When the Body Says No

by Gabor Maté

research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.

“Psychological factors such as uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, and lack of information are considered the most stressful stimuli and strongly activate the HPA axis.

Repressed anger will lead to disordered immunity. The inability to process and express feelings effectively, and the tendency to serve the needs of others before even considering one’s own, are common patterns in people who develop chronic illness.

These coping styles represent a blurring of boundaries, a confusion of self and non-self on the psychological level. The same confusion will follow on the level of cells, tissues and body organs. The immune system becomes too confused to know self from other or too disabled to defend against danger.

Controlling your breathing allows you to control your temper and your anger—and by controlling I mean using it to get to where you want to go.”

He has noted that family systems in which children develop disease have four features in common: enmeshment, overprotectiveness (controlling), rigidity and lack of conflict resolution.

The poorly differentiated person “lacks an emotional boundary between himself and others and lacks a ‘boundary’ that prevents his thinking process from being overwhelmed by his emotional feeling process. He automatically absorbs anxiety from others and generates considerable anxiety within himself.”12

Parental love is not simply a warm and pleasant emotional experience, it is a biological condition essential for healthy physiological and psychological development.

Emotional competence is the capacity that enables us to stand in a responsible, non-victimized, and non-self-harming relationship with our environment.

It is the required internal ground for facing life’s inevitable stresses, for avoiding the creation of unnecessary ones and for furthering the healing process.

Behind all our anger lies a deeply frustrated need for truly intimate contact.

“What is in us must out,” wrote Hans Selye, “otherwise we may explode at the wrong places or become hopelessly hemmed in by frustrations.