has anyone experienced what I call mind/body/spirit gaslighting?

[SNT Gatchaman]

Ah! I was trying to think of a way of saying it that sounded like it, but couldn't quite get there!

Not an original joke and there are a number of versions. The Dyslexorcist is my favourite.

Edited: original link in favour of Google (it was a little too vulnerable to random adjacent images of questionable taste).

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

You can try a meditation that detaches your mind from your body. And you won't feel the pain for as long as you stay in trance. It's like when you sleep and dream, you won't notice this reality either. But once you wake up, once you leave the trance, you have to play by the rules of this reality and that means that pain signals are perceived by the brain, no matter what.

Perfect!!!

if you ask them to hold their hand over the burner on a stove, treating that pain spiritually and emotionally will probably not help until you allow them to remove their hand from the flames. Once they do remove that hand from the flame, again spiritual and emotional treatment may help them, but if a burn unit only uses those techniques and does not treat the blistered skin, they will likely experience some unpleasant pain.

EXACTLY THESE, by @nerd and @hapl808 !!!

Brilliant, to the point, and hard to refute, tho I find that people defending their positions and misconceptions are pretty adept at that .... and the shakier those are, the more fiercely they fight to support them ....

 

[wabi-sabi]

Relieving pain is not a fix if you are still hurting yourself.

This is such an interesting and nuanced way of putting it. Like you, I think pain is a message from the body telling us something is awry.

Of course there are situations where the pain message can't be fixed-something broke in the body- that our current level of medicine just can't deal with. And in those cases coping mechanisms are great. I also find meditation helpful. But I feel there's a real danger or stopping the physical workup too soon and jumping to coping mechanisms instead of fixing the underlying problem.

Sometimes there's an arrogance that there is no physical cause. But other times, there's just a real misunderstanding that symptoms are crying out to be heard and treated. Sometimes I think that healthcare people ignore pain because they can't stand the thought of people being in pain, so they just sort of edit it out of their minds-spiritual bypass indeed!

 

[Inara]

I thought- this is a new form of gaslighting- refusing to acknowledge physical pain,

It's very common in Germany in my experience, I mean: It has a past, a present and it will have a future.

I was and am psychopathologized regularly, i.e. people claim that my physical symptoms have a psychological cause.

The problem you describe is sth that honestly troubles me a bit. It reminds me of religious fanatism: If you're not a believer, you will be "flogged". It belongs to a wider problem in my view: We have unlearnt discussions and accepting other opinions. Instead, only one narrative is allowed, and if you don't follow there will be "hatespeech".

Fanatism means: no matter how many facts you present, they are ignored or discussed away.

Respect for speaking up - we need that! It takes a lot of courage though.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

It takes a lot of courage though.

Agree with everyth1ng you so eloquently expressed.

It takes a lot of courage, and a lot of persistence, and a lot of resilience, because it's a constant repetition of "Lather, rinse, repeat" ....

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Sometimes I think that healthcare people ignore pain because they can't stand the thought of people being in pain,

I think that's very true .... and it's not so much that all of them ignore it, but rather that in order to survive, to keep putting one foot in front of the other every day, to keep dealing with the constant flood of pain and suffering and needing needing needing that flows thru their doors every ay, they just shut it out. It;s there, but more or less unheard, like a TV with the sound turned off ....

Others are just conscienceless, thoughtless clots, eyes and thoughts focused constantly, ceaselessly, dartingly on themselves and anythig that serves their interests ....

 

[BrightCandle]

Medicine is a very long way from its scientific roots in practice. We can read about all these amazing discoveries in research for drugs and treatments and yet when it comes to seeing your doctor he does a basic blood count and then shrugs his shoulders and calls you mentally ill and shoves you on SSRIs.

Putting diagnostic power in the hands of the worst of the medical system is and always will be a terrible idea especially those that spend 99% of their day dealing with the same common and mundane conditions, they can not accept that anyone might not fit into the 20 or so conditions they always see and hence miss everything. That lack of acceptance of their own ignorance and their lack of investigation shows the rotten system that is in place that is so out of step with the extent with which research has gone.

One thing I noticed is every specialist has a go to "unknown" condition that they use when they can't work out what it is due to negative diagnostic tests. They assume the doctor sent you to the right place so you must have a problem in their specialism so they go to the default. You do their treatment and it doesn't work but that just means you weren't doing it properly. Throughout the system no one ever realises that a negative result from treatment for a condition they have no positive diagnosis for means they were wrong, its not possible for them to be wrong so they never send you somewhere else.

Most doctoring feels like sharpened sticks smashed together while the researchers are working on nukes. They really have no clue what they are talking about and alas neither does the public, but it doesn't stop either treating you badly based on their ignorance. Pain just sucks the life out of you.

 

[Pyrrhus]

It's very common in Germany in my experience, I mean: It has a past, a present and it will have a future.

I was and am psychopathologized regularly, i.e. people claim that my physical symptoms have a psychological cause.

I grew up in a German family. My grandfather refused to keep a thermometer in the house.

He claimed "if you don't keep a thermometer in the house, no one ever gets a fever."

(He grew up towards the end of the Victorian era, so his attitude might also be related to the Victorian "stiff upper lip".)

 

[Inara]

He claimed "if you don't keep a thermometer in the house, no one ever gets a fever."

That's funny. 😂 What you don't know won't hurt you.

 

[wabi-sabi]

Respect for speaking up - we need that! It takes a lot of courage though.

Well, I can't say I spoke up in any productive way- I couldn't make them understand and not just because of them. My brain was not very functional that day. I will keep trying....

 

[wabi-sabi]

Well my first email attempt was utterly unsuccessful. Will hope for better luck on presentation!