The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.
—Anthony Robbins1
WE’VE TALKED AT LENGTH ABOUT EXPRESSING our feelings and effecting changes in order to navigate back on track to a better life for ourselves. But why are we so vulnerable to being derailed in the first place? That’s a complicated question, but we can answer it in simple ways. Starting when we’re young, we begin to accumulate the various slings and arrows that others shoot our way, whether deliberately or not. The people around us affect us. Their arrows can wound us and hinder our progress just as easily as their embraces can heal our pains.
So I’d like to turn our attention now more deeply to this web of relatedness in which we all exist—the web that so profoundly influences who we are and how we feel. Although we’re responsible for our own health, our own feelings, and our own changes, none of these things are isolated elements, because none of us lives in isolation. As the poet John Donne writes, no man is an island. We’re all part of the same “continent,” intimately and intricately connected to each other and the world around us. It’s true that the strength of the fibers of those connections—of our past and present relationships—are as sure a sign of our overall health as our blood sugar or body mass index.
Because relationships are fundamental to the fabric of life, their success is a great yardstick by which to measure our personal growth and health. Sound, healthy relationships require compassion, balance, flexibility, and equanimity. Indeed, not only do our relationships reflect the quality of our lives, they are the most accurate way to assess and measure our state of health.
You must remember, though, that this web of interconnectedness works both ways. Dysfunctional or absent relationships inform us that something is amiss in our personal health and growth. So I’ll also be reminding you to spin out your silk and make filaments between you and those around you; the strengthening of these bindings ensures our health and survival. But just as much or more so, we need to consider our early bonds, too, sometimes shoring them up and sometimes severing them if they were built on foundations that were so unskillful, they can’t be fixed.
Although we live in a world that values rabid individualism—and such individualism has its place in healthy development—it’s a linchpin of the new and skillful health paradigm that understanding health requires that we understand our relationships. That means the family relationships that shaped where we came from, the intimate relationships that shape our present circumstances, and the community of relationships in which we would like to live. You know this to be intuitively true: it’s nearly impossible to experience a state of health if our marriages are destructive, the people we work with are “psychic vampires,” and our cities and social establishments are in ruin. And all this interconnectedness starts with how we grew up—our first community, our family of origin.
54. Did You or Do You Feel Close with Your Parents?
WHERE YOU CAME FROM: ACCEPTING YOUR FAMILY
The foundation of all human relationships is the relationship between parent and child. Although the following questions can sometimes cause pain, I want to encourage you to ask yourself where you came from, and consider how your primary family relationships are contributing to your physical health, happiness, and emotional well-being today. As children, our autonomy can be stunted by well-meaning but overbearing and overprotective parents. And we can be victims, form unhealthy attachments to victim mentalities, or develop other forms of chronic negativity and pessimism based on our early experiences of repression, abandonment, anger, fear, and so on.
In the worst case, we can suffer outright abuse and terror from those who were supposed to protect us. On the other hand, our parents can work miracles, helping make us self-possessed, self-actualized, whole, and healthy adults. In any case, there’s no doubt our families shape us—but they needn’t limit us. We can transcend them.
So to begin with, I want you to spend some time thinking about your relationship with your parents when you were a child. How did your parents treat you? How did you feel when you were with them? How would you assess their parenting skills? Here are some more specific angles, in black and white, from which to view your parents and the way they reared you. Your memory and intuition will help you determine where your parents fell on the continuum between these extremes:
|
THE SKILLFUL PARENT |
THE UNSKILLFUL PARENT |
|
Respects and recognizes the integrity and autonomy of the child from the very first moments of life, writing a recipe for future independence, health, balance, and high self-esteem. |
Considers the child only as an extension of self, compelling the parent to “manage” every aspect of the child’s life, often well into adulthood, “for their own good,” producing a resentful, rebellious, confused person, with low self-esteem. |
|
Prepares the child to enter the real world by allowing her to learn age-appropriate lessons, and sometimes experience necessary pain in order to grow stronger. |
Infantilizes the child, shielding her constantly, overprotecting and overcontrolling, perpetuating dependency and an inability to problem-solve in later life. |
|
Models the kind of person he wants his child to become; behaves as a role-model as much as possible in matters of integrity, honesty, good citizenship, hard work, and health, making for a child who follows suit and feels internally good about herself as she moves through life. |
Never considers ethical modeling, frequently “slips” in morals, behavior, beliefs, and speech, offering repeated unskillful examples of behavior and thought that a child can mimic, stymieing her later development. |
|
Provides stability in his relationship with his family of origin and the other parent, as well as in finances, beliefs, and in a harmonious and established home that offers the child consistency and steadiness to build on as she grows. |
Creates an unstable environment with different partners, constant moving, lack of enough money, constantly wavering beliefs, and fighting with his own family, upending the child’s sense of safety, stability, and harmony. |
|
Shepherds good health in the home by making skillful choices about food, physical activity, natural healing, and medicine, ensuring skillful choices in the child’s later life. |
Exemplifies poor, unhealthy, and unskillful choices about diet and exercise; doesn’t take responsibility for the young child’s health; models Band-Aid solutions to medical challenges, setting the child up for immediate and long-term physical health challenges. |
|
Demonstrates an ability to show love, both physical and emotional, with the other parent and with the children in the home, increasing the chances the child will form healthy, loving relationships in her future. |
Withholds love in order to “toughen” the child; is physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive; acts distant for whatever reason, setting the child up for bad relationship choices and failure and pain in future relationships. |
|
Disciplines the child firmly, fairly, and consistently when necessary, teaching consequences for unskillful actions, thus demonstrating love and care for the child’s future, helping the child understand responsibility and the costs of poor choices. |
Allows bad behavior and unsafe decisions to go unpunished, or inconsistently or unfairly punishes actions, setting up a frightening, unsafe, and out-of-control world for the child, which can lead to an undisciplined adulthood. |
|
Expresses emotions like pain, fear, and anger regularly and in appropriate and moderate proportions; discusses these emotions and their meanings with the child, and allows the child the space and consideration to share her feelings, too, setting her up for an emotionally rich and healthy later life. |
Swings wildly with emotions, or bottles them up and never expresses them; scolds the child for her expressions of emotions, and confuses her about her feelings, setting her up for future misery. |
|
Forgives the child easily, even when the child must be disciplined, teaching valuable lessons about love, trust, and intimacy. |
Holds grudges; blames the child for his own feelings, creating a resentful, shame-filled, and agonized child who will have trouble dealing with adult emotions appropriately. |
Chances are, your parents fell somewhere in between the columns. However they performed, you didn’t have much choice in the matter. But we can see here how the choices they made had a profound impact on the way we turned out. The good news is that we’re not children anymore. We’re not cowering in a corner, or silent at the table, or acting out at school. We’re (more or less) fully formed adults with the ability to choose now for ourselves. We can act responsibly now, taking our lives and our actions and beliefs into our own hands. This is critical, because the past relationships with your family of origin remain very much alive and active in your chosen relationships now. To move forward in those relationships, you must first come to terms with the past.
So I’d recommend you first come to terms with the mistakes made by your parents. I’d like to be able to assume that, like most parents, they did the best they could, and occasionally made some mistakes that might have hurt you, but overall, if you’re reading this, there’s good reason for optimism. But I know it’s not that simple. Truthfully, some parents should never be parents. I hope that your childhood was not overtly abusive and awful, but I know that it might have been. If you think about it, the very nature of childhood is “abusive” to some degree, at the very least repressive. As a young child growing up in our culture, you’re essentially living entirely at the whim of the adult world, with very little say over anything in your life: even the most essential choices like where and when you sleep and eat are made by your “overlords.” Whatever your childhood circumstances were—even if they were dire—you can accept that it was what it was, mistakes and all, and get yourself ready to move on. You see, it doesn’t really matter what happened to you, what was done to you when you were a child, because now you’re an adult, no longer actively subjected to those mistakes—unless you continually allow them in your life. You cannot change one iota of the past. The only thing over which you have any control now is the way you deal with your childhood. Even if you have recurring nightmares and can’t easily overcome the subconscious and unconscious effects, there’s more you can do to change the way the past haunts your present.
If your parents are still alive, you might consider speaking with them about your discoveries when you reflect on this question. If you have to talk to a tombstone or a photograph, you can still gain a lot from that catharsis. If it’s easier and more comfortable for you to write down your feelings or discuss them with a therapist, close friend, or spouse, do that. Just don’t keep it in any longer. Your body, mind, and spirit will all thank you.
As you learn lessons about how your parents handled or mishandled you as a child, you can hone your own parenting skills, if it applies. If you yourself have made the choice to be a parent, now you’re responsible for the health of your children and those around you who can’t take complete care of themselves, and who will someday become adults themselves. What would you like your children to say about you at your gravesite? There’s much more on the subject of skillful parenting that I’ll share in a future book. But for now, start here.
55. Can You Forgive Yourself and Others?
Forgiveness is the virtue of the brave.
—MAHATMA GANDHI2
In the ideal scenario, you will find a way to forgive your parents. You could consider that your parents were only human. They were as messed up and pained as most people, and, for the most part, most of them tried to do the right thing, at least most of the time. But even if they didn’t—even if they were blatantly terrible to you—you can still learn to forgive. Many millions have, using their faith or meditation or professional counseling or the love of a good spouse to help. While most of us would agree that perhaps the worst thing a person can do in this life is to harm a defenseless child, we might also agree that one of the worst tragedies is that child holding on to the pain until the day he dies, an old and miserable cuss. You bring yourself your life. Now, as an adult, you and only you can bring yourself peace and forgiveness.
The same goes for pains you’ve suffered at the hands of others, besides your parents. Yes, it hurts to be wounded. But we all know that wounds must be tended—cleaned, stitched, soothed, and salved, until they scab over. You wouldn’t tear off a scab daily and dig through a physical wound with sharp nails, would you? So why would you go out of your way to aggravate a psychic wound by rehashing and daily reliving the pains of the past? Yet that’s exactly what you do in your head and your heart with daily reminders of how you were hurt way back when. That was yesterday. Today is today, and you should assume there will be a tomorrow.
Common sense would compel you to cast off something immediately dangerous to your life and health. If someone handed you a ball of fire, instinct and the autonomic nervous system would cause you to hurl it out of your hands before you could blink—before you could even think. If you swallowed some toxin, the body’s defenses would force you to vomit it out of your system as soon as it was detected. Even on the cellular level, the body acts to fight microinvaders and predators, sending white blood cells on assassin missions. If any of the systems failed, we’d say you had a grave health crisis, and the system was in need of urgent aid. In this context, it’s a strange paradox that when it comes to psychic and emotional dangers, we tend to hold on, rather than cast off. We keep that poison inside us, churning. We hold onto that fireball, which burns us. We let the toxin into every fiber of our being. That, too, is a sick system in need of healing.
I know it isn’t easy, and it sometimes takes years—and the help of a professional—but there are few things that will contribute to your health and increase your quality of life more powerfully than forgiveness, more healing than letting go of the past. Yes, we’ve all been wounded in some way, sometimes severely. And, yes, we feel damaged. Somebody abused us, or took something from us. But now it’s over. Now it’s up to us. If we fan those flames, if we keep swallowing that venom, we’re going to suffer indefinitely, and for what? Does that hurt our parents or our abusers or our ex-spouses or whoever mistreated us? Absolutely not. It only feeds the hungry monsters inside us, whom we’ve invited to take up residence in our souls. They eat away at our lives. They eat our time. Our energy. Our self-esteem. Our ability to love. We suffer disturbing dreams and phobias. We get depressed. We endure panic and anxiety attacks. We develop obsessive-compulsive behaviors. We overeat and engage in risky sexual behaviors.
And these monsters consume our bodies, too. They eat away at our stomach lining and feed cancers. We watch our blood pressure and our heart rate rise. To paraphrase Dante, the putrid slime from the mouths of these hungry ghosts boils and swells inside us, in the form of abscesses and infections. Indeed, those monsters made out of holding on to past pain are often at the root of our maladies, from our head down to our toes. As hard as we might try to push them away, hold our breath, or just simply bear the pain, we ultimately succumb. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the two most common areas at risk from this “holding on” are our lungs and colon—the organs responsible for letting go.
Think about it: What would happen if you never exhaled or released what was in your bowels? That’s the experience of holding on to the mistakes of the past. We get full of gas, congested, constipated, stagnant, and toxic. So we’ve got to let go. There’s a profound relief and a massive physical and emotional benefit in forgiveness and other forms of letting go. I can’t think of a pill I’ve ever prescribed that can have as profound an effect.
So get back in front of that mirror. Think about the past pains and hurts you’re holding on to. Who’s out there to forgive? Did they send you away to school when you wanted to stay home? Did they treat your sister better? Did they forbid you dating that girl you liked? Did they hit you? Molest you? Abandon you?
Maybe you need look no further than the mirror—maybe it’s time you forgive yourself for some past mistake.
If you don’t feel quite ready to forgive yet, you can recognize that you can still let go of those things you can’t change. You must. What are the other choices? A lifetime of suffering like a helpless child, full of bile and stagnant air? If you learn to let go—with professional help, if you need it—you take responsibility for your now and your future. You take the wheel, the reins, the rudder—whatever cliché you want to use. You take back your life, and your health.
56. Do You Enjoy High Self-Esteem?
57. Do You Experience Unconditional Love?
MADE IN “USA”
Letting go of toxins, both emotional and literal, will make you feel better. An obvious factor in good health is feeling good about yourself, and vice versa. So let’s talk for a moment about an often misunderstood notion called self-esteem. Not surprisingly, several key studies conducted on adolescent and adult behavior show that low self-esteem is a factor in the development of depression3 and other disorders. It works the other way around, too: depression likely leads to low self-esteem, which further increases the depression, spinning out a negative spiral that can lead to suicide or a completely wasted, “frozen” life.
On the other hand, studies conducted on adolescent behavior have observed that high self-esteem increases happiness in all aspects of life.4 How do you get it? Well, if you lead an active life, with intimate relationships with parents, friends, and romantic partners, you’re going to experience higher levels of self-esteem. And such high self-esteem will in turn benefit your relationships and your quality of life, a fulcrum in extraordinary health.
It’s critical that you achieve this, even if you have to get there incrementally. Low self-esteem has been linked to increased susceptibility to all kinds of illnesses of the mind and body. Michael Marmot, the previous director of the British Medical Association, cites a study of two groups of Pima Indians in Arizona who had high levels of obesity and diabetes. One group acted as the control group, while the other was provided support in maintaining a better level of health. At the end of the study, researchers concluded that “increasing pride in their identity had a more favourable impact on health behaviours and risk than focusing on how to change diet and exercise.”5 I’ve studied the outcomes in thousands of my own patients and seen similar results: maintaining a positive view of yourself—improving your self-esteem—leads to improved mental and physical health.
But what exactly is self-esteem? Is it hubris? Didn’t such excessive pride kill all those Greek heroes and Shakespeare characters? Isn’t it pride that goeth before the fall, turning Lucifer to Satan? Is it vanity, narcissism, conceit? How can any of that be healthy?
Albert Ellis, the famous humanist and founder of the Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy school, answered that question. He built a sixty-year career on one simple principle that attracted millions of adherents: Unconditional Self-Acceptance, or USA. Ellis argued that happiness, balance, and health are indeed dependent upon high self-esteem, and the only way to truly attain a high sense of self-esteem is to forgive and accept yourself unconditionally:
Give up all your ideas about self-esteem, stick only to those of unconditional acceptance, and choose to accept your self, your existence, your humanity whether or not you perform well, whether or not you are loved by significant others, and whether or not you suffer from school, work, sports, or other handicaps.6
In other words, don’t tie how you feel about yourself with how “good” or “right” you are, because you are yourself, a self worthy of your own esteem. Psychologist David Mills expands on his mentor Ellis’s theory by explaining that “most people unfortunately believe that self-esteem must, in some way, be earned through achievements.”7 You know how this works: You lose five pounds, so you feel good about yourself. But later, you eat twelve cookies, and now you feel bad. There are three fundamental problems with this very common way of thinking. The first is that it’s a false dichotomy:
To overcome self-esteem-related anxiety and inhibition, recognize that your choice is not between self-esteem and self-condemnation. Your choice, rather, is between establishing an overall self-image and establishing no self-image. That is, you can choose to view your external actions and traits as desirable or undesirable, but abstain from esteeming or damning yourself as a whole.8
Which leads to the second problem with that good/bad dichotomy: it shouldn’t be the point of self-esteem in the first place. It’s called “self”-esteem and not “action”- or “belief”-esteem for a reason. You need to feel good about your self, even if you don’t feel that you’ve made an ideal choice in any given situation. In other words, you can criticize and challenge your behaviors—“Eating three croissants was not the smartest move in light of my weight-loss goal”—without criticizing or challenging your self—“I’m a big, fat, ugly, stupid failure.”
Lastly, there’s a problem with the quest itself for self-esteem. As Mills writes, “A compulsive drive for self-esteem leads to increased anxiety. And self-esteem-related anxiety is an obstacle to achieving those goals so essential to our self-esteem!”9 So don’t fret about it or overanalyze it. Just practice, daily—or several times a day until it sinks in—some USA. Speak kindly to yourself. Tell yourself you’re okay. Yes, not every choice you’ve made so far has been skillful, but you are a good person, deserving of your own esteem just because you’re you. If some of your choices need honing, that’s all right. Start making those changes. Just remember, that’s about your decisions, your behavior, your actions, which might need some changes—not your core self, which you should accept unconditionally. It’s uncertain if you’ll ever experience unconditional love from someone else, so you should at least get it from yourself.
58. Do You Give Yourself More Supportive Messages Than Critical Messages?
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
If you don’t accept yourself—if you don’t forgive yourself and learn to like and care for yourself—then your physical body, and your mind and spirit, will never heal. They won’t be able to help you, because they will have received the message loud and clear that you’re not worth it.
There’s a valuable slow medicine prescription I can offer here to help you on the way to USA: It’s called positive self-talk. This is just a fancy way of saying you need to be nice to yourself. We all have continuing “scripts” in our heads, consisting of our inner self-talk. The things you say to yourself on an ongoing basis need to be supportive, loving, fair, and kind—not hateful, shame-inducing, and mean. It’s that simple. Skillful Living and extraordinary health rely on a sense of self-worth that springs from the reminders you give yourself often about who you are and what you’re worth. So sit down somewhere quietly, in a comfortable room or out in nature, and listen to yourself talking to yourself. What do you say to the you in the mirror? What messages do you give yourself? As you slowly become aware of these messages, work on altering them. Although they seem to work on an unconscious level, they’re entirely within your control. Look at the difference between positive self-talk and negative self-talk:
|
SKILLFUL SELF-TALK |
UNSKILLFUL SELF-TALK |
|
I made a good choice at dinner tonight, avoiding that second glass of wine. |
I’m a useless drunk and I’ll never get it under control. |
|
Cooking with all this salt is not the most skillful choice for my high blood pressure. Cutting down will help my health. |
I’m addicted to salt. I’ll never be able to give it up. |
|
I’d like to be more patient with my kids. The weekend was peaceful, but come Monday, they were really pushing my buttons. I’m going to work on ways to see things more from their perspective before I yell. |
I’m a terrible parent. |
|
I’ve been procrastinating on getting my health in better shape. Today I’m going to start with something simple and positive, walking to lunch instead of driving. |
I’m so lazy and useless—I can’t even take care of my own health. |
Notice how positive, skillful self-talk, even when it must be self-critical, accentuates the positive, focuses on changeable behaviors that lead to desired outcomes, and works on finding a path to solutions. It doesn’t attack you, the person behind the decisions. Negative, unskillful self-talk, on the other hand, goes right for the jugular, savaging your core self, the person behind the actions—then stops right there, offering no avenues to change. You can tell it’s negative and unskillful, by the way, because it usually contains some form of the verb “to be”: I am fat. I am bad at my job. I am a terrible daughter. Such negative self-talk is paradoxically quite comforting sometimes. First of all, we’ve grown used to it. And secondly, it removes responsibility for changing behaviors. If you are, at the essence of your being, fat, then you might as well have another pile of deep-fried Kool-Aid, right? If you are, fundamentally, stupid, then why bother working on learning anything new?
Changing your inner script is not easy, and it will take constant vigilance. Please don’t expect to be able to do it overnight, or even over the course of a year. The fact that it’s a “script” means you’re apt to stick to it. To go off script requires some uncomfortable improvising and ad-libbing. Here are four final pieces of advice about making those changes:
1.Resist feeling awkward about talking to yourself.
2.Whatever you do, don’t criticize yourself if you find you have a negative script in your head. In other words, don’t create a negative script about your negative script. If you do this, you miss the point entirely andcompound the problem.
3.Whenever you talk to yourself, imagine you’re talking to a person you love very much. To that person, you would always be supportive, nurturing, and gentle, even when you have to nudge in a new direction. Now, why shouldn’t you be that person that you love? You might not think so right now, but I can promise you that you deserve it! It is of real, practical value to learn to like yourself, says the self-help guru Dr. Norman Vincent Peale: “Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.”10
4.Use a loving friend or partner to help you determine what to put in your new script. They love you for a reason: Why? If you’re uncomfortable receiving such compliments, think about why that is and how that’s serving you.
59. Do You Surround Yourself with Positive, Encouraging People?
PUSHING BUTTONS
To make this easier, let’s spend some time talking about criticism, and how the negative script gets into your head in the first place, leading to the creation of all your “buttons.” I have a patient, Lara, who, while under my care, also received private counseling for issues she had with her older sister, Judy. As an individual, Lara was very well adjusted, showing maturity, composure, balance, and restraint in nearly all areas of her life. But she really lost control around her sister, who, not surprisingly, had an uncanny knack for pushing Lara’s buttons. This scenario is not uncommon, especially among siblings. No one knows our vulnerabilities and can get underneath our skin quite as skillfullyas our family members.
According to Lara, Judy’s life was apparently littered with other acrimonious relationships as well. Although I have never met her, from what I could discern, Judy had many issues of her own to resolve. However, by continually pointing out her sister’s flaws, Lara was diverting the attention she needed to examine her own role in the relationship. Blaming other people, even if it is warranted, keeps us from developing ourselves. Habitually, we protect our fragile egos by pointing a finger at the other person, blaming them for the problems in the relationship, and this is not the way to skillfully manage a relationship.
Instead, when we’re in a challenging relationship, we should also look at ourselves. If the goal is growth, maturation, and health, then it’s worth asking: Why does it take so little for others to push our buttons?
While it’s sometimes prudent to let go of a relationship, Lara didn’t want to cut off her sister, nor was it realistic for me to expect her to do so. Lara loved her sister and wanted to improve their communication. But Lara’s vulnerability to Judy’s barbs pointed to a crack in her façade. Judy knew the location of this crack because she was there from the beginning, and might have even played a role in its formation. Rather than recommending she resist or deny the challenge posed by this relationship, I encouraged Lara to use it as a way to work on her own health, balance, and inner peace.
Together, we concluded that if Lara hit Judy back with barbs of her own, the divide between them would widen. Similarly, if she ignored the comments, that might paradoxically enrage Judy, who seemed always to be looking to get a rise out of her sister. Ultimately, all of Lara’s pain in that relationship boiled down to her attachments and her ego. What was she willing to surrender? I reminded Lara that, at one time or another, we have all been hurt, abused, teased, and mistreated. From the earliest age, we’re labeled: smart or dumb, energetic or lazy, popular or unpopular, exceptional or ordinary. Some of us are “odd” or “quirky,” whereas others are simply “messed up” or “damaged.” Often, these labels work in juxtaposition to our siblings (Annie is the “pretty” one and Nancy is the “smart” one). And frequently, these labels provide a mark or stigma that sets us apart from others, or connects us to undesirable or socially disagreeable characteristics. Every time Judy interacted with Lara, Lara had to face her labels in the mirror.
Lara’s most sensitive label from Judy happened to be “bad hair.” You can see how easily that label became a button for Lara. Judy frequently commented about Lara’s hair, even though—or perhaps because—she knew that was her sorest point for whatever reason. But why did Lara have a button about her hair? It might sound overly simplistic, but once Lara let go of—or at least tempered—the issues surrounding her hair (her need to appear well put together and even glamorous), that button would disappear—and neither Judy nor anyone else would be able to push it any longer.
So I began by suggesting that Lara start the healing process by focusing on herself for a while and letting Judy off the hook for the time being. I wanted her to create some space, some time and distance away from the ongoing battle. This would be important before embarking on a new path that would require work of a highly personal nature. I reminded Lara about her ongoing work to build greater balance in her life and to reassess her attachments, loosening those that did not serve her. In this instance, she had to face that her vanity was one of her issues. It might have seemed cruel of Judy to always attack this one point of sensitivity, but it said as much about Lara: Judy was simply turning the mirror around.
I encouraged Lara to use Judy’s provocations as motivation for her own personal growth. After ruminating about this topic over many sessions, Lara finally asked me, “How will I know when I’m ready to do this?” My answer to her was straightforward and simple: “When you no longer feel vulnerable to comments about your hair.” That has so much more to do with Lara than with Judy. Ultimately, this is about self-esteem. And once we reclaim it, the negative script is erased.
EXTRAORDINARY HEALTH AND HAPPINESS
And so it goes. Until we address our buttons, the negative script will play on, and the button pushers will hold their magical spell over us. And when our buttons are pushed, our self-esteem will suffer. But, as we learn to live more skillfully, as conscious adults, we realize that it is we who are responsible for our own self-esteem and our feelings and reactions. Yes, it requires work, but so be it. It can’t be achieved by swallowing more pills (even if they’re prescribed), and it can’t be bought.
Indeed, our health and happiness is not tied to how much we own and how much we control. In order to move toward the rewards of extraordinary health, you have to move away from the herd’s suicidal drive off the cliff of material goods and false promises. Instead, you have to head in another direction altogether, facing yourself and actually committing to letting go of the negativity, ignoring the voices of the naysayers and those who would otherwise bring you down, serving their own self-interests.
What will really make you happy and healthy, if not a fancy car and a house on the beach in Saint-Tropez? You can start by cultivating a more positive mental state, which will have a positive effect on physical and mental health. In Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, “Positive Psychology” expert Martin E. P. Seligman collects some of the best data available on the positive influence on the health of things like solid relationships and a sense of life-purpose.11 The best way to “build strength” against physical illness, according to the many studies Seligman performed or compiled, is—you guessed it!—to go well beyond the physical. In fact, after you correct for all the traditional risk factors for chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease (things like obesity, smoking, and high cholesterol), we find that positive psychological aspects, such as optimism, have positive effects on our specific disease states and our overall health outcomes—sometimes quite profound effects. These studies show that the right, positive mentality can help us with specific chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes, as well as with specific and integrated aspects of our lives, such as feeling useful and productive on the job or in the community.
