Reader's Responses

YOUR BOOK

Dear Dr. Maté.....Last week I turned on the CFax radio station in Victoria and heard your interview and immediately took down the name of you book. I then turned to CBC radio which is my usual station and again heard your interview and saw myself in many of your stories. After purchasing your book, I have not been able to put it down and thank you from the bottom of my heart for the incredible research and insight. I only hope it is not too late for me. I believe this book will save many lives. Thank you again Dr Maté, for as we all know "everything happens for a reason."

K. S., Nanaimo, B.C.

COMPASSSION

Dear Dr. Maté,

I have never before written a fan letter, but I feel compelled to do so after reading your new book, When the Body Says No.

In trying to think why I found this book so moving, I come back again and again to the word "compassion". The book is full of it. Every page seems to speak of a deep understanding of the vulnerability and fragility of the human psyche.

I am currently working through the darkest time in my life and I recognize more and more the need for deep compassion (for myself, for others) as the essential lever for healing. Your writing speaks so richly of that, and I thank you. It has given me much to think about, especially in terms of my own life-long patterns of dealing with stress. I also wanted to pass along, briefly, my own experience of many years ago when my own body said no. After my son was born (I was 27), my periods stopped. Before that I had been as regular as any textbook example of a healthy young woman, but even after I stopped nursing there was no resumption of my monthly cycle. Every specialist who could possibly have something to say about this had a poke at me, and I took every test that was to be taken. No one could make anything of it. Of course, no one thought to ask me the real question. Yes, I was unhappy in my marriage, trying to hold on to normalcy as best I could. My husband, who seemed to have felt terribly displaced by the baby, had an affair with one of my closest friends, and then (as I found out later) continued having a series of affairs before he finally fell deeply in love with another one of my friends (do we see a pattern here??) and left me. During that time, we appeared to function normally, and I was unable to admit even to myself how terribly wrong things were. But my body knew I should not be in this relationship and that having another child (which my conscious self really did want to have) would be the worst thing I could do. So it said no. A few months after my husband finally left (my son was 6 at the time), I felt as though a fleet of moving trucks had moved into my lower abdomen, and lo and behold, my periods resumed as happily as can be. I am now just a few months shy of 55, and I haven't skipped a beat -- every 31/2 weeks, I experience that miracle of shedding blood, and it does feel like a blessed miracle to me. Of course, life is indeed complex, and I believe I know the reasons my body has decided to keep on with its menstrual tasks long after most of my friends have finished with menopause. I understand my body so much better than I did 25 years ago, and I continue to applaud its own ways of knowing. Your book encouraged me to do just that.

Thank you so much for your wisdom.

D.R., Campbell River, B.C.

SCARED AND GRATEFUL

Dear Gabor,

I met you briefly when you signed my copy of your book at Socrates Bookstore in Calgary last night. I began reading it this morning and have had to put it down after three chapters as my heart is pounding so and I keep crying and feeling scared and mostly everso grateful to have found you and your book.

For seven months I have been working on healing my body and spirit. My MD does not support my path and so I turn to three amazing women who have been guiding me - a herbalist, a chiropractor and a Somato(Spelling?) Emotional Release Therapist.

The mind/body connection was introduced to me only recently as I studied to become a yoga teacher. Yoga started out as a very physical activity for me and I was quite good at it, I thought. The more I practiced and studied, the less physical it became. Once I began teaching, the less confident I became. I wasn't practicing what I was preaching. My swollen joints forced me to give up teaching and the yoga I practice now is the antithesis of what I used to practice.

Obviously there is much more to my dis-ease history, but I am not writing to tell you my story. My biggest struggle recently has been justifying my healing path to family and friends who do not understand or agree. The stress I have experienced recently has been while standing up for myself, explaining myself, explaining why I don't take medication for my aches and pains, explaining why I am willing to take the time to heal all of me....which is tough when I don't understand it completely myself. I work very hard at getting out of my head and trusting the process, having faith that I will find my truth that got lost along the way.

