Discovery – change your mind and you change your physiology
- Jill Dunsford
- Mar 25, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 20, 2020
During my time as a physiotherapist, I could not help noticing that the way we think affected our behaviour and even outcomes after operations and accidents.
"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right"
Henry Ford
These belief systems arise as we grow up and obviously can be almost anything. Daddy calls you his little princess and you can start to believe it and behave that way or you experience continual rejection and you can believe that you're flawed, you're shameful. Our personalities are shaped by our experiences and we develop an ego, a "protective personality" as Dr Sue Morter calls it. We also develop strategies in order not to feel the pain of hurt, rejection, inadequacy or whatever negative feelings want to arise. We are not old enough to understand the projections of other people on to us.
Our outlook on life may well be something we’re born with but I also suspect that it comes as a result of life’s experiences. Or most likely a combination of both.
As I grew up I made decisions about me, about others, about life but I didn’t know that I was doing this. When something happens we create a belief system about it.
I rush into mummy to give her a big hug because I love her but mummy is cooking and there are lots of hot pans on the stove. She pushes me away, I decide mummy doesn’t love me.
I’m not old enough to realize that it would be dangerous to hug me back at that time.
This is a very damaging thought and feeling so I become alert to looking for it and the next time I’m pushed away, my mind tells me “see, I told you mummy doesn’t love you.”
This can grow into “if mummy doesn’t love me, I am unloveable.” This was actually one of my core wounds. And of course it's totally unconscious, I am completely unaware that I have this belief.
This idea, that I am unloveable, is like a virus in a software system. If your computer software is corrupted, it doesn't function well. Run a programme to update the software and your computer is fixed.
Whatever thoughts and beliefs we have, create different neurochemicals and signals in our bodies. Negative ones create cortisol and adrenalin, positive ones create DHEA, oxytocin, serotonin and anadamide. It is now well established that stress creates both physical and mental illness and one of the most stressful things we can experience day in and day out, is our negative inner self talk. We probably wouldn't accept this type of talk from anyone else, but we do it to ourselves all the time. And it's so continuous, we hardly notice.
Obviously, I am not a computer but my unconscious mind is very simplistic and not unlike a computer. It records everything including the message, the decision I made about being unloveable. Imagine living your life with that running in the background! So by becoming aware of this wound, this software virus and asking myself "is it true?" I am able to heal this wound, to transcend it, to integrate it so that it no longer causes a malfunction.
"You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude" - Eleanor Roosevelt
On another occasion I was feeling anger and rage but because of the way I had been treated, expressing my anger was a dangerous thing to do so I suppressed it at that time and it stayed that way. I was in a double bind, all this anger and nowhere and no method to release it. It also required as much energy as stored in the anger to suppress it, energy I could use for living.
Years later I had a go at sparring with my personal trainer and the sense of peace afterward was amazing! The action of fighting, even though it was only mock fighting, released much of the stored anger and frustration.
"Change your mind and matter changes right along with it."
Dawson Church "Mind into Matter."
As I said, I am not a computer, I am an energy being. At core level we are beings of energy. In fact I believe we are not energy beings having a physical experience, we are not even spiritual beings having a physical experience but we are energy/spiritual beings creating a physical experience.
I am having a shiatsu massage and suddenly I find myself outside my body, I feel light, happy, free. I realise that I have made a fundamental mistake in thinking that I was the body but I still am even though I now have no body, it is there below me. "I had thought I was the radio but I am the radio waves being broadcast by the radio."
As I continued to heal myself by integrating my traumas, feelings of love would arise. At first I thought they were coming from outside, I used to liken it to being wrapped in “angel’s wings.”
These feelings could be so blissfully intense that I thought I wouldn’t be able to function properly if they persisted so I tended to push them away too. But, fortunately, one evening after I said to myself “I can’t live like this,” I followed it up with “Oh yes I can.” From then on in, I was able to increase the frequency of these feelings of love and joy and bliss. It was and still is as if these emotions, this part of me is intent on healing me, of making me more and more whole.
These emotions are incredibly healing and beneficial, not only for you, but those around you. My experience of life, of relationships altered dramatically. Life, existence became a joy. Lovely people came into my life, I started to acknowledge that people actually liked me. I ceased to be shut down, defensive, believing that people would find fault with me.
Several years later I realised that these feelings of love and joy and bliss were arising from within me, that by no longer resisting the pain, the negative feelings, integrating my traumas, that many of the negative feelings were no longer there, that all there is, is love, that this love was arising from within me. That underneath all the negativity there is, and always has been, only love. At my core, I am love. At your core, you are love.
It is also now known that our energy affects this around us, so if you increase the number of times you feel happy, you will help others around you to feel happy too.
I changed my mind from telling myself I am unloveable to I am loveable.
And so it continues.
Resources
Loving What Is - Byron Katie
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