The Urgency for Love as a Healing Force.
How indifference is limiting the future of health care.
Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

KEY POINTS-
Most of us agree that love is important for healing, though it is largely ignored in scientific research.
Loneliness, isolation, and warfare are contributing to record levels of anxiety and depression worldwide.
An attitude of curiosity and urgency could explode the potential of love as a healing force.

Love. We all talk about it, but how much do we really understand this mysterious force field?

We refer to love frequently in poetry, religion, and mysticism. “The universe would disappear without the existence of the force [of love],” said Gandhi. When the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love,” more than 400 million people in 25 countries watched via live satellite and raised their glasses in a resounding “hell, yeah.” So there’s no disputing its fundamental importance.

Today's Experience of "Non-Love"
Yet, it’s also clear that "non-love" is a dominant experience today: Loneliness is more prevalent than connectedness, and the longer-term effects of global lockdowns and enforced isolation are only just starting to emerge. Take a look at the most recent statistics in PubMed where new cases of anxiety and depression are documented, and you’ll understand why psychotherapists' and psychiatrists’ schedules are fully booked. Consider the incline in suicide and divorce rates, not to mention warfare in recent years. Even the climate crisis may have its roots in a deficit of love.

It’s not that we don’t share a sense of collective urgency about resolving these situations. However, because we don't know how to measure love specifically, or diagnose “not-love” so that we can prescribe remedies, we don’t know how to get down to the originating cause. This leaves us shuffling the best cosmetic solutions we can find.

This is simply because we don't have an adequate understanding about the true nature of love as a healing force. Beyond romantic love and attraction, it gets left out of scientific and medical discourse. Apart from a few courageous explorers of love as a transformational field, it is generally overlooked by the experts. We don't pay attention to it; we don't try and measure it; in scientific research, we're not even curious about it.

What creates such indifference? By holding this question throughout recent years as we have been developing Heart Based Medicine, I have become aware of how much the disposition of being an expert gets in the way, particularly in a white male mind like mine. A part of all of us wants to be an expert, and leaning into things that we don't understand can make us uncomfortable. Yet, the capacity to explore and acknowledge things we don't know about opens the possibility of intelligent, creative, generative conversations.

Let’s look at an instructive example: The Black Death, which primarily affected Europe and the Middle East from 1346 to 1353, was the most fatal pandemic in human history. It killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million people, wiping out 30 to 60 percent of the European population and about a third of the Middle East. It reduced the world population from 475 million to about 350 million in just seven years, taking until 1500 to get back to the same pre-plague levels.

Faced with the magnitude of this health crisis, the world was gripped by a tremendous sense of urgency, but without having an accurate and comprehensive system to understand the origins and to address the catastrophe. There was an intuitive sense of the nature of infection, without yet understanding the mechanics. Transmission was attributed to smells, so gowns and masks were worn for protection. There was no microscope or other direct way to measure bacteria and no one had even considered antibiotics back then.

Open-Minded Curiosity
Centuries later, we now know that the plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This knowledge was the result of open-minded curiosity, and the willingness by scientists to acknowledge that there was something present that they didn’t yet fully understand. The enquiry took rigorous questioning of previously held assumptions. It then took decades of piecemeal science before we shifted from a medieval view of infectious disease to our modern scientific view that allows us to deal with bacterial infection.

This approach is the opposite of, and the antidote to, the arrogance of expertise. The expert leans into what she thinks she knows, while the inquisitive explorer has the humility to be curious about what she doesn’t know.

When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek came up with the first microscope in the 17th century, he amplified the capacity of our eyes in such a way that we could see things we had not seen before. That could be a useful clue here. To embrace love as a healing force, it may not be the eyes but the heart that you want to see through. Your heart has the capacity to experience and to know things. It may well be that, by learning to amplify the messages that come from the heart, we will be able to develop coherent diagnostic tests for not-love as well as a prescriptive attitude toward love.

Humility and an open-minded disposition may finally lead us beyond the limited view of seeing love as the byproduct of human thought, emotion, and action. Maybe one day we will come to recognize scientifically what most people already know intuitively: that love is a universal generative healing force available to us all.

I would suggest that what is needed today—more than anything else—is to bring the same open-minded curiosity to the nature of love that Pasteur and Koch brought to infection. If our greatest minds were fueled and funded by that same degree of urgency and tasked with discovering the potential of love as a transformational field, imagine what the effects might be on health care and society.

RESILIENCE-
What I Learned About Resilience When My Desk Buddy Died.
A Personal Perspective: Finding resilience through others.
Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

When asked to recall the formative moments in our lives, few of us will describe the luxury holidays we were lucky to go on or the lavish gifts that our parents indulged us with (if we were fortunate enough to receive them—I’m just imagining here). It’s rare to hear someone relating tales of their character being forged while sipping cocktails at a poolside bar. There’s something about the experiences that feel the hardest to experience that make for the most potent memories. I know this well; I learned important lessons about resilience when the colleague who sat next to me fell ill and died in a month.

