There’s something other-worldly about the body. It is like a fantastical building which, after being attacked and cracked by the elements of nature, works very hard to try to patch itself up. On being hurt, the body heals – at least, that is so if the damage isn’t so extensive as to result in death. When it is under attack from external agents, the body rises to defend and protect itself. Whenever you have had a cut on your flesh or battled an infection, you have been privy to the body’s magic. Without your having to command it, without your even noticing its working, without you knowing how, your body, little by little, fights invaders and repairs the damage.
Where does this healing come from? Science has helped us demystify the body’s healing process a little. We know of the immune system, the clotting mechanism, and the reflexes of our nervous system. So, we recognise that each of us heals from within. From somewhere within the body, there arises a spring of healing. In as much as science helps us understand the process a little more than our forefathers did, science also humbles us into recognising that much of the body’s mechanisms are still unknown to us. The source of our healing, rejuvenation, and indeed of life itself, remains mysterious.
To confound things further, within the body, as if it were a treasure of immeasurable worth, something that we call ‘the mind’ is housed. What fits the domain of the mind is even more unclear. But we might think of our instincts, the impulses that tell our muscles to breathe and our hearts to beat, our perceptions and interpretations of the world, our thoughts and insights, our emotions, and our deep desires to belong, to contribute to society and to connect with something bigger than us. The mind is an enigma, and the more science discovers about it, the more we realise that we have but scratched the surface.
Moreover, science confirms that just as the body can be hurt, the mind too can be hurt.1 We experience this when our opinions are not heard or are perhaps ridiculed, when feelings cannot be expressed or are rebuffed, or when we feel unsafe, unaccepted or unvalued.
In addition, the mind does from time-to-time malfunction. For example, when the mind is crammed with too many thoughts or feelings, it may “shut down” or “burnout”.2 Or when the mind goes round and round the same unproductive or even damaging cycle of thoughts and worries, it could become transfixed and stupefied, almost like a computer that “hangs” or is overheated.3 Yet, once those thoughts and feelings are properly processed and when the mind has had the time to rest, it often revives and functions well once more.
This makes one wonder if as the body when it hurts heals itself, the mind heals itself too. The development of the discipline of psychology has helped us understand that the mind does indeed deploy unconscious defence mechanisms to contain and neutralise threats to it.4 The mind also uses conscious coping strategies that allow the person who is hurting to heal.5 The science of psychology has thrown light on these means through which the mind heals itself.
Thus, through the use of the body and mind’s own mechanisms, physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual healing seems to happen from within. In many instances, perhaps in most instances, healing is automatic and unconscious. There is little we or anyone else needs to do to heal. In instances of greater damage, the help of medicines or a counsellor can be of great use. Yet, even in such cases, what is applied from the outside needs to be internalised before the assistance can be of benefit. In other words, however much external assistance may be given, that assistance is useless unless the internal mechanisms accept and absorb the help from outside. We may not be far off the mark if we say that external help may be a prompt or catalyst or even a supplement; but ultimately, it is what is inside us that determines the degree to which any assistance is used.
However, the self-healing nature of our bodies and minds does not mean that our bodies and minds work in isolation. To begin with, the two are enmeshed with each other to such an extent that we cannot tell where the body ends and the mind begins. Emotions and thoughts contribute significantly to the body’s health.6 You are no doubt aware that anxiety or stress make your breathing and heartbeat quicken. Perhaps you have noticed that an unrested mind interferes with digestion and delays recovery from acute bouts of illness. And just as the mind affects the body, so too the body affects the mind.7 Recall the irritation we feel when hungry or sleepy, and the anger or sadness that can come over us when we are physically exhausted.
The body and the mind each move the other, and what’s more, our connectedness extends well beyond the union between body and mind. The body and mind are in alliance with the environment as well.8 The body takes in nutrients (and for that matter, toxins) through the lungs, gut and skin. And the mind internalises the environment through the senses – what is seen, heard, felt and experienced are relayed to the brain and contributes to thought. This goes to show that while healing originates within an individual, the restorative process needs what is nourishing and necessary to come from outside and become one with the person, while that which is harmful needs to be removed.
The implication here is two-fold. The fact that our healing depends on the environment and what we internalise behoves us to be proactive in ensuring that they are both conducive to our healing. Wounds don’t heal quite as well when they are infected, have dirt stuck in them, or are constantly prodded.9 The body may remodel itself so as to surround and contain what harms it, but it will never heal completely as long as the traumatic substance remains within it. Neither does our psyche heal while we are still in a toxic relationship with what hurt us.
When healing seems protracted or stalled, when we find ourselves worsening rather than getting better, we need to think on what we can do to help ourselves heal. It might be as simple as taking days off work to sleep in, or it might be as complex as finding a way to change our world more substantially. In healing, we are in conscious partnership with the mystic, supernatural, therapeutic fount within each of us.
The second implication is that we need not think that we have to do it all ourselves. Our bodies and minds are not completely self-sufficient. They are open systems that exist in, respond to, and take from outside. Moreover, healing is energy-consuming work that often requires supplementation. We often need some external help. Perhaps an antibiotic, a dressing, or speaking to a therapist. It could even be a spiritual encounter with the supernatural which sustains the fount of healing within us. Though stigma continues to exist around getting help, especially with regard to matters of the mind, it helps to remember that our systems are not designed to work in isolation. They are in symbiosis with the world. Therefore, it is natural – though it often doesn’t feel so – to ask for and receive help.
To sum up, we are not yet in a place in our wisdom and research to tell conclusively and convincingly where healing comes from. It seems to both bubble out from within and fill us up from without. Healing – like the Divine Spirit – is in and all around us. It is at once individual and universal. Sometimes, we are spectators to the miracle. Most times, we have the sublime honour of partnering with the fount of healing by making our internal and external environments as favourable to our recovery as possible.
References:
- David Biro. “Is There Such a Thing as Psychological Pain? and Why It Matters.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 34, no. 4 (September 2010): 658-667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-010-9190-y
- Sergio Edú-Valsania, Ana Laguía, and Juan A. Moriano. “Burnout: A Review of Theory and Measurement.” Internation Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 3 (February 2022): 1780. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031780
- Munir S, Takov V. “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.” Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing (January 2023). Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441870/
- Mariagrazia Di Guiseppe and J. Christopher Perry. “The hierarchy of Defense Mechanisms: Assessing Defensive Functioning With the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales Q-Sort.” Frontiers in Psychology 12 (October 2021): 718440. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718440
- Emad B Algorani, and Vikas Gupta. “Coping Mechanisms.” Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing (January 2023). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559031/
- Habib Yaribeygi, Yunes Panahi, Hedayat Sahraei, Thomas P. Johnston, and Amirhossein Sahebkar. “The impact of stress on body function: A review.” Experimental and clinical sciences journal 16 (Jul 2017): 1057–1072. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2017-480
- B. Wells, J.M. Golding, and M.A. Burnam. “Psychiatric disorder in a sample of the general population with and without chronic medical conditions.” The American Journal of Psychiatry 145, no. 8 (August 1988). https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.145.8.976
- National Research Council (US), Institute of Medicine (US). “Physical and Social Environmental Factors,” in S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, ed. Woolf S. H. and Aron L. (Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2013), 7. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154491/
- Guo and L.A. DiPietro. “Factors Affecting Wound Healing.” Journal of Dental Research 89, no. 3 (March 2010): 219-229. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022034509359125