So...when I read the review of your book in The Calgary Herald and then heard the interview on CBC..I had to come last night. To find a doctor who hears me is a blessing. Thank you, even after only three chapters I am comforted. I will read on and reread and reread and soon be well. I so appreciate the support.

Cheers and many blessings.

L. B., Calgary, Alberta

ELOQUENT AND ON THE MARK

Hi, I just wanted to write and tell you how wonderful I think your book is, When the Body Says No.

I spend most of my thinking time thinking about family problems, probably far too much time, and it's caused me chronic stress for sure. What you are talking about is so true, absolutely right on - A lot of this I know intuitively; such as when my mother died of cancer in 1985, ovarian cancer; I felt very much that the fact her cancer was connected to the awful position my father put her in when he would not allow her to help out my younger brother, who was on the street. My father was an alcoholic, and physically abusive to us, not to my mother, but she suffered anyway.

Your book is fantastic, I have read Caroline Myss' stuff on energy medicine, and Joan Borysenko, but none of it is as eloquent and on the mark as yours.

S.B., Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

ONLY THIS

Only this, that I have waited fifteen years to read these words that articulate so concisely and compassionately all I have learned as therapist and now program director in a cancer support centre.

L.S., Waterloo, Ontario

MAYBE WE’RE ALL CRACKED VESSELS

I'm not yet finished reading your book yet, but I felt compelled to e-mail you to let you know that this book is one of the most powerful reading experiences I've had in recent years. This one really grabs me where I live.

They say a real book reads you, and this is the experience I'm having with When The Body Says No. My whole family history, and the myriad mental and physical ills that resulted from the maelstrom, seems to be flashing in front of my eyes in technicolor and Panavision. Actually, I come away from my reading sessions (I can only do about 40 pages at a time, as the material is so intense) both exhausted and exhilarated. It's gratifying to realize that there is someone in the medical community who "gets" all this. It also, I will admit, triggers me in certain ways, as I still have a fair degree of post-traumatic stress syndrome which manifests in various ways. My physical health has always been very strong, but all my life I was prone to extreme depression and was hospitalized something like 12 times. This was complicated by alcoholism, the family curse, which goes back many generations.

My older sister is crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, not to mention morbid obesity, and lives as a virtual recluse. To this day she insists we had a wonderful family life with no problems, and that my father is a virtual saint. In fact she once sent me an eight-page letter describing in intricate detail my "happy childhood". (She missed her calling. I think she should have been a fiction writer!) We are now completely estranged, as when I disclosed in a letter to her the sexual abuse I suffered from my father, she cut me out of her life. When I started coming out with a truth she couldn't bear, her response was to shoot the messenger. But even at a distance, I want to cultivate some compassion for her, and your book is helping me at least make a start. She's caught in something she can't handle, obviously. At times I can't help but think that she has unconsciously chosen the chronic pain over the awful truth. Certainly there are payoffs in the illness: medical and social attention and sympathy, which likely eases the loneliness of her life. She does not have to bear the stigma of mental illness, either, as I've had to do.

My own doctor has been a tremendous help to me in regaining my sanity/sobriety over the past 12 years. But what makes her such a good doctor in my estimation is the fact that she looks at the whole person. To do anything less is short-sighted, I think, but I had to go through three other doctors in my first year of my sobriety to find her. In particular she always asks me about my writing, which is such a contrast to the way it used to be treated by the psychiatric profession. Years ago, when I was in and out of hospital so much, my writing was viewed more as a "symptom" than a way of life, and I was even told by one shrink that it would be better for my mental health if I gave it up and just got a job at the 7-11.

To make a very long story short, my life healed, if imperfectly, largely through the process of my writing (though I also had 5 years of Gestalt therapy, not to mention the unwavering love and support of my husband and kids). I wonder if healing from this sort of thing is ever complete. I have to live with an imperfect result, but I'm beginning to see that everyone around me is similarly imperfect, and that it doesn't render them any less worthy or loveable. Maybe we're all cracked vessels, damaged in some way, but repair is possible, and powerful. Once real healing gets underway, it is a primal force that transforms your life from the inside.