Where's Our Resilience Switch?
The concept of resilience is so casually bandied about that it can feel hackneyed. "Be more resilient," children are schooled. We’re all advised to show a resilient bounceback response in the face of personal setbacks. But the term is so liberally invoked that even a keenest intent to be resilient can stumble for fear of not knowing how. Someone telling us to show more resilience can elicit helplessness if we feel unable to activate the elusive strength when asked. Where’s our resilience switch? I’m certain that I would have had no idea of how to demonstrate greater personal fortitude if asked before I found it being thrust upon me. I learned that resilience is the strength we draw from the people around us.

For a British person, one of working life’s simple pleasures is finding yourself in the synchrony of being in a "tea round" with like-minded desk neighbours. Yes, we really do drink lots of tea, and we tend to take turns making cups for each other in "rounds." To look up from an email or to wrap up a call to see a hot steaming mug of perfectly coloured tea being gently laid down is an under-celebrated joy. When people talk about what we lost in the pandemic, this was our quietest loss. One Monday morning, my tea buddy was gone. I’d been prepared for her absence: an unrecognised number appearing on my phone screen the day before, her anxious partner telling me of an unexpected cancer diagnosis after a visit to the emergency room.

I was part of a small team, with around 50 or so colleagues in a slightly tatty serviced office in central London. The colleague I’d made hot drinks for was also a friend and colleague to the group who worked in the tightly packed space around us. When someone’s health takes such an alarming turn for the worse, we’re so consumed with distress and sympathy that even acknowledging our own distress can feel indulgent. People cried together and hugged each other but didn’t want to dwell on their own feelings; rather, we wanted to hold our colleague’s well-being at the top of our minds.

Anyone familiar with cancer care in the United Kingdom will know that most hospital wards prohibit gifts of flowers and chocolates. In the fog of emotional confusion, it’s not immediately obvious what token of love that you can send to a sick friend. One colleague (who sat roughly two tea rounds down the office) suggested we could collectively knit a simple woolen blanket. Knitting lessons were arranged, and size-10 needles distributed with balls of soft yarn. Meetings developed a gentle click-clack percussive soundtrack as colleagues raced to complete their pledged commitment of knitted rows. There’s something therapeutic about working with one’s hands. It felt that we were trying to mend our friend with our slow and deliberate stitchwork.

We Were Bonded by a Powerful Shared Experience.
Heartbreak soon followed, our friend slipped further into sickness and then, within days, was gone. To compound the breathless urgency of the few weeks, we’d not even been able to visit or say goodbye. In such grief, it would have felt indulgent to observe on how the month had changed us as a group. We survivors—knitters, stitchers, and nonparticipating supporters—had been bonded by a powerful shared experience.

When we look for resilience, we make the mistake of going in pursuit of tales of individual valour and bravery. The US Army has spent the last decade desperately trying to teach combat soldiers how to switch on their personal resilience mode in exactly this manner. (And this has been an endeavour that research would suggest has had no impact.)

In contrast, so often when we do observe resilience, it comes quietly, like an enveloping hug. It comes as a sense that we’re all in it together with those around us. When we hear stories of the resilient bravery of Ukrainian citizens and soldiers, it’s this sense of shared experience that seems to embolden them. We witness it in the bravery of survivors of natural disasters. More mundanely, my colleagues and I learned our own lessons of drawing on the strength we gained from each other— the tea rounds grew bigger, and the bonds grew stronger.

Bruce Daisley is the author of Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength.

OCD-
Solving Repetitive Unpleasant Thoughts—OCD Is Just the Extreme.
Addressing threat physiology allows solutions.
Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

KEY POINTS-
Mental and physical pain are processed in similar regions of the brain.
Our inability to escape from RUTs relentlessly drives flight-or-fight physiology, and people may become ill.
There is a sequence to resolve repeated unwanted thoughts–thought diversion, lowering anger, moving into creativity, and dissolving the ego.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is manifested by extreme anxiety that is driven by repetitive unpleasant thoughts (RUTs). Most people associate it with disruptive compulsive behaviors, such as hand washing, climbing up and down stairs, following a rigid daily regime— the list is endless. However, there is also a form of OCD called “internal OCD,” where a person has an unpleasant thought and “counteracts” it with a pleasant thought. Either form has no endpoint and is considered a diagnosis to be managed and not solved.

That is simply not true.

RUTs are universal
Essentially every human being has some level of RUTs. At what point do they become severe enough to be considered OCD? Why not discard the diagnosis and consider the process on a spectrum of human consciousness? The classic definition of OCD is when the thoughts/behaviors interfere with your capacity to carry out activities necessary to live a functional life.

What about enjoying your life? With internal OCD, there are no outward manifestations, but your quality of life might range from unremarkable to miserable. There also many “acceptable” behaviors such as working hard, overexercising, “passionate pursuit” of a hobby or vocation. All can be just fine, but what is driving them?

