drdanratner

Today, I sit down with Barbara Kline, a licensed clinical social worker who just recently retired after helping countless people recover from mind body issues over the course of her career. Among the many topics we discuss, Barbara and I agree that our symptoms are a communication even more than they are a distraction and she found this to be true personally.

Barbara shared her experience talking to Dr. Sarno and getting help from Dr. Andrea Leonard-Segal. She notes that these doctors helped her turn things around with one of my favorite phrases: ‘it might hurt, but it won’t harm you’. We talked about working through triggers and the way progress moves along in this ‘last stop on the train’ intervention for pain.

She and I also saw eye to eye on the power column and how society tries to make us doubt our own ability to craft a life that is exactly as we want it to be. Barbara’s story of a patient getting in touch with the fullness of their anger also resonated deeply. It was a great pleasure connecting with her and I can see why she has successfully helped so many people get better with her warmth, clear thinking, and inner strength.

On this episode of the Mind Body Connection Series, I look at one piece of logic that reveals how we’ve gotten to where we are with MRI and other imaging techniques and why we are so far astray: we seem to have forgotten the unbelievable power of our own brains. When we look at technology and what it can do versus the brain, we can see the illogic in underestimating the mind, making doubt about a mind body connection seem downright silly.

Think about it: your computer can barely function for more than a day without needing to reboot, it becomes obsolete in five years, and it has literally no emotional intelligence at all. The brain, in the meantime, is managing millions of times more functions than a computer, unconscious and conscious alike.

All of this is to say that we have thousands of reasons to believe, without a doubt, that our brains are not only capable of generating mind body symptoms, but it would be strange if they couldn’t, given the functionality already being there physically and the brain having such immense power, adaptability, and functionality.

On my How To Series I look at how to distinguish between a true injury (one that heals!) and a mind body one (one that drags on chronically). When you get hurt, there is the physical component of it, but also the psychological one. You can understand the difference with some telltale signs based on science and logic.

The main distinction really does come in the fact that all tissue that CAN heal, DOES heal. But there are other factors as well, such as the fact that movement related ‘injuries’ are mind body ones right from the start. Identifying and deconstructing triggers is crucial in getting better from mind body experiences that began with a true physical injury, as well.

Focus on the timeline of your recovery and you can see that the science and logic ends up pointing in the direction of mind body experience as long as you have been cleared by a medical doctor from damage to internal organs or from a full blown life or death medical issue.

Today’s interview is with Licensed Mental Health Counselor Liz Wallenstein, who studied with Dr. Sarno and developed her own practice in mind body therapy. We talked about her own experience with mind body symptoms and the various aspects she has found to be contributing factors in her patients and in herself.

We talked about the state of the mind body field and our hopes for where it will go, including what it takes to accept a mind body diagnosis. Liz specializes in the single population and the Jewish community as well. We connected over the aspects of therapy, in general, that can get brought into mind body work more fully.

Liz and I talked about the importance of getting rid of doubt in the diagnosis and in our experience, as well as how people, so frequently, become more powerful as they master their symptoms.

Barb and I met for the final session of four consultation meetings, this time focusing on action steps within the emotions, doubt, and power columns. One of the main advantages of three column work is how much more specifically it identifies what is going on for each person and how their symptoms profile.

Barb and I recognized that a big part of what can now help her to feel better is to use power to crush doubt. By recognizing when she is out of power — with herself, her symptom, or others — she can now challenge some ways in which she can make more powerful choices and align with her true self.

As always, I am so impressed by, and grateful to, the people who share their stories on Crushing Doubt and with our community. I know we all wish Barb well in her recovery and I am pleased to see it heading in the right direction so well.

This is a live Q&A about mind body symptoms with Crushing Doubt host Dr. Dan Ratner. If you have chronic pain or other physical symptoms that haven’t been able to be explained or helped by medical doctors or other alternative treatments, this information can change your life. By changing the way we think and feel, we can change our actual physiological processes to relieve — or even cure — many symptoms, from head to toe.

