11/07/2021
Spontaneous Healing Inquiries + Internal Family Systems + Harvard + Trauma Healing= Miracles?
Hello from Harvard! I've spent the past week in Boston and New York with my dear friend and colleague Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv, the medical director at Harvard's McLean psychiatric hospital, and as I'm updating you all from his office, he's rounding on inpatients here. For even longer than I have, Jeff has been rigorously studying people who wind up cured from seemingly "incurable" terminal illnesses, documenting their journeys with medical records and diving into the "why" and "how" of their experiences. Just before the pandemic hit, he published his findings thus far in his book CURED: The Life Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing.
Both Jeff and I are infinitely curious about why some people seem to do everything "right" but stay sick or die, while others experience seemingly miraculous cures, even when they're not trying so hard. What makes people "miracle prone?" Is there anything we can control to influence our health outcomes and make us more likely to be one of those admittedly rare health outliers? Any why does it seem so unfair? Why do good people experience horrible diseases and why do young children die painful deaths, yet others seem to be spared for mysterious reasons and in mysterious ways? Does it have anything to do with trauma, and if so, can we reverse physical and mental illness by treating trauma, and if so, what does it actually take to effectively treat trauma?
I'm particularly curious, as I sit here in a hospital where psychiatric inpatients suffer so much and so many feel hopeless to help them, whether "spontaneous remissions" also happen in psychiatry, and if so, how much spirituality has to do with those healings. Jeff and I have more questions than answers, but the inquiries feel gravely important. If we don't ask the right questions- and stay open to the uncertainty of not knowing- we might miss great discoveries that could turn both conventional medicine and alternative medicine on its head.
Along with our friend Ed, an ER doc who has been on the front lines of COVID for the past 1 1/2 years, Jeff and I just attended Dick Schwartz's IFS workshop at Omega and have spent several days with Dick after the workshop in Boston. I've done countless IFS sessions with Dick, and now Jeff and Ed have also both done IFS sessions themselves, which gave them insight into the direct experience of working with our "parts" to heal them. We've been noodling how to bring an IFS-informed approach to Harvard, to conventional medicine in general, and to trauma survivors who suffer from trauma symptoms, whether those symptoms are psychiatric challenges, chronic illness, addiction, attachment wounding and the relationship struggles developmental trauma causes, or any number of other painful kinds of suffering caused by untreated trauma.
I just shared with all of them the notes Chris Rutgers at the Trauma Foundation and I put together, as well as the information you all helped me crowd sourced, in today's blog: What Actually Heals Trauma: The Key Components Of Effective Treatment. You can find it on my website or in the comments below.
This inquiry into what actually cures trauma is an evolving document. We've been tweaking it in a Google doc since I first wrote this nearly 3 months ago, so this is the first published version of it. But please- feel free to challenge our assumptions, assert your own, and help us build on our growing body of knowledge about what really heals trauma and the medical, psychiatric, social, relational, and collective symptoms trauma causes.
I've been processing and inputting so much new understanding this past week, after hundreds of hours of heart-storming with Jeff, Ed, and Dick, and I'll update you all more soon- after I visit Acadia National Park this weekend!
Jeff, Ed, and I have been on a three way text thread since the beginning of the pandemic. At first, it was a way to share articles and try to sense-make the pandemic, and as many of our more cutting edge and holistically-minded medical colleagues went off the deep end of conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, as the world's chaos escalated, as our culture began finally unpacking power and how people in power abuse their power and victimize those with less power, our text thread became a surprisingly nurturing resource of friendship, companionship, emotional processing, healing, resourcing, resilience-building, and professional and personal bonding. If you've found my posts helplful in the past year and a half, I can honestly say that it's largely because of the friendships I've built with these three men- Dick, Jeff, and Ed. To be together all week while Jeff shows us Cambridge, Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, the Berkshires, and this weekend, coastal Maine, is a blessing beyond words.
I'll be back with more to share with you about all the unfoldings in the world of trauma recovery, spiritual healing, insights around spontaneous remission, healthy boundaries, and how to bridge the best of conventional medicine with all the other trusted tools in the world's medicine bag next week! But until then, please check out the blog in the comments below and share any feedback that might arise for you.
*The photo is Jeffrey Rediger on the left, Dick Schwartz, the founder of IFS, in the center, and moi!