OUR PARTNERS OF CHOICE
The fact is, there’s plenty of science to support the notion that a truly integrated and holistic approach to health is the answer. However, the symptoms of poor health are most readily found by looking around at the faces that surround us at dinner. Our families and partners provide the best window into how we are doing. Thus, I’d like to take this discussion further to consider where we wind up once we leave our families of origin and how easily we can fall into the patterns of the past if we are not careful.
Think about it: we come out of our families of origin variously healthy or wounded, and then we find families of choice, the people with whom we surround ourselves—starting with our partners. Very often, as you’ve probably experienced in your own life or by studying those around you, we surround ourselves with those who fit the same patterns and fulfill the same roles as those from our youth—even when those roles are largely negative. Harville Hendrix, the psychologist who wrote the bestseller Getting the Love You Want and cofounded Imago Couples Therapy, sums up this phenomenon well: We sometimes seek in our partner the “imago” (Latin for “mirror image”) of one or both of our parents, whom we perceive as having created a certain wound or series of pains in the way they loved us, or seemed to sometimes deny us or threaten to deny us love. The confusing and overwhelming experience of this all-powerful love of our parents—and the agony of feeling it slip away—creates an “emotional map” in us that we continue to follow into adulthood. We put ourselves back in the “same” relationship to try to heal those wounds. If we continue this way unskillfully, we simply relive, again and again, the pains of our childhood, and we never realize all the potential joys of our current relationships. Hendrix recommends a path toward bettering these relationships through what he calls “conscious partnership,” in which we share with our partners those emotional maps, and help each other heal past wounds: “Happiness is relational.”12 It requires intimacy—opening up, even about your most “shadowy” past—with someone you trust enough to help you heal, without ever taking advantage.
So before I review the benefits of intimate relationships, it goes without saying that the most intimate relationship within your family of choice—the one with your spouse—can be either a source of terrible anxiety and pain, or tremendous support and joy. Take a good look at your present relationship, if you have one, and consider a simple question: Are you better off in this relationship or out of it? An unskillful relationship is a cancer that festers and swells, consuming your health and happiness, until the day it kills you. Like many, I know this from firsthand experience. Sometimes the most skillful decision is to recognize (preferably together) that you’re no good for each other, and move on, letting each other go because you know it’s the right thing. My former wife and I had some good years together and made three remarkable children. But it eventually became clear that we were not on the same page about how to work on ourselves and the marriage itself in order to maintain it. Our health on many levels was affected and hanging in the balance. Indeed, researchers have concluded that the emotional and physical stress of bad marriages can cause serious health problems. A good, stable marriage, on the other hand, promotes health and lowers disease incidence. One thing is for sure: hurting each other is not what skillful relationships are all about.
For a long time, common sense and anecdotal evidence led us to believe that people in love fared better in their health. Now research findings support a direct link between happy, stable relationships and better health. There are many examples,13 and here’s one that I think illustrates the point quite well: A long-term study of six thousand male and three thousand female British civil servants shows that healthy social relationships lead to better health, especially cardiovascular health, and unhealthy or negative relationships are often a key prognostic factor for myocardial infarction (heart attack) and congestive heart failure. The study showed that married women in unsatisfying relationships are three times more likely to have metabolic syndrome (a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease) than women in satisfying marriages. In men, marital distress is often associated with poor diet, lack of exercise, and substance abuse (alcohol chief among them), which might account for the higher instance of heart-related issues among unhappily married men. Both men and women in negative relationships are nearly twice as likely to experience a cardiovascular/heart disease event than those in positive, happy relationships. They are also more likely to develop depression, work stress, reduced self-esteem, anger, and a flat affect—which, in turn, are risk factors for any number of other major chronic health concerns. Yikes. Looks like you might want to put down this book and go say “I love you” to your neglected spouse. And for those of you without such a relationship, read on.
60. Do You Experience Intimate Nonsexual Relationships?
What exactly is intimacy? It’s differentiated from other personal relationships by the presence of confiding interactions between partners. This is different from sexual intimacy, which is dependent on physical interaction. Either way, intimacy, at its core, is a social interaction. How does it work? Karen J. Prager, a family psychology expert from the University of Texas at Dallas, has studied the phenomenon: “Intimate relationships seem to buffer people from the pathogenic effects of stress,”14 she writes, and “People who lack intimate relationships are at risk for a variety of ills.”15 Yes, love and friendship are good medicine.
Strong, intimate bonds between spouses have shown long-term benefits in helping cancer surgery patients recover psychologically and physically.16 And research has also shown that intimacy improves the satisfaction of women during and after stressful events, such as pregnancy and giving birth.17 Deep, personal relationships are indicators of well-being,18 maturity,19 and positive psychological growth.20 Such intimacy should start early, with training from parents. Developing strong relationships during young adulthood leads not to dependency, as you might expect, but rather to a better sense of independence as we grow older.21 High intimacy levels that start early also set us up for fewer psychological problems, such as alcohol and drug addictions, anxiety, and general mental and physical illnesses.22
Intimacy needn’t take place only with spouses. Strong bonds between friends and family members can have the same positive physical and psychological benefits. One study shows that increased intimacy within a family, between parents and children, and between spouses, influences the mental and physical health of everyone in the group. The children in these families experience less mental and physical stress as they reach adulthood; they feel better, and they feel better about life.23 This is important nowadays when most people in our culture don’t get married until they’re in their twenties, thirties, or older. That allows for nearly half a lifetime to practice developing “intimate” relationships of all kinds. It’s difficult to start your experience of intimacy with your new spouse—you wouldn’t know how.
Still, you needn’t be connected at the hip to be intimate. Henri J.M. Nouwen, a Dutch-born Catholic priest, has written more than forty books about spirituality and relationships, often developing beautiful treatises on intimacy that I’ve shared with my patients and reflected on in my own life:
Intimacy between people requires closeness as well as distance. It is like dancing. Sometimes we are very close, touching each other or holding each other; sometimes we move away from each other and let the space between us become an area where we can freely move. To keep the right balance between closeness and distance requires hard work, especially since the needs of the partners may be quite different at a given moment. One might desire closeness while the other wants distance. One might want to be held while the other looks for independence. A perfect balance seldom occurs, but the honest and open search for that balance can give birth to a beautiful dance, worthy to behold.24
The fact that the lovely metaphor above comes from a (presumably) celibate Catholic priest makes a valuable point for me: intimacy is not just about sex (a fact many men sometimes don’t realize). If our intimacy is entirely sex-based, we’ll find we have nothing left when we get older and our bodies stop working the way they once did. Even in the closest relationships, sex can be off limits because of age, health, or faith reasons, and intimacy can still flourish.
