Diagnosis Hypnosis

 

In 1999 I bought the centennial edition of the Merck Manual.  I was getting ready for my outpatient internship and thought it would be a cool purchase. It was a waste of money.

It also came with a facsimile of the very first edition.  It was much thinner, of course.  There were fewer diseases back in 1899.  

What?

Doctors and others have documented funny symptoms for centuries.  The body hasn't changed in a millenia. Why is the current Merck Manual 3500 pages long? (The original was 192 pages.)

If you're in the emergency room, triage is boiled down to a small number of life endangering symptoms, not thousands. 

When I was in my master's program, we had to memorize a lengthy list of psychological diagnoses. It was overwhelming and confusing.  Even the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders) has 947 pages.  Someone's life being impacted by stress is much more important than what's printed on page number 527. 

What's the point?

The point is, while we are arguing on what kind of fancy name to give someone's presentation, the person could care less what category of illness best describes the situation.  The person wants empathy and a solution.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and throw all of this extraneous knowledge away.  Stick with me for a minute before you go back to watching Tik Tok videos of car crashes. 

The basic things people need to stay alive are: 

Air

Water

Food

Comfort from the elements

In order to obtain these things we need to work together in a community.  To meet these goals, we each have to pursue our individual talents so we can help each other. 

How did we get so complicated?

This question has put me in the middle of a challenge to get rid  of what I call Diagnosis Hypnosis.

Regardless of a diagnosis given, we have to give the body what it needs to rebuild tissues and maintain homeostasis otherwise the body reaches a state of exhaustion and possibly death.  The famous endocrinologist, Dr. Hans Selye, describes this in General Adaptation Syndrome.  

Whether a person succumbs due to cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, or some type of brain death the body reaches a point of final exhaustion. 

What does this have to do with chiropractic?

The founding of chiropractic is based on The 33 Principles of Chiropractic.  (Ralph Stephenson, DC) One of the principles emphasizes that all processes require time.  Another principle notes there is limitation of matter and limits of adaptation.  (Great thinkers at different times in history)

And because I get all kinds of questions from people.

What causes arthritis?

Why are my feet cold?

How do I get rid of itching and rashes?

What supplements get rid of indigestion?

What exercise will get rid of my muscle pain?

How do I lose weight?

People mostly want to "get rid of" something.   That is the diagnosis hypnosis.  

We have choices. We can focus on discomfort or fear with a strong urge to stop it in its tracks.  Or we can take a moment to discover what programming the body has chosen to initiate because it encountered stress.  The body is being protective.  If we stop the process, we allow the stress to do more damage.

Imagine driving to your house and your car becomes stuck in the street flooded with dirty water. You notice the water is coming from a fire fighter spraying a hose.  You wouldn't tell a fire fighter to roll up the

hose and leave.  Sure, you've diagnosed a flood and blame the fire fighter for making a mess.  But you don't realize there's a fire because most of it is extinguished.  You don't see the smoldering wood in the back of the house, but the fire fighter does. 

Simple analogy.

What did I do with the Merck Manual?  I used it as a bookend. It stands up by itself. 

How do I use chiropractic to help someone obtain air, water, food, and comfort from the elements?

Spinal adjustments re-engage the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. Too much stress programs the limbic system to dominate.  Stress happens on a daily basis.  Sometimes it's manageable.  Sometimes it's overwhelming. The limbic system suspends the rebuilding process and normal metabolism. This leads to weak tissues that are unprepared for future stress. 

Adjustments help the brain shift gears from protection (fight or flight) to rebuilding. 

If your brain is balanced, you can manage your life effectively. 

Don't let a diagnosis overwhelm you.  Take the time to understand the body's wisdom as it responds to a stress, traumatic event, etc. Reduce the stresses you have control over and get adjusted to "even the scales" of nervous system actions. 

Diagnosis hypnosis can perpetuate stress, with a fear response. 

Expose yourself to a positive hypnosis: a better balanced brain with chiropractic. 

The #1 Reason Everyone Needs Chiropractic

--Dr. Lisa

--Your Health Freedom Advocate

Liberating Your Nervous System from Unacceptable Ideas

Expand Your Talents Beyond Your Comfort Zone.

Photos: 

https://creatingimpact.net/2018/01/16/overcoming-overwhelm-part-1-im-overwhelmed-mean/

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-merck-manual-of-diagnosis-and-therapy-thirteenth---13th---edition_merck-sharp--dohme/1209564/item/2239583/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwm6KUBhC3ARIsACIwxBhuuIjee7_djj9TmpyJ1uTtaGuk-W8kcrFJBLMDPrxPi5LL-0HlgegaAlgFEALw_wcB#idiq=2239583&edition=1869920

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/video-zone/how-do-firefighters-put-out-fires

Follow the Leader: Your Brain is the Leader

Why I Need to be a Chiropractor...