In talking to patients carefully over 40 years, I gradually learned that mental pain is a much bigger problem than physical pain. Asked whether they would prefer to get rid of their physical pain with surgery while still having their ongoing anxiety versus resolving their anxiety and living with the physical pain, the majority of people wanted to get rid of the mental pain.

Related behaviors
There are also some cousins of OCD. Consider them in the context of behaviors to cope with the unpleasant sensations created by anxiety (threat physiology). They include:
Hair pulling
Nail biting
Eating disorders
Excessive attention to physical appearance
Hoarder’s syndrome
Skin picking
Cutting
Extreme convictions regarding religion, politics, or any social issue
Imposing these “ideals” on others is the next step because control lowers inflammation. The more power the more control.

Any addiction is an attempt to mask anxiety.

Avoiding anxiety (threat physiology) drives most human behavior
Avoiding anxiety is the driving force keeping all living creatures alive. It is the result of stresses and challenges, not the cause. Amongst the many stressors in our lives, the inability to escape from our thoughts is a major one, maybe the worst. Although we cannot control our thoughts, many activities create sense of control. Suppressing RUTs just makes them worse.

“Worrying” seems normal to many people. But is not particularly enjoyable. Why do we spend so much time worrying about so many things, many of which we have no control over? One reason is that it provides a feeling of control. Somehow, worrying enough will help solve the problem. What it does is keep your brain and body fired up, leaving you with less energy to effectively deal with challenges. But suppressing worry is even worse.

Or maybe you have an “anxiety disorder.” Everyone has anxiety, so why call it a disorder and why personalize the intentionally unpleasant sensations that evolved to keep you alive. It is something you have, not who you are.

What about those who don’t have any of these behaviors. Even many well-adjusted people living normal enjoyable lives can experience a level of RUTs that interfere with their quality of life. Actually, when life is relatively calm, the repetitive thought patterns can significantly increase. Pursuing pleasurable activities to distract themselves doesn’t work and is actually highly inflammatory. The data shows that a hedonistic lifestyle creates aggressive inflammatory cells known as “warrior monocytes.” In addition to attacking viruses and bacteria, they also go after your own tissues. Other factors that stimulate their formation include social isolation and chronic stress.1 Your body knows how to effectively deal with acute stress, but it needs a break to rest and regenerate.

Degrees of OCD
Obsessive thought patterns are inherent in human cognitive consciousness. There are degrees of intensity, and they vary day to day depending on the level of stressors and the state of your nervous system—calm or hyperactive. Again, even if your life is relatively calm, they can also be problematic.

OCD, the extreme manifestation of this situation, is considered a diagnosis to be managed, not solvable. However, medicine has not consistently addressed the body’s physiology. When you are in a flight-or-fight state, your brain also becomes inflamed, and such thoughts fly out like clay pigeons at a shooting range, except there are trillions of them. The medical profession has also not acknowledged the seriousness of the effects of less intense RUTs on people’s sense of well-being and health. They still drive threat physiology. They are often referred to as a “monkey mind” or signs of a nervous breakdown. These thinking patterns are a problem, but our inability to escape them is even more problematic.

Solution principles
There are four aspects of solving RUTs. They all happen simultaneously and indefinitely. Eventually, as your brain evolves away from them, you no longer have to work at dealing with them.

The four approaches to RUTs are:
Diverting, not controlling, them—mindfulness, expressive writing, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
“Turning down the heat”— When you are trapped by anything, your threat state fires up even more, and you are angry. Anxiety is activated, and anger is hyperactivated threat physiology.
Nurturing creativity and joy. This is where the real healing occurs as you move away from the spinning circuits.
Dissolving your ego—We work hard to attain enough self-esteem to feel better about ourselves. However, most of it is based on cognitive distortions that drive RUTs even more. Without an ego to defend, the racing thoughts will abate, often dramatically.
This set of approaches evolved from my own 15-year ordeal with severe “internal OCD.” Not only do I not experience the vivid, almost visual thoughts, I don’t seem to have the random distracting thoughts I had before I became ill. There is also a vast amount of research looking at the mechanisms of why and how they occur,. The challenge is to present it in a manner so you can pursue your own healing journey. No one else can do it for you.

As your brain heals, your body heals. As your body heals, your brain will heal. The reality is that they are just two parts of one unit—you.

Recap
Our inability to escape our unpleasant thoughts is inflammatory. Since half of your brain has inflammatory receptors, it also fires up in response to unpleasant thoughts.. The diagnosis of OCD is considered to be relatively uncommon; however, many people suffer from RUTs that interfere with the quality of their life. Obsessive thought patterns are considered to be unsolvable and just subject to management. However, medicine is not generally addressing the underlying physiology. There are four aspects of dealing with OCD that will lower the intensity of the thoughts: thought diversion, lowering anger, moving into the creative part of your brain, and allowing your ego to dissolve. They are solvable.