Today, I outline how to escape a narcissist so that you can be free of that toxicity in your life. We begin by talking about what a narcissist is and also what does not constitute a narcissist, because learning to recognize who and what they are is so important in learning to steer clear of them.

Next, I turn my attention to what makes them operate the way they do so that you can understand what is happening to you in relation to them and why it goes the way it goes. It is crucial to learn to think of them by different rules than ‘normal’ people.

Lastly, I go through a set of rules of engagement, per se, with them to give some basic ideas of what to do or not do to set you up for success. But the bottom line is that they will become easier to recognize and it will be all the easier for you to not have to interact with them once you see the basics: They make you feel terrible on a regular basis and absolutely nothing you have done or any part of who you are is deserving of it.

I am honored to have been joined by a true legend in Grammy award winning singer/songwriter Judy Collins. We talked primarily about the ups and downs of emotional life, particularly given her experience of the catastrophic loss of her son Clark to suicide in 1992. She shares generously how she was able to survive such detestation, even managing to feel deeply close with her son in an ongoing way all these years later. As Judy wisely puts it, death ends a life, but not a relationship.

Our time together highlights the preciousness of time and connection and the importance of knowing there is a way out, as suicide is so often a choice that comes out of feeling no way out. She shares her experience of making a suicide attempt, herself, when she was fourteen and facing the potential disappointment of her father.

One of the most remarkable things about Judy’s way of surviving her son’s suicide was her ability to reach out to others for support and finding an ability to connect to what she termed ‘the gifts of catastrophic loss’. As she has done so many times musically, she turned the experiences of her heart into something beautiful and to be treasured. I am so grateful to her for taking time with me and bearing her heart and soul on this very important issue as we work to promote suicide prevention.

Today, Barb and I met for our third session of one of my actual mind body three column consultations. I am so appreciative to have another person show the courage and generosity to engage in the actual process with me so that we can bring to all of you a direct view of how the work goes and what it looks like. In this session, we look, in depth, at the power column and how it affects us all in how we relate to ourselves, others, and our symptoms.

You’ll get to see Barb and I build her core narrative and begin to discuss how she can utilize this emotional mantra, of sorts. From the broad, high stakes central emotional experience of her life to the specific way it impacted her, we use the information to create a goal with respect to what she can do about this enduring experience. I also help her to articulate and highlight the ways she can feel out of power in her interactions with herself, as well as exploring certain relationships with others. Finally, we note that the symptoms still feel in control of her and stated our goal of reversing that experience, as she learns to understand the flow of her emotional life into symptoms, reduce doubt, and become more powerful feeling in her own right.

This is the third of four meetings with Barb, so that you can see the full mind body mapping process, how it works, and why. She and I will continue to get her emotional themes articulated, polished, and honed, until she is able to understand each symptom onset or uptick through this lens, giving her the tools to disable the mind body pain process from these acute moments of suffering. We will also continue to get all of her doubts articulated, so that I can help her get answers to them to her satisfaction. Now, we add in her thinking about power in different situations, so that she is more able to make a powerful choice for herself in many different areas. Next week, we turn to the action steps for the four columns. I look forward to carrying this process forward with her and hope it is of value to you all to see how the process works!

In this episode of the Mind Body Connection Series, I discuss the subjective nature of language and the ways our different understandings can get us into trouble or even lead to symptoms from doubt. One way this occurs is in the language of diagnosis or theories about what is actually happening. How much can we actually know when we are using the same words but interpreting them differently?

In my three column system, I try to stay away from terms, or even specific wording, that other people use and focus, instead, on the basic principles and understandings we can all agree upon. If we are going to be our best scientific and logical selves, we have to forget about what we think words mean and zero in on the actual meaning underneath whatever words we might choose at a given time.

Most importantly, there is an objective reality about anything scientific and logical and we need to feel confident in that viewpoint and our ability to find the objective. Words can often obscure that if they are being interpreted so closely that they can lead to disagreements. This video explores how we can cut through words to the heart of the meaning.