What I See is Unacceptable

(photo: https://dianegottsman.com/2017/05/15/business-etiquette-follow-the-leader/)

I went through a very liberating experience as an 11 year old. Revisiting it with my adult mind, I can only imagine how well or poorly we hang on to childhood memories.  A child is still learning  how to  handle stress.  Hopefully kid problems are manageable and age appropriate.  Sweating out a spelling test is manageable.  In my case, I didn't know how to verbalize my worry and ask my parents for help.  

Luckily, I resolved the issue on my own and moved forward with confidence.  When I was in 6th grade my mom lost both her parents one month apart.This was my first experience with grief.  Knowing my mother was dealing with her own broken heart, I was unsure how to cope.  Then, in my own thoughts, I convinced myself I was  going to die next. 

Every body sensation made me paranoid.  While noticing a visible vein on my calf, I was adamant it was going to kill me.  I don't remember how long I carried this anxiety, but I found relief in a box of old books. 

Someone gave us a crate of their unwanted junk, but I discovered a treasure.  I peered into an old textbook that explained why I didn't have to be scared of my own body.  It was perfectly written for my reading level with easy to follow diagrams.  It was a health book that taught me how the body systems coordinated with each other to keep me alive and active. This was fascinating information that was not taught in my school until junior high. 

All my fears dissipated.  My obsession disappeared and I lived my life as a typical kid once again. 

When I was 15 years old, my grandmother moved in with us.  Watching her health fail under the "guidance" of the medical system was an eye opener for me.  Surely 41 years later (Yes! 4 decades.) I wouldn't be seeing the same malpractice going on, but look around you. It's worse.  I am determined to avoid the poor  quality of life that my dear grandmother endured. It's not acceptable to me. 

I also have a special soft spot in my heart to help people with mental health challenges.  I quickly grew disillusioned with the dis-empowering mental health system as a therapist. 

Chiropractic became the missing link that ties together the profound mental and physical interplay so often ignored by both disciplines. Sadly, even chiropractic ignores this.  

I have become a critic of just about everything in the health arena.  Frankly, the body is not complicated.  Nature is not complicated.  Our educated arrogance has made a mess of things. 

It's been 22 years since I graduated from chiropractic college and I still haven't been able to make sense of the world.  If you have had any similar experiences you will be asking the same questions.  

I went to college for a long time because I wanted to be qualified to perform in three specific professions.  I started out as a teacher, next, a mental health therapist, and finally, chiropractor.  After all this, I realize what I was taught does not match up with life experience.

How about you? 

When I attempt to reconcile this, I have trouble explaining it to others who are still tightly snug in their comfort zones of ideas that are incompatible with the real world. 

Here's where I stand: Chiropractic is the most profound way to re-calibrate your brain once you understand what the brain does and what it needs. 

I need to be a chiropractor to alleviate the frustration and stagnation people are suffering through. 

I don't want to see people fall through the cracks and that's exactly what happened to my mental health clients, as well as my grandmother.  

A lot of what we rely on as conventional wisdom has not served us.  You can use your own life as an example.  Ask the hard questions and be willing to accept a new answer.  

What isn't matching up? Pain syndromes.  For all the folks I know who rely on medications, they don't get better.  They are stagnating, or getting worse. 

This is the wrong approach.  So, why does it continue with such fervor (as I am bombarded with numerous pharmaceutical ads during a TV show)?

Remember, you can't fool mother nature, and you can't fool the brain.  The brain's activities are deliberate for the situation. It works hard to assess and respond to the environment.  How do we support the logical functions of the nervous system?  Most of the time we ignorantly get in the way. 

Pain medications put the body in fight or flight.  There's no tissue repair going on.  It's suspended.  On the other end of the spectrum, tranquilizing medications that just plainly shut you down. 

Then we throw in to the mix our inadequate food supply, misconceptions about healthy diets, lousing timing of our daily activities that stress our natural body rhythms, "workaholism," worldly pressures, etc.  I'm not trying to depress you.  We do have alternatives. We can make peace with our stress.  It just takes a little detour in our thoughts to make a better plan. 

I am a chiropractor that treats the nervous system as the leader that it is.  The nervous system is in charge.  It's time to work with the nervous system, and not foolishly assume we can manipulate the body.    It's time to stop judging body responses as wrong, or dysfunctional.  All body responses are logical.  

I follow the body's lead.  I use chiropractic as a tool to enhance what the body is already doing.

Sounds weird?  Is that the opposite of your life-long programming?

Hang in there.  You are in for a brand new ride. 

The #1 Reason Everyone Needs a Chiropractor

--Dr. Lisa

Your Health Freedom Advocate  

Liberating your Nervous System from Unacceptable Ideas