61. Is Your Sexual Relationship Gratifying?
Not to say that sex isn’t important, if you want to have it! I’ve noticed in my practice that sexual challenges—clinical “dysfunctions” and general anxiety about sex—are a chief complaint and stressor among patients with chronic health problems. While I could engage in an intriguing chicken-or-egg debate about it, what’s important here is to note that the free expression of sexuality is a sign of general health, well-being, and self-esteem.
I ask you if your sexual relationship feels gratifying because it’s a good and simple measure of your ability to open up. As an apt generalization, health is determined in part by becoming “open” instead of remaining “closed.”25The extent to which we’re willing to be physically intimate and vulnerable is a reflection of the level of comfort and trust we have both with ourselves and with our partners, not to mention a good clue about our early lives (one of the places Sigmund Freud was prescient). If you have strong sexual inhibitions and aversions within your sex life with your partner; if you feel closed off, overprotective, or too vulnerable when you’re naked or when your partner touches you, it’s worth some reflection about where these feelings are coming from. People who’ve been wounded or violated—especially when the pain occurred early in life—tend to later protect their underbelly (both figuratively and literally), which often manifests itself in sexual hang-ups. Lack of comfort with sexual intimacy is a good mirror of our wounds in that general area. When we’re wounded there—either by some past abuse, by something that happened that we consider shameful, or even by cultural mores and taboos—it’s difficult to allow ourselves to feel sexually gratified, even if we want to. So we close ourselves off to these experiences, and this closure can block our connections to our partner and to others. Think about whether you’re closed off in some way, sexually. Think about what you might do to safely, gradually, and appropriately open up, either on your own or with the right, trusted partner who can share that journey without ever pushing you too far, too fast.
SPACE IN YOUR TOGETHERNESS
I should mention again that although we are drawn together, intimacy does not require permanent merger. In fact, it’s essential for partners, especially those who share a household, to give each other enough personal space, as this space helps each individual stay whole and fully available for their partner and the partnership itself. Relationships frequently fail because this principle is tacitly honored in theory, but seldom practiced. To paraphrase the brilliant Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran, the oak tree and the cypress do not grow in each other’s shadow.26 Instead, what we often see is partners subtly or not so subtly competing with each other: competing for attention, demanding that their problems be addressed first; suffocating their mate (and paradoxically, a vital source for their own nourishment). Those of you who garden have learned such lessons about how to sow seeds and tend to plants. We can apply the same lessons to our relationships. Says Proust: “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, for they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”27
Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles adds a spiritual component to this argument: “Kadosh, the Hebrew word for ‘holy,’ also means ‘separate.’ Yet Kiddushin, the word for the sanctification of marriage, also comes from the same root. How can togetherness come from separateness?”28 The answer, to paraphrase the Hasidic theologian Martin Buber, is that love requires a certain amount of detachment.29 This kind of holiness “is the dancing master of the heart: encouraging intimacy, insisting on distance, drawing close again.”30 Further, when we consider that the English words “holy” and “health” likewise derive from the same root, the circle is completed. Clearly the path to extraordinary health goes through our relationships.
So, why do we engage in such obviously unskillful interpretations of intimacy? Some people just seem incapable of leaving their partner alone. Their demand for attention is never sated, and they struggle when their significant other closes off in any way. Often, they react by drawing closer or becoming needier. Just as young children get attention from their parents by squabbling, acting out, or engaging in some manner of mischievous behavior, a needy partner gets attention and stays in focus by drawing negative attention. Many adults hold on to this behavior, particularly in their primary relationships, because it’s how they learned to feed their ego or act in the presence of their imago. Yet even those who have insight into this aspect of their behavior appear to have little ability to do anything about it. Why?
Likely, the answer touches on their very primal fear of isolation or abandonment—part of that “emotional map” we form early on when we experience our parents’ love, and fear that they will take it away. This fear overwhelms logical thought and supplants reason. In the context of a committed relationship, this behavior becomes pathological as one ego attempts to overshadow the other in a dysfunctional struggle for survival. Indeed, this competitive twist undermines the cooperative spirit of the relationship.
It’s okay—it’s even necessary—to let go a little. You must, or you will smother your partner. As Robert Brault writes, “There are days when you need someone who just wants to be your sunshine and not the air you breathe.”31
It’s also critical for you to have your own space, for both you and your partner (and the rest of your family) to help nurture your individualism and autonomy. This is one of the reasons that, no matter how much you love and adore someone, you ought not to make another person your purpose in life, your sole reason for living, your self. This is hard for a lot of people, especially women. It feels selfish or greedy or egotistic to think about and act on a personal sense of purpose that seems, ostensibly, to forgo the important people in your life. And, often, it seems impractical. You might wonder: Who’s going to change the diapers? Who’s going to worry about college tuition? Who’s going to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan? I can assure you there’s enormous room to accommodate the ones you love—but it’s your soul and spirit, your life, your purpose, your health, your self, at stake. “Certainly your health and your body and you are more important than anything else in your life,” say Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, the health divas who rocked the world with their straightforward Skinny Bitch series of books about women’s health:
Yes, you have to put yourself before your friends, parents, boyfriend, husband, and even your children. It won’t make you a bad daughter or wife or mother; it will make you a less resentful, more confident, interesting, beautiful, patient, tolerant, and fun person to be around.32
62. Do You Feel a Sense of Belonging to a Group or Community?
COMMUNITY CHEST
Now that we’ve explored our families of origin and our present, intimate relationships, it’s crtitical that we take the next step and consider the larger context of our relationships, the groups and the larger community to which we belong—or ought to belong. We can’t sustain extraordinary health in a state of isolation. There was a time not so long ago when it took a village to raise a child. At the least, many of us grew up in extended families, and many more in true neighborhoods, where people shared in the responsibility of child rearing and taking care of each other. But we’ve begun to look at the world through the unskillful lens of isolation that blinds us to the web of cause and effect. I propose that to be truly healthy, we must begin to take our collective interests into consideration when we make choices about our own health and well-being. We can call this “informed personal responsibility,” a new kind of leadership that genuinely supports this notion of “universal health.” Or we can just call it Skillful Living.
So, do you feel a sense of belonging to a group or community? This is especially important if your family of origin tended to hurt you rather than make you feel whole. We can go back to prehistoric times or simply look around at modern analogs to learn that we need each other to survive and thrive optimally. We need to feel that we belong. Do you feel part of your block, your neighborhood, your town, your country? In what ways do you express that sense of belonging, and how does it make you feel?
What happens in these groups is variously called intimacy, camaraderie, sharing, support, and so on. People stand by each other. People offer each other advice. People acculturate each other, accept each other. Paradoxically, we need others to make us feel whole as individuals.
