Almost everyone has an inner knowledge that mental and emotional “stresses” can cause illness in the body. However, the question has always been how and why? To understand the inner workings behind stress-induced symptoms, we need to understand and learn about the way the body responds and adapts to a specific kind of stress called a “conflict shock.”
There are two kinds of stressors we experience within our psyche. The first, though they may be difficult to manage, are predictable and relatively normal. They represent hardships we are prepared to meet and are mostly clear on how to navigate, despite the difficulty. The second kind of stressors are ones that, without a moment’s notice, take us by surprise and catch us on the wrong foot. They are acute and isolating, where we have difficulty comprehending or navigating the challenge, sometimes for weeks, months or years to come. The latter kind of stresses are called “conflict shocks.”
For the purpose of overcoming conflict shocks, every living organism possesses what are called innate “biological programs” of adaptation. Here’s how it works: The conflict shock causes a visible, focal imprint in the brain controlling a specific cellular adaptation in a corresponding organ of the body, designed to help an individual, from the biological level, overcome their conflict. Which organ, and the degree of its cellular changes, depends on the nature of the conflict and how the psyche perceived the shocking event.
If someone is “conflict-active” (where the conflict is unresolved), the cellular changes will continue to proceed accordingly. If they resolve the conflict, the biological program will begin to reverse those changes; edema will present in the area of the brain where the foci exists, and an inflammatory process of cell-restoration or recovery will unfold to heal the organ tissues that had previously undergone unique adaptation.
In all, I don’t think there is a more significant discovery in all of medical science. We can now understand and predict disease symptoms before they occur…Because “disease” symptoms are merely the consequence of these natural, predictable, cellular changes directed from the brain. The majority of “common ailments” unfold at the onset of the inflammatory process of healing or recovery after the conflict is over.
Knowing each organ’s unique biological program of adaptation gives us a scientific basis to understand health and biology free of fear. By knowing the specific kinds of conflict shocks that initiate each program, we can peer into our own biology through a new lens, with a clear understanding and comprehension of the meaning of symptoms. In the case of chronic inflammatory conditions, we can now see how “relapses” of the original conflict shock can inhibit and prolong the healing or recovery process, because the relapse re-engages the biological program response.
In chiropractic there is a saying: The power that made the body, heals the body. We are coming very close to a scientific appreciation and comprehension of this power, which exists in the individual’s nervous system, in their psyche.
In classical mythology, Psyche is the personified soul or spirit, the beloved companion of Eros who embodies “a type of love that seeks fulfillment without violation or something else.” Etymologically, psyche comes from the Greek psykhe, “the invisible animating principle or entity which occupies and directs the physical body.” Psyche is the animating human spirit that directs our biology and life.
There are several major gifts afforded by these brain-body discoveries that have re-vivified the importance of the psyche within our understanding of health and biology. The first is in its scientific affirmation of the vitalistic paradigm which advances the major premise that life expresses intelligence—not malignancy or evil—and that the purpose of healthcare is to enhance the individual’s ability to express this innate intelligence.
In seamless connection to this, the second gift is the precise method of achieving health by helping an individual address and fully resolve their specific, unique conflict shocks. Thinking in terms of chiropractic philosophy, this is a mirror image of “correcting subluxations” within the physical body. We are learning how to correct the psyche-level sub-lux-ation that obstructs and diminishes our vitality and higher health potential.
The third gift, and perhaps the best of all, is the empathic bond and fellowship that will come out of it, not just in the field of healthcare, but in our culture at large. If you can imagine what the world would be like, if instead of judgment and blame for an individual’s medical, alternative, or general lifestyle choices, we hone in with our empathic circuits to honor their unique reaction to their isolating shock-event—an event that could have just as easily been ours in life—then you will begin to understand how the world in this new healthcare paradigm, far above the turbulence of the past, becomes one of immense beauty and love.
With great love for who you are and what you do,
John Ohm
This article appeared in Pathways to Family Wellness magazine, Issue 77.