You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
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| Acceptance, Belief, and Surrender I have mentioned the word suggestibility throughout this book as if being suggestible were something that all of us could simply do voluntarily on command. As you read in the story at the beginning of the chapter, it turns out that it’s not that easy. Let’s face it. Some of us— certainly Ivan Santiago—are more suggestible than others. And even those who are more suggestible respond to certain suggestions better than other suggestions. For example, some of the hypnotism test subjects had no problem stripping to their underwear in public when given that posthypnotic suggestion, yet they were unable to subconsciously accept the idea that a tub of frigid ice water was really a warm Jacuzzi. This was true even though posthypnotic suggestions (including the suggestion that Santiago shoot the stranger) are generally more difficult to make stick, compared to suggestions that alter someone’s state temporarily during the hypnotic trance itself. And like hypnosis, the placebo response also doesn’t just work for everyone. The placebo patients you’ve read about who were able to make positive changes last for years (like the men who had the sham knee surgery) respond much like hypnotherapy subjects who’ve been given posthypnotic suggestions. For some, like these men, such suggestions work beautifully. For others, not much happens. For instance, when they’re sick or suffering from a disease, many people simply can’t accept the idea that even a drug, procedure, treatment, or injection can help them—let alone that a placebo might work. Why not? 136 It takes thinking greater than how they feel—in turn allowing those new thoughts to drive new feelings, which then reinforce those new thoughts —until it becomes anew state of being. But if familiar feelings have become the means of familiar thinking and the person can’t transcend that habituation, he or she is in the same past state of mind and body, and everything stays the same. However, if those same people who can’t accept that a drug or procedure could make them well could reach anew level of acceptance and belief, and then surrender to that end without constantly fretting, worrying, and analyzing, then they could reap greater rewards from the process. That’s what suggestibility is making a thought into a virtual experience and having our bodies consequentially respond in anew manner. Suggestibility combines three elements acceptance, belief, and surrender. The more we accept, believe, and surrender to whatever we’re doing to change our internal state, the better the results we can create. Similarly, when Santiago was under hypnosis and his subconscious mind was in control, he could totally accept what Silver told him about the “bad guy who needed to be eliminated, he could believe that Silver was telling the truth, and he could surrender to carrying out the detailed instructions Silver gave him, without ever analyzing or thinking critically about what he was about to do. There was no hand-wringing and asking for proof. There was no second-guessing. He just did it. Adding in Emotion So when we are presented with the idea of better health, and we can associate that hope or thought—that something outside of us is going to change something inside of us—with emotional anticipation of the experience, we’re becoming suggestible to that end result. We condition, expect, and assign meaning to the whole delivery system. But the emotional component is key in this experience suggestibility isn’t just an intellectual process. Many folks can intellectualize being better, but if they can’t emotionally embrace the result, then they can’t enter into the autonomic nervous system (as Santiago did using hypnotism, which is vital because that’s the seat of the subconscious programming that’s been calling all the shots (as discussed in Chapter In fact, it’s generally accepted in psychology that a person who experiences intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and is therefore more suggestible. The autonomic nervous system is under the control of the limbic brain, 137 which is also called the emotional brain and the chemical brain The limbic brain, depicted in Figure 6.1 , is responsible for subconscious functions like chemical order and homeostasis, for maintaining the body’s natural physiological balance. It’s your emotional center. So as you experience different emotions, you activate this part of the brain, and it creates the corresponding chemical molecules of emotion. And since this emotional brain exists below the conscious mind’s control, the moment you feel emotion, you activate your autonomic nervous system. When you feel an emotion, you can ultimately bypass your neocortex—the seat of your conscious mind—and activate your autonomic nervous system. Therefore, as you get beyond your thinking brain, you move into apart of the brain where health is regulated, maintained, and executed. So if the placebo effect requires you to embrace an elevated emotion ahead of the actual experience of healing, then when you amplify your emotional response (and come out of your normal resting state, you’re activating your subconscious system. Allowing yourself to feel emotions is away to enter the operating system and program a change, because you’re now automatically instructing the autonomic nervous system to begin creating the corresponding chemistry as if you were getting better. And the body receives a blend of those natural alchemical elixirs from the 138 brain and mind. As a result, the body is now becoming the mind emotionally. As we’ve seen, these can’t be just any emotions. The survival emotions that we already explored in the last chapter knock the brain and body out of balance and so downregulate (or shutoff) the genes needed for optimal health. Fear, futility, anger, hostility, impatience, pessimism, competition, and worry won’t signal the proper genes for better health. They actually do the opposite. They turn on the fight-or-flight nervous system and prepare your body for emergency. You’re now losing vital energy for healing. It’s a similar situation with trying to make something happen, by the way. The moment you’re trying, you’re pushing against something because you’re endeavoring to change it. You’re struggling, attempting to force an outcome, even if you don’t realize that’s what you’re actually doing. That knocks you out of balance, just as the survival emotions do, and the more frustrated and impatient you become, the more out of balance you get. Remember in The Empire Strikes Back, when Yoda said to Luke Skywalker that there is no try, only door do not The same is true with the placebo response There is no try there’s only allow. All those negative and stressful emotions are so familiar to us and connect to so many past known events that when we focus on them, those familiar emotions keep the body connected to the same past conditions— which, in this case, is poor health. No new information can then program your genes in any new ways. Your past reinforces your future. On the other hand, emotions like gratitude and appreciation open your heart and lift the energy in your body to anew place—out of the lower hormonal centers. Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions for increasing your level of suggestibility. It teaches your body emotionally that the event you’re grateful for has already happened, because we usually give thanks after a desirable event has occurred. If you bring up the emotion of gratitude before the actual event, your body (as the unconscious mind) will begin to believe that the future event has indeed already happened—or is happening to you in the present moment. Gratitude, therefore, is the ultimate state of receivership. Look at Figure to review the difference between the expression of survival emotions and the expression of elevated emotions. 139 Survival emotions are derived primarily from the stress hormones, which tend to endorse more selfish and more limited states of mind and body. When you embrace elevated, more creative emotions, you lift your energy to a different hormonal center, your heart begins to open, and you feel more selfless. This is when your body starts to respond to anew mind. If you can bring up the emotion of appreciation or thankfulness, and combine it with a clear intention, you’re now beginning to embody the event emotionally. You’re changing your brain and body. Specifically, you’re chemically instructing your body to know what your mind has philosophically known. We could say that you’re in anew future in the present moment. You’re no longer using familiar, primitive emotions to keep you anchored to the past you’re now using elevated emotions to drive you into anew future. Download 5.46 Mb. Share with your friends:
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