In a formal way, we can join military or paramilitary organizations. We can join fraternities and sororities, political parties, or religious organizations. We can benefit from the strength of groups in less formal ways, too. We can belong to a poker game, a gardening club, a sewing circle, a choir, a cycling team—or even just a group of close friends who gather to travel or eat or shoot the breeze.
Lately, of course, many of us are joining social networks online. A recent study found that the average American user has 245 Facebook friends33—and some have many thousands. The total number of Facebook members—just shy of one billion—would make it the third most populous country in the world, after China and India. On Facebook and other social networks, we can reconnect with old friends, meet new people, share our latest triumphs and pains, and stay “connected” to others—or so goes the pitch. But there’s a backlash against such virtual social networks. In a recent article, the New York Times highlighted the growing trend of smaller and smaller social networks. One social network, called Pair, limits each user to just one friend!34 Funny old world. Do you need a computer and an Internet connection to bond with one close friend? Is the next piece of advice from an ingenious computer company going to be “Turn off your computer and hug your spouse?” “We actually have to get together to make a relationship work,” argues British evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar. Poignantly, he points out, “Words are slippery, a touch is worth 1,000 words any day.”35
Yes, both literally and figuratively, the health benefits that arise out of group belonging are based on the fact that we can touch each other, hold each other and hold each other up, motivate each other, move each other.
Let me be clear about one caveat: yes, there are huge health benefits that involve our love of, and our cooperation with, others. I urge you to pursue those, but I warn you to be careful of the dangers of allowing others—either individuals or the masses—to overly influence your direction. This is a very personal matter. Remember, sometimes the herd is heading for a cliff. Where has simply following the crowd helped you so far in pursuit of either health or happiness?
63. Do You Go Out of Your Way to Help Others?
OUR BROTHERS’ AND SISTERS’ KEEPERS
Beyond merely belonging to a group, though, it’s worth looking at what you can do for the group, for others, and the community at large. Do you currently serve others in some way? Do you volunteer? Do you go out of your way to give time or energy (not just money) to help others? Does the herd you belong to do any of these things? If you do, you’re not alone. Every year, nearly 63 million Americans give of themselves through service.36 Their dedication and compassion is a testament to the generosity of the American spirit. In difficult times, we come together to tackle our challenges instead of ignoring them. Lots of us face hardships today. But regardless of the severity of our present, personal problems, we can always find neighbors who are suffering more than we are—and whom we can help by donating our time, expertise, or goodwill. When we do something for others, we help heal them, and we help heal a hurting world.
Service opportunities “tap the energy and ingenuity of our greatest resource—the American people—to improve our neighborhoods and our world,” according to President Barack Obama. Millions of citizens each year serve through Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America. “We are building the capacity of organizations and communities to tackle their own problems by investing in social innovation and volunteer cultivation,” says the president. And through United We Serve, a national call to service, the government is making it easier for women and men of all ages to find volunteer opportunities or create their own projects where they see a need.37
Look around—there’s a heck of a need. Use your intuition and your senses to tell you where you can do the most good. Volunteering and altruism go hand in hand. According to C. Daniel Batson’s book The Altruism Question,altruism is “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare.”38 It feels good, and you value it, but you do it for others, not your own gain. And no one forces you into it. The moment you engage in a behavior that promotes the welfare of others “without conscious regard for one’s own self-interests,”39 you’re being altruistic. However, you don’t necessarily have to think of it as self-sacrifice. You want to help others. But why? Why not just look out for number one?
Paradoxically, self-centeredness doesn’t work for self-preservation. One study observed that the number of times a person used self-references in an interview (such as talking at length about themselves or using the first-person pronoun excessively) was an indicator of the extent of coronary heart disease.40 We must think of—and help—others in our community to reap the beneficial health effects ourselves.
Research on the sociological and biological evolution of altruism suggests that our ancestors might have developed such altruism as a long-term survival instinct or strategy.41 It makes sense that when you help the tribe, you help yourself. Further research proposes that the larger a society grows, the greater the inclination to share resources and labor within that group, especially when competing with another community.42 This “pro-social” behavior eventually developed into the modern concept of altruism. One study observed that humans are unique in that “people in even very large societies also show strong tendencies toward altruism. Warfare, food sharing, and taxation are all examples of pro-social patterns of behavior that are common in human societies but nearly completely absent in other vertebrates.”43 Altruism and volunteerism are then beneficial to human society as a whole, but how does that affect smaller communities, and most important, individuals?
Well, researchers have found that “volunteers have higher levels of well-being and life-satisfaction than non-volunteers, suggesting that volunteering can play an important role in maintaining good health later in life.”44 This is true even when you’re sick or suffering yourself. Another study found that patients actually experienced decreased pain and depression when they volunteered as counselors for other chronic pain patients. Somehow, dedicating themselves to others in their same predicament not only helped the others, but helped them, too. The study found that “making a connection” and “a sense of purpose”—two health factors we’ve already discussed—were major contributors to people feeling better.45
Psychologist Stephen G. Post, the author of The Hidden Gifts of Helping and Why Good Things Happen to Good People, writes that “positive emotions (kindness, other-regarding love, compassion, and so on) enhance health by virtue of pushing aside negative ones. . . . [They seem] to cast out the fear and anxiety that emerge from preoccupation with self.”46
But it’s important to note that this evidence is not just anecdotal. Altruism has physiologically measurable effects. One study describes something known as the “Mother Teresa effect.” When a group of students watched a film about the altruistic acts of Mother Teresa, their salivary immunoglobulin A, a critical antibody, rose.47 Immunoglobulin A literally provides a hedge against illness.
So take note—especially if you’re a senior. Christine L. Carter, a sociologist at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and the author of Raising Happiness, writes, “People fifty-five and older who volunteer for two or more organizations have an impressive 44 percent lower likelihood of dying—and that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor.”48 According to a study by the University of Michigan, volunteers with contributions of at least forty hours per year were likely to live a full seven and a half years longer than those who did not volunteer.49
We all need help and support sometimes for healing. But it’s the act of giving—not receiving—social support that decreases the chances of disease and death in older adults, regardless of age, culture, social class, and gender.50The more you volunteer, and the more regularly you volunteer, the greater the chance that you will live longer. Just remember, though, that despite this knowledge, the healing effects of altruism don’t work when you volunteer to help yourself. As one study reported, “Those who volunteered for self-oriented reasons had a mortality risk similar to non-volunteers. Those who volunteered for other-oriented reasons had a decreased mortality risk.”51
It’s never too late to get into the habit of doing for others. But, like financial investing, the earlier you start, the greater the rewards. People who were altruistic as adolescents grow up to have more successful lives—with better physical and mental health in late adulthood—than their peers who were not altruistic in adolescence.”52
Keep in mind that your community includes more than just other people. Every day that you take care of a pet, you’re volunteering and acting altruistically. You’ve heard this before, and it’s true: blood pressure, heart rate, and mental stress all go down among people who own pets.53, 54
SERVICE STATIONS
In Rockland, the next county over from mine, there’s a program called RSVP—Retired Senior Volunteer Program—based at SUNY Rockland Community College. It places hundreds of volunteers at more than 150 local agencies where they’re best matched. RSVP’s director, Gerri Zabusky (after whose name follows an alphabet soup of higher degrees), keeps it simple: “Volunteering is a noble gesture, and it has major benefits for the health of the volunteer.”55I guarantee you there are programs like this one in your town or county—for youth, for seniors, for everyone.