This is a live Q&A about mind body symptoms with Crushing Doubt host Dr. Dan Ratner. If you have chronic pain or other physical symptoms that haven’t been able to be explained or helped by medical doctors or other alternative treatments, this information can change your life. By changing the way we think and feel, we can change our actual physiological processes to relieve — or even cure — many symptoms, from head to toe.

In this episode of my How To Series, I cover how to understand boundaries and how to set them effectively. As usual, I find that understanding what is going on underneath it all to be the best guiding principle with respect to figuring out how to do anything. With setting boundaries, the first thing you need to know is what it is you need and why.

Once you figure out who you are, in any given situation — or generally, more importantly — you can then make more effective decisions. This also can help you disentangle from the needs of others when they do not need to be factored into your decision or way of setting up the boundaries.

In addition to clarifying your set up in order to make boundary set up natural and easy, I distinguish between the kind of ‘self care’ that actually harms other people, whereas good boundaries don’t hurt anyone at all. Come find out how!

Dan is joined by four time NBA Champion John Salley to discuss his take on health and wellness. John is a vegan activist and he and Dan connected on the idea that we are very influenced by what we feed ourselves — the actual food, in John’s case, and the ideas we have about ourself and the world in Dan’s case.

John shares how he got his viewpoints, including a look at his NBA days, learning from Adrian Dantley, whom he called ‘the teacher’ — a name I paired by Dantley showing John everything he needed to know about how to take care of his body and mind in the NBA. We also talked about his being an observer and this leading to his being able to make an impact on people through his understanding. Dan and John also bond over people with emotional struggles gravitating towards them both, as they understand that a different way of thinking isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We discuss how following your dreams leads to some of the biggest breakthroughs as well.

John’s successes in life come from his many gifts — including his empathy and comedic instincts — an it was a pleasure to have him on Crushing Doubt to talk about mental health and what we need to do to better address it.

Today, I am joined, once again, by Barb, for the second session of an actual consultation right here, in the moment, on the podcast. As always, I am so appreciative of anyone willing to share their story with the rest of our community, as it takes such courage and generosity and it provides such a help to people in understanding the process in a more direct manner. In this second session, we look, in depth, at the doubt column, the three levels of doubt and the four categories of it as well.

You’ll get to see how I take Barb’s various narratives and locate the doubt within each of them. We uncover her questions, lack of certainty, confusion, and fear. Barb and I found that her sense of being different has many ramifications and one of them lies in her worrying that she will be too different to have a pathway to get better, even though she believes, fully, in the mind body process. 

This is the second of four meetings with Barb, so that you can see the full mind body mapping process, how it works, and why. She and I will continue to get her emotional themes articulated, polished, and honed, until she is able to understand each symptom onset or uptick through this lens, giving her the tools to disable the mind body pain process from these acute moments of suffering. But now we will also continue to get all of her doubts articulated, so that I can help her get answers to them to her satisfaction. I look forward to carrying this process forward with her and hope it is of value to you all to see yet another example of how the process works!

In today’s episode of the mind body connection series, I look at the power of the placebo effect and what it means for our understanding of mind body living. The placebo effect is often regarded, in science, as a novelty act, of sorts — something that is to be disregarded because it occurs with incorrect beliefs. But the placebo effect itself is NOT a false experience. In fact, it is the most compelling example we have, on a regular basis, in every clinical trial that has ever been done, that the mind is ALWAYS creating a physical reality.

This video helps you consider why it has been dismissed and why this is a mistake of epic proportions, as the evidence for mind body work is right under our noses all the time. As always, I challenge the viewer to use science and logic and to not dismiss pieces of evidence in trying to discover the truth. Once we do that, placebo reactions become not only evidence of mind body experience, but direct proof.

This is a live Q&A about mind body symptoms with Crushing Doubt host Dr. Dan Ratner. If you have chronic pain or other physical symptoms that haven’t been able to be explained or helped by medical doctors or other alternative treatments, this information can change your life. By changing the way we think and feel, we can change our actual physiological processes to relieve — or even cure — many symptoms, from head to toe.

