Stress Patterns That Causes Illnesses

Seeing the many different cases that comes to my cranio clinic, I always wonder what are the patterns that caused them to be ill? Are there any deeper reasons beside the usual: lack of exercise, lack of proper diet, or exposure to environmental toxins? Because it often occurs to me that that is not the full story about what causes illness.

One of my favourite writers, Caroline Myss, together with Dr. Norman Shealy gave some very good answers in their book, "The Creation of Health". In it, they wrote this list of significant stress patterns that cause illness:

1.The first pattern involves the presence of unsolved or deeply consuming emotional, mental or spiritual stress within a person's life.

2. The second pattern relates to the degree of control that negative belief patterns have upon a person's reality. Each of us is a complex system of positive and negative beliefs, attitudes and experiences.

3. The third pattern is the inability to give and/or receive love.

4. The fourth pattern is the lack of humour and the inability to distinguish serious concerns from the lesser issues of life.

5. The fifth pattern is how effectively one exercises the power of choice in terms of making decisions over the movement and activities of their own life.

6. The sixth pattern concerns how well a person has attended to the needs of the physical body.

7. The seventh pattern relates to the suffering that accompanies the absence or "loss of meaning" in one's life.

8. The eighth pattern is the tendency towards denial.

I think they are right on target. I saw these patterns in clients that could not move out of their illness. No matter how many therapies they went, nothing seemed to work. But, for those who were able to let go of these patterns, something wonderful happened. They became well again.