Please, please keep on with the work you are doing. It is of immense value to people like me who have had to struggle to get free from the generational meat-grinder. Health is a very precious thing, and worth fighting for. I can predict that not everyone will want to hear your message (people like to shoot the messenger!), but keep putting it out there, for it bespeaks the kind of truth that can quite literally save people's lives.

T.S., Edmonton, Alberta

A FAINT WHISPER

Dear Gabor:

I am writing to thank you for your new book, When the Body Says No. It confirmed for me what I had felt inside from a very young age. I grew up in a very stressful environment and have dealt with many issues including abandonment. As a young adult, I was first diagnosed with essential hypertension.

As I grew older and learned more about myself, one thing seemed obvious: the anxiety I felt in many situations, the way I automatically or unconsciously responded to the world was learned thoroughly and very early. It was so ingrained in my being.

For years, I struggled to overcome these anxious responses and in doing so actually did much more in life than I ever imagined. But the struggle took a great toll, not directly in physical illness, but in mental distress. It was difficult to enjoy life.

For the longest time, because of my experience, I have felt that stress has an incredible impact on so many people's lives. I have long believed that it was the cause of so much of our physical and mental distress and disease.

Recently, I have been reminded just how important it is to look at a person as just a body that has symptoms. Last March my mother died. She and my father had been married for 56 years, and my dad had been the primary care giver over the last few years as my mother sank ever deeper into dementia. My mother, by the way, was one of the most anxious people that I have ever known. She, at a very early age suffered both from asthma and eczema. Later in life she had major surgery for ovarian cancer.

Anyway, shortly after my mother died, my father's health took a distinct downturn. It started with an inexplicable and terribly uncomfortable full body rash. Then what seemed a rather minor circulatory problem in his lower legs worsened . My father's GP referred him to two dermatologist and a specialist to deal with his poor circulation.

To my knowledge not one of these doctors inquired about my dad's life or the profound stress of his loss. In fact, when I visited his GP with him and asked the GP if he had thought of sending my dad to someone who he could talk to, the doctor basically said that he could if he wanted to, as if the whole idea was not important.

Your book had made it wonderfully clear to me just how inter-connected our "PNI" system is. I have felt it for years. When stressed over long periods, I have had difficulty explaining the ache at the base of my skull. Is that not my pituitary gland saying no, something I have learned after many years of being a community activist.

So as you can see, you book has made me think, and I thank you for that.

Near the end of the book, you write about a faint whisper in your head urging you to write. Not long ago, when I was visiting a psychologist who I have seen for a number of years, I said to her that I need to write. It just so happened that she knew of a writer who was offering a course in her home. I took it and am also aware that I too need to express what is inside. I also need to overcome the anxiety I once had around writing.

I particularly find that with the war and with the level of injustice provincially and internationally that getting my anger out and releasing the stress is not only healthy but it is simply a creative act.

So again, thanks for the book. Your words have not only confirmed what I have intuitively felt, but it has given me more wisdom to articulate it.

Sincerely,

J.S., Vancouver, B.C.

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

I have just completed my Master's (counselling). As a portion of the requirements for this degree I completed two practicums. By a series of coincidences, one practicum was counselling clients using a form of trauma therapy (developed by Peter Levine); the other was assisting the director of care at a residence for Alzheimer's, and other dementia patients. A very short time into both practicums, it became clear to me that there was probably a direct connection between the symptoms and behaviour of unresolved life trauma and those of Alzheimer's disease.

I have just begun to read your latest book. On page twenty you sum up much of my thesis on this relationship between trauma and Alzheimer's disease with the words "The fundamental problem is not the external stress but an environmentally conditioned helplessness that permits neither of the normal responses of fight or flight".

I believe that Alzheimer's disease could frequently be avoided were we to pay attention to our, and others, emotional pain, seeing it as the precursor of physical pain. I wrote because, perhaps, what I learned, if shared, could lead to more compassionate and respectful care of both trauma and Alzheimer's victims. Thank you for writing your book. I believe that it is a ground breaking offering to the public, the medical profession...and to those working in psychoneuroimmunology!

