Blog
How Menstrual Cramps Taught Me About the Mind/Body Connection
One of my missions in life, particularly in this post-medicine meditation stage of my career, is to help people understand the power of the mind-body connection. Too often in my medical career, both patients and docs interpreted ‘your symptoms are stress related’ as ‘you are a wack-job and a faker’. Here’s a personal story that I love sharing with my clients to illustrate just how much control we have over our bodies, and just how attached (consciously or subconsiously) we can become to our symptoms.
Pain vs. Suffering
Pain vs suffering. What’s the difference? Pain is inevitable. Pain can even be helpful. Our nerves provide sensations, so that we may avoid injury. Suffering occurs when we give our pain a personality, a cause and effect, a narrative. If pain is the physical sensation we feel, suffering is the story we tell ourselves about that pain (and what the pain says about us).