In this episode of my How To Series, I explain how you can use the logic that comes from our knowledge of body metaphors to be more certain of your TMS/mind body diagnosis. One of the central ways to do effective work in the doubt column is to recognize the convergence of evidence from all areas and I encourage people to not leave out what our spoken words tell us about what we must know.

People can be ‘a pain in the neck (or ass), someone can ‘make you sick’, you can literally get overheated when you are angry, and many, many more. Because metaphors come from actual lived experience, I point out how it strains logic to think these are just poetic statements, as opposed to revealing about what we know to be true of the mind body connection.

As you work to pin doubt to the ground and get it to relent — because it will try to creep back in at every turn — you need to have every bit of logic you can at your disposal. Pay attention to the metaphors of the body and consider why they are such an ever present part of how we talk.

Today I am joined by Penny George and Dan Hindsley, two chronic pain recoverers from the UK who have teamed up to create the website mindbodymedicineinfo.org, which collects tons of information on mind body experience. Not only that, but Penny and Dan (yes, acknowledged…ANOTHER Dan) are spearheading an initiative to get medical doctors more open to mind body ideology, so that we can make progress in society overall. Penny and Dan have created a wonderful resource for sufferers and curious medical doctors alike, including a collection of the best research studies backing up the science behind it all.

We talked about each of their journeys through the mind body process, as Penny got a ‘book cure’ for her chronic fatigue, while Dan resisted the whole idea for fifteen months, until finally coming around. We also explore the ways in which each have had to think about how they want to apply what they know, finding that this is way of helping the community grow and the conversation evolve to be the most powerful and accessible for them. Dan, in fact, tried to be a TMS coach and found it to be not for him, which is a powerful reminder that there are so many ways to contribute to the effort to help people with mind body issues. In fact, as we know, finding your own power and pathway is so important. I look forward to keeping in touch with them and collaborating in our efforts to get people the right information.

Today, I am joined by Barb, who suffers from sciatica, back pain, and a number of other symptoms. This four session consultation shows how each person can fill out their individual columns on their mind body map so that they can understand the role of emotions, doubt, and power in their chronic pain or symptoms, as well some specific action steps the sufferer can take to create their own program to get better, using my overarching system. I was so appreciative that she showed the bravery and openness to engage in the actual process with me so that we can bring to all of you a direct view of how the work goes and what it looks like.

In this first session, I orient her to the mind body map work and we began to develop her emotional themes, so that she can recognize the broad, high stakes, but specific experiences and feelings that can lead to the onset and uptick in symptoms. Among the themes we hit upon were not feeling she could be noticed for who she was, needing to strive for attention, feeling different in ways that made her feel bad, giving up control to other people, and more. We talked about how she will feel so much better and with significantly more hope once she understands the mind body experience and how it works inside and out.

This is the first of four meetings with Barb, so that you can see the full mind body mapping process, how it works, and why. She and I will continue to get her emotional themes articulated, polished, and honed, until she is able to understand each symptom onset or uptick through this lens, giving her the tools to disable the mind body pain process from these acute moments of suffering. I look forward to carrying this process forward with her and hope it is of value to you all to see how the process works!

On this week’s edition of the Mind Body Connection Series, I explore the primary importance of dreaming — not the sleep kind of dreaming, but the kind where your wishes are front and center in your life. I found this to be true in therapy, and using the knowledge of the mind body only adds to my conviction that to realize a dream, you must first HAVE the dream. 

This video helps you think through how to give up old dreams that either cannot be realized or aren’t even serving the function you’d want them to — making YOU happy. I discuss why these dreams are not good for us, and why they aren’t effective in getting us what we want. 

Finally, I talk about the key to happiness not being about getting what you want in external reality, but using your dreams to enact WHO YOU ARE. Related to the power column, we explore how you can use dreams to access your purpose and unlock new, powerful ways of living.