So what can you do for others, and where can you start? Where can you feel a sense of belonging and/or contribute and serve others?
•Your local volunteer fire department or ambulance squad. You don’t necessarily need massive training for this. They need drivers, “scene support” people, traffic officers, and folks to help with pancake breakfasts, fund-raising, blood drives, and so on.
•Your local library. They need help getting donations and new members, stacking shelves, helping patrons, and reading to kids.
•Your local community college. They need volunteer tutors.
•Your local pet shelter. They need volunteers to feed, walk, and groom homeless animals, as well as raise funds.
•Your local hospital. They need candy stripers, clowns, and patient visitors.
•Your local nursing home. They need people to read to the residents, chauffeur them to appointments—and often just to sit and visit with them.
•Your local kids’ sports organizations. They need coaches and assistant coaches, as well as team mothers and team fathers to bring snacks and equipment.
•Your local veterans organization. They need help writing to soldiers overseas, delivering aid to veterans, welcoming returning military personnel, and a host of other valuable services.
•Your local literacy organization. They need people to help kids and adults with reading challenges.
•Your local Meals on Wheels or other meal-donation agency. They need help preparing and delivering meals to the hungry in their homes and on the streets.
•Your local church, synagogue, mosque, or other faith-based organization. They need ushers, fund-raisers, cleaners, cooks, choir members, and day care and Sunday School helpers.
•Your local Boys and Girls Clubs, 4-H, Scouts, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or similar organization.
•My garden here at SunRaven, or one closer to you.
All these places provide training. If you’re willing to step up your volunteerism, as some of my patients have done, there are agencies like Teach for America, the Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, Doctors Without Borders, and others that provide high levels of training, a huge adventure for you, and an awesome opportunity to do massive good for others, assuming you can dedicate a large amount of time and energy.
But you needn’t formalize your community service. Here are a few simple things you can do, starting today, that will take the focus off your problems as you begin to help others. This will help heal you both:
•Mow your neighbor’s lawn
•Pick up the litter along your road (be safe!) or a local waterway
•Bring some food to an elderly resident of your town
•Clean up some graffiti
•Send a book or DVD to a soldier abroad
•If you see a soldier at an airport or restaurant, pay for his or her meal
64. Do You Confide In or Speak Openly with One or More Close Friends?
FELLOWSHIP
Beyond our original families, beyond our families of choice, and beyond the community lies another intimate connection: our true friends and fellows. Good health requires a level of intimacy with others that is similarly vital to our health and well-being. At its core, this type of intimacy is really about trust. Who would you call for a favor? With whom, besides your partner, would you share your most intimate thoughts? Indeed, since we often need someone to speak to about our partner, it is easy to see one example of how and why intimate friendship is so important. Therefore, it’s essential to work up to trusting at least one other person in your life with confidences. This can be tough if your trust was broken in early life, but it’s worth a try. You can start by always being trustworthy yourself. By listening attentively to friends. By supporting them. By never breaking their confidences. Be for them what you wish them to be for you, and they will be more likely to deliver. By the same token—especially if your trust and vulnerability have been violated—be careful whom you choose to take into your confidence. Make sure that person demonstrates the qualities of trustworthiness. Use your intuition.
You’ve heard the wise sayings: Birds of a feather flock together. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. You know close friendships can influence you. But can they really benefit your health? Recent studies have shown that when it comes to physical and psychological health, close relationships with friends are as important as those with our families—and maybe even more important.56
One recent fifteen-year study found that Swedish men were more likely to contract heart disease if they lacked intimacy with close family and friends, and as well as if they lacked well-developed relationships within their community.57 An earlier study conducted by the same researchers observed that lack of social support was one of two leading risk factors for heart disease in these middle-aged men.58 Other research has observed that women diagnosed with breast cancer who did not have intimate relationships “had a subsequent 66 percent increased risk of all-cause mortality . . . and a two-fold increased risk of breast cancer mortality” compared to women who had close family and friends.59
Of course you know already that the effects of our social interactions can be either positive or negative. One thirty-two-year study found that “a person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent . . . if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval,” and that this influence extended to three degrees of separation.60
In the end, sound, healthy relationships are an indication that things are going well. On the other hand, unhealthy, dysfunctional relationships tell us that something is amiss. Simply stated, the quality of our relationships reflects how skillfully we are living. Good relationships require compassion, balance, flexibility, and equanimity. Our primary relationships—with others and ourselves—are a true reflection of our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
PRACTICAL PRESCRIPTION 7: RECLAIMING TRUST
In order to foster intimacy and its associated health benefits, it helps greatly to be able to open up to other people and share your thoughts and feelings—in short, to be open to giving and receiving love from at least one other person. So I’d like you to identify a person in your life with whom you think you will feel the most comfortable opening up and sharing a little, or a little more than you have thus far. This could be your spouse, a trusted friend, or a family member. It could be a group in your community, such as a recovery group or a church group. Reach out to this person or organization, and tell them that you want to crack open the door of your relationship a little more. Here’s the prescription: share your feelings about an important subject—one that you’ve never broached before. You needn’t confess your most private and well-guarded secret (although you might find massive relief in that when you’re ready); just share something that pushes your intimacy level a little further. This might be difficult. If you suffered horrendous abuse or for some other reason have a total lack of trust in others, you can write out these feelings in journal form, without ever having to show them to anyone. Use your intuition here. What would you like to share?
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION
65. Have You Demonstrated the Willingness to Commit to Marriage or a Comparable Long-Term Relationship?
66. Have You Had Deep Tissue Bodywork or a Massage, and Are You Comfortable Being Touched?
67. Can You Let Go of Your Self-Interest in Deciding the Best Course of Action for a Given Situation?
68. Do You Have Regular, Effortless Bowel Movements?
At first glance, these questions might seem unrelated. But I assure you they’re not. The issue here is how “open” you feel, how secure you are in your own space. Indeed, if you hold on too tightly, others, including the divine, cannot penetrate—and you’ll be constipated to boot. Without getting too vulgar, our bodies are a clear reflection of our interior emotional and spiritual landscape. Extraordinary health is predicated on our ability to get so comfortable in our own skin that we feel safe being touched on the deepest level.