Changing the way we heal
I had a revelation this week. A year ago my sister-in-law’s aunt was suddenly getting into heated fights with her sisters and nieces. When I came to visit, I could feel the disturbance in the field these fights had left behind. Nothing anyone did seemed to help, nothing got resolved. And people’s feelings were hurt all around. People stopped talking. A few days ago, a year after the summer of fights, my sister-in-law called to tell me the aunt who had stirred up so much gall in the family had just been diagnosed with brain cancer. She had a brain tumor. I flashed back in time to a memory of a friend confiding to me that her father-in-law was saying and doing inappropriate things that were embarrassing her, only to discover a year later he had brain cancer. In each case, family members came late to the realization that mind, body and emotions are all connected. They can be separated only in our broken thinking about them. Isn’t it time we change that way we think, feel and act about the mindbody connection?
When we get sick, any of us, we get sick in mind and body and heart and spirit—all at the same time. Because they’re all connected. This fundamental truth about healing explains why our chronic disease epidemic—which affects more than 50% of people living in the U.S.—parallels a spike in the divorce rate which has doubled since the 1990s. Apparently, the vow to love and cherish in sickness and health is getting harder and harder to obey as more and more couples are challenged with chronic illnesses that last for years and even decades, many of those spent with degenerative symptoms of cognitive and emotional decline before the physical illness is even diagnosed. We can connect the same dots to our suicide epidemic, with suicide increasing 36% from 2000 to 2018 according to the CDC, with an alarming number of them among young people.
People who are paying attention to the stats and who have the capacity to be emotionally honest about the social causes of our chronic dis-ease often come to the inevitable and obvious conclusion that the U.S. healthcare system itself is sick. If you have doubts about that conclusion, it helps to compare the U.S. healthcare system to a country like France to see where Americans stand.
In skill and competence of medical staff, France ranked 1st compared to the United States' disappointing 16th ranking. France ranked 3rd in cost compared to the United States' shocking 23rd ranking, with Americans spending almost twice as much per capita as our French counterparts for far less health when it comes to chronic illnesses. And France ranked 3rd in the overall quality of their health care system compared to the United States' dismal 41st ranking.
On top of all that, people in the U.S. suffer from mental disorders more than anyone else in the world. That astounding fact may explain why Americans seem to be struggling not only to heal ourselves but also govern ourselves.
From dentistry to psychotherapy to chemotherapy, Americans need to change the way we think about healing so that we really can. Starting with the commonly held belief that healing comes from outside of us—from a doctor, a pharmaceutical product, or a treatment—rather than from within us. Healing from within is the terrain of prevention, or what I call preventive self-care. Without all of us practicing it, living it, teaching it and investing in it, health care will never be enough to stem the turning tide.
What do Americans really need to turn our ship around so that one day we step foot again on the land of wellbeing? First, we need to connect human health to environmental health, and look those political and economic consequences squarely in the face. We also need to stop avoiding, denying and delaying the truth about the chronic illnesses we ourselves have created, and start the journey of healthy adaptation rather than continue down the path toward maladaptation and sickness. Finally, we need more faith that we can turn our ill health around by valuing, teaching and practicing preventive self-care practices to reduce the risk of chronic illnesses in the first place.
We’re all in this together. Practice now.
