The brain is physical. Our experience is physical. Our experience can directly impact our other organs. Why else would your heart rate increase in fearful situations?
Point being, "all ailments have physical causes" includes the brain.
> You don't think that you have now skin problems because 10 years ago you ate too many pancakes and had a constipation but now you massage your belly a bit to reconcile that past trauma and your skin problems will go away.
That's not how I read the comment. Seems like he was suggesting that old traumas led to maladaptive behaviours which led to ailments. That's perfectly reasonable.
Yes. The question is how lasting and impactful that effect is in normal people suffering only normal life events, not continous abuse.
Your body can get back to normal just a year after quitting smoking. How lasting can be effect of spikes of pressure, pulse and homones many years after they happen?.
> Seems like he was suggesting that old traumas led to maladaptive behaviours which led to ailments.
That's reasonable but this means trauma no longer matters after all the years because it's the maladaptive behaviour that actually does the harm and it might be possible to stop behaviour and the harm without revisiting the trauma or lay the trauma to rest without correcting the behaviour and removing the harm.
You can't really know that for certain, even if it seems reasonable.
> it might be possible to stop behaviour and the harm without revisiting the trauma or lay the trauma to rest without correcting the behaviour and removing the harm.
Agreed, "might be" being the key phrase. But it might also not be possible, or it might even be more expedient or more therapeutic to revisit it.
Point being, it's not nearly so certain as you initially claimed.
Spot on, and it's a very interesting point. Chronic negative emotions can have a direct harmful effect or an indirect effect by leading to maladaptive behaviour.
A chronic anxious state might cause impaired immunity that leads to chronic infections or greater vulnerability to acute infections.
Or it could lead to heavy smoking or drinking or recreational drug use that could cause or compound said immune impairment.
Consider, was someone who died of alcohol-induced cirrhosis afflicted by a primarily emotional or physiological illness?
You might consider that over nearly 15 years experiencing pain and distress, I've done a bit of research and tried a few different approaches.
In fact I've spent at least an hour or two per day for pretty much that entire period, trying various ways of getting well, and learning about ways of doing so.
If a new chair was going to make the difference, I would have figured that out by about year 3 or 4 at most.
In fact, I've tried every remedy that you can imagine and many that you can't, and read every relevant book, research paper and internet forum post that might possibly be useful.
I come from a scientific family and work in a scientific field; I understand logic and reason; my career and health depends on it.
I have no incentive to promote or engage in any ineffective remedy; my only incentive has been to become free of pain and illness through whatever means possible, and having now done so I'm happy to share my experiences with others who want to learn from them.
For what it's worth your position relies on some assumptions about physiology that I used to accept but no longer do (or more accurately, no longer can). Most importantly this assertion: "your mind is just a function of your physical brain like digestion is the function of your physical gut". I'm not going to try and educate you on this as there is ample material around for you to find if you care to, but you need to examine this assumption in order to properly grasp this topic.
My doubt about cause of your problems being psychological traumas of the past comes from sheer number of possible other causes and from how many times those other causes were actual causes of peoples ailments while psychological factors were suspected.
Also slow and partial recovery is suspicious to me. When you find the real cause and remove it, relief is quick and large.
My intelectual objection to your train of thought is that you claimed "I checked everything else." Which is false because there's too much of everything.
You just seen one correlation after years of seeing none and think that's a causation just because of that.
Don't get me wrong I do the same thing. My gf has brain tumors. I give her melatonin every evening just because I've seen some correlation between the times she stopped taking it and started again and how her MRI looked. But I'm telling about it hardly anone because there were too many cases when one thing seemed to work for someone and only after much research it was established that in general it was as stupid idea as it sounded.
My belief that mind is just what the brain does doesn't strongly influence my opinion of your claims. This belief comes from reading about various cases of how brain damage shapes the mind.
Another thing that makes me sceptical is that after what I lived through with my fragile mind I should be suffering for all host of suspicious ailments. But all my ailments can be traced to specific factors like dry air, allergy, working as a programmer, having fun by playing computer games, genetically shitty joints (as my mum's), caffeine poisoning, genetically prone to migraines, skipping eating and drinking, not sleeping enough, being close to 40, not excersising.
> Also slow and partial recovery is suspicious to me. When you find the real cause and remove it, relief is quick and large.
It's not a single cause. It's thousands of experiences/memories, and they need to be found and processed one by one, usually at a rate of no more than a few per week.
That said, some traumas have brought about "quick and large" changes when they've been found; that's how I've known the system was working.
But for thorough healing of deeply held traumas and related physiological ailments, it needs consistent work over a long period of time, and gradual improvement is to be expected.
> chronic muscle and joint pain,
Maybe new couch or different chair at work? Maybe bit more walking becsuse you now frequent different grocery store or now park usually bit further? Maybe you don't go anymore to the places where people can pass onto you some virus that manifests in few days of muscle and joint pains? I sometimes get them. I can recognize them because they are sometimes causing few sneezes over few days, way too few to say 'I have a cold' but really hard muscle and joint pains and fatigue.
> digestive issues,
This might be as simple as not eating one thing anymore because they no longer sell it, it's no longer tasty for you or you stopped seeing person you ate it with?
> fatigue/lethargy,
Maybe less stress at work, nothing good to binge on Netflix, or you got bored with that one game you really liked to play, new bed, couch, you nap more often or just developed resistance to coffee fallout?
> skin conditions,
My hands started itching like crazy in the beginning of winter. Atopic dermatitis? Nah my skin just started spontaneously cracking in dry cold weather because it got old (at 30). Now I just use hand cream (what a disgrace) and all the little itching microwounds just seal in 2-3 days.
You skin issues might have gone away because of lighter winters or less time spent in AC or just AC getting old. Or you getting older, or bit cleaner air because patterns of traffic near the sites you frequent changed, or changes in population of local plants.
> signs of inflammation
That's highly unspecific.
My point is, you are deeply dependant of your environment.
Also there is no ideal, healthy you. You are just bunch of cells subjected to billions of organic chemistry reactions that surprisingly manage not to rot when subjected to elements for few decades thanks to miracle of evolution that shaped them.
What your mind experience is generally not important with some exceptions. If you are subjected to stressful emotions that are too long or too strong you potentially get some brain damage that could alter how you function later. But that's not a rule. There are people who had really horrible psychological experiences in life but they don't get anymore trouble because of that in later life then we all get from the environment we live in and our bodies getting old in common and unique ways.
So many illnesses of mind and body were thought to come from what your mind experienced and later turned out to be just bacteria, viruses, or your own genes acting up with age that I think it's better to consider the possibility that nearly all ailments have physicsl causes.
After all your mind is just a function of your physical brain like digestion is the function of your physical gut. You don't think that you have now skin problems because 10 years ago you ate too many pancakes and had a constipation but now you massage your belly a bit to reconcile that past trauma and your skin problems will go away.