S.R., Victoria, B.C.

WHEN THE READER SAYS YES

I've just finished reading When the Body Says No and think that I must have set some sort of land speed reading record, which is helpful since it's a library copy and I want to read it a second time before returning it. (Due to some quirk in the Toronto Public Library hold system, I got the book within 48 hours of putting a hold on it, even though I was something like 34th in line for a copy -- I see this as a clear case of the book knowing when it has found its proper audience and circumventing bureaucracy to get there faster...)

I have rheumatoid arthritis. It both amused and bemused me to see the struggles I wrote about -- feeling reticent about seeking help, resistance to taking meds, not voicing complaints -- as being "rheumatoid characteristics". I had a funny jostling of my ego on reading that description -- a combination of "Oh, thank God! It's not just me!" and "Hey, you mean I'm typical?!"

It was a definite relief to read that something I have believed all along about the biochemical components of emotions, illness and healing has a basis in scientific fact. I'd like to give your book to my rheumatologist, who has yet to ask me anything about my personal life or family history.

I also don't consider it an accident that my RA began manifesting symptoms in the first year of my marriage to someone who is perfectly described by your example of "functional differentiation". In very broad strokes, I was not meant to stay in that marriage and my body said no. Again, I wonder how my rheumatologist could have gone through the whole initial exam – and follow-up appointments -- without once asking me how my marriage was coping under the strain of a second RA diagnosis or whether I was able to care for my child or how my was progressing in the wake of my diagnosis. She did refer me to an Arthritis Society social worker (who made home visits, mirabile dictu) and that was immeasurably helpful. But it would have been equally helpful for her to hear firsthand how I was living in a mid- to high-level thrum of stress and anxiety. I must have been producing gallons of cortisol. Your book has helped me see a much clearer picture of my situation, even if it is retroactively.

Again, thank you for writing the book. It's already had a powerful effect in my life.

G. A., Toronto, Ontario

QUITTING TEACHING

I recently finished your book When the Body say No. As a former English teacher I was truly impressed with the writing, the relevant anecdotes, your insightful and perceptive interpretations, but mostly by your ability to capture much of what I have been struggling with over the past eight weeks.

On February 10 after a long hiatus from teaching, I reluctantly accepted a part time teaching position. I say reluctantly because I went against my natural instinct--my gut feeling--when I accepted this position. All the alarms, bells and whistles were telling me not to do this; I ignored them for a variety of reasons. Less than one day into the job, I knew this was not for me and told the principal so. He is quite pursausive or I simply thought I could help him out (read: I cannot say no to anyone), and I agreed to see it through until the end of the school year. Big mistake. Two weeks ago, I tendered my resignation citing personal and health reasons.

My daily morning ritual, after a fitful night of three hours sleep was to throw up for at least an hour or so. Since my appetite was non-existent, these anxiety attacks were extremely painful and as the weeks went by, more violent and longer in duration. I knew something was dreadfully wrong and sacrificing my health and perhaps my life could not be off-set by living this way.

Three weeks ago, I finally stopped deluding myself. I went against many of things I had been consciously taught and firmly believed in--namely, I can meet any challenge, make the necessary sacrifices and adjustments, and be successful through inner strength, courage, and determination. It was a humbling experience, but one which needed to be made for my survival. As a former sailor, I learned very quickly to find the cause of any problem rather than constantly deal with its effects; it is pointless to try and discover more efficient means of pumping out the boat before sealing off the hole. I know what the cause of my problem was; seeing a doctor to correct it or ameliorate it was pointless...

Your book and my discovery of it could not have come at a more opportune time.

H.I., Vancouver, B.C.

FROM A PHARMACIST

I just finished your book When The Body Says No. I think it is excellent and I thank you for writing it. I am a pharmacist who is very interested in how biography creates biology. I have always believed that disease is the body's way of telling us something.

Even as a pharmacist I believe medication is rarely the first choice to heal yourself (of course I keep that thought to myself at work). Your book confirms my belief. I will be recommending your book to people I see at work and also my family. You will help a lot of people.

D.F., Sarnia, Ontario