain” but that his knowledge of English at the time was not precise enough.2
The Second Illness
I’m going to switch to the term “second illness”, which was coined by Barbara Brown in her brilliant book Supermind. She writes along the same lines as Selye.
Any disturbance of body or mind creates yet another, second, very real disease. There is, she tells us, for every illness or mental distress, a “second illness” that is the distress of just being sick or, for that matter, the distress that comes from being out of any part of life’s normal course for any reason at all.
To appreciate the true virulence of this second illness, Brown asks us to consider different kinds of illness in a general way.
First there are the illnesses or distresses of life that cause moderate discomfort and diminished ability to participate in life’s activities. This would include an almost infinite variety relatively mild health problems, from recurring headaches, ulcers or bouts of hay fever to bereavement or high blood pressure. No matter how mild or severe, all health limitations impose restrictions on one’s performance or participation in social activities.
The second category of illness would be one of degree; more severe disabling illnesses, such as paralysis, loss of a critical body part, cancer, other debilitating chronic illnesses and severe mental illness. Victims of these illnesses become social outcasts, set aside as permanently impaired and beyond rescue.
In other words, the person is the eternal patient, consigned to the back corridors of life.
Whatever the case, the emotional reaction to not being able to perform up to public or personal expectations involves a tangle of nearly every emotion known to psychology: anxiety, depression, frustration, anger… all made worse by fear of the unknown, the not-knowing if the signs of sickness herald something serious, when it will end, whether it will end even, not knowing where to find help, or what help, and being uncertain how long the condition will last, or whether it may become permanent, these are all hidden layers of sickness, dis-ease and stress related illness.3
Brown and Selye are alike in identifying the “stress of being ill”.
New Healing Concepts For Old Issues
I’d like to introduce the concept of getting everyone on Earth back into “life’s normal course” (see above) and powering global stress levels. I can do that by getting to work with the literate, ingenious, inventive human mind that Barbara Brown talks about (also see above).
I call my subject Supernoetics
(super– means the biggest or best, of course; noetics is an Ancient Greek word, meaning the science of mind, soul or spirit). It’s a kind of mental and spiritual grammar: a new way of positioning our thoughts, for better emotions, behaviors and outcomes.
We have a particularly powerful remedy—or rather it’s a whole battery of remedies—that I choose to call Transformational Mind Dynamics. By that I am signifying it is not psychology, counseling, psychotherapy or psychiatry; it’s healing and restorative but it’s not a “treatment”; it’s the pathway to the Self.
In other words, we should all do it. Indeed, those who are not distracted by physical health problems or continuous present-time stress will probably get more out of it than those seeking cures. But either way it works.
Wherever you stand on life’s pathway, or if you dropped off it for a time, I can show you a whole system of meaningful change.
I hinted at it in my magical book To Fly Without Wings, I’ve shared some of the simpler material in my bumper compilation of tips, tricks and tweaks: Healing Your Life.
At last the time has come, I feel, to release the full flood of knowledge.
My mission is all about HEALING THE WORLD. I’m a doctor, a fixer, I like to lessen suffering and share good things. This morning at coffee, I joked with my wife Vivien about declaring myself “President of Planet Earth”.
I notice that nobody else has tried that role! Everybody seems to be on a self-serving path. Politician’s you wouldn’t trust with your purse, never mind your life, livelihood, the environment and all our futures!
What we don’t need right now is more politicians, more meddling priests, more schooling, more laws and more “peace missions” (read: war). What we do need is a Doctor To The World.
That’s me!
Seriously though, I can do a better job of healing things than any of the crowd that claim they are trying.
The answer is not politics: indeed that kind of group are a cancer on society. I don’t need power, prestige, mega millions of dollars or an armed guard to protect me from the people I claim to be serving. All I need is a classroom and the chance to share much brilliant knowledge that has come my way over the years and I have catalogued into Supernoetics.
To help convince you that there are worthwhile answers already available, I have compiled writings that I will share with you in my Super Mentality newsletter brought to you by SupernoeticsTM. Join my self-growth community today, you’ll get your free report and start receiving a weekly dose of personal power for self-growth and transformation.
This information is so vital that we just need to get it to the people that could use it the most. I urge you to forward this email to a friend and let them know that this information could change their life too.
These were not “channeled” as some people will try to claim. I was wide-awake and just looking at the issues and applying reason. I’m quite clever (a member of the high-IQ club MENSA) and have a good way of putting things, don’t you think?
Plus, I have a sense of humor. You have to laugh on Earth, otherwise you would go crazy!
Anyway, please join me in a journey into knowledge and Being. It is, as I say, non-political and non-denominational, no –ism and no -ology.
(So don’t write and tell me about YOUR religion. Earth religions have had over 2,000 years to produce a result and what have we got for it? Trouble, strife, sectarianism, wars, crime, depravity and peril on every side).
I am not trying to talk people out of having a religion. But religion is not the answer we need. It’s divisive. We just don’t need another belief system. We need workable truths, effective strategies, sane behaviors, thought structures on which to hang it all and a willing purposefulness. If any of that applies to you, listen up…
It all starts with education.
P.S. If you want to get the latest information on SupernoeticsTM, please click here to join now.
P.P.S. When you sign up for FREE you’ll receive my insightful eBook the “Constellation of Accord.” In it, you will discover the most important interactive aspects of our human relationships. Don’t miss out – remember, “Life can change in an instant; all it takes is one decision.” Make yours today and get more healing knowledge now.
References:
1. Selye H, The Stress of Life, McGraw-Hill, New York/San Francisco, 1976, pp. 15-16
2. Hans_Selyel. (n.d.). Wikipedia
3. Brown B, Supermind The Ultimate Energy, Bantam Books, New York, 1983, p. 114-116
The post A Very Real Yet Ignored Disease – Stress Related Illness appeared first on Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby.