San Diego Therapist Blog: Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD

I am constantly blogging about someone from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS is the organization dedicated to researching consciousness, healing, psychoneuroimmunology, and other cool metaphysical stuff. They also hold the largest database of spontaneous remission cases (see blog article spontaneous remission).

Well check out my new favorite researcher, Dean Radin. He's into studying the power of thoughts/intention and how they effect matter. His latest work is so cool and uplifting, and it involves chocolate. How can you go wrong here? Check out the one minute video below:

If you are like me, you are thinking two things:

I know where I'll order chocolates for Easter. AND you're thinking of the implications this study has for healing and loving those we care about. Our thoughts and intentions do create shifts in matter. There are many other studies which support this fact, but this one was the most fun.

Use your intention wisely, apparently it's rather potent.

Love and Light,

Regina

Today, I thought we would talk about Love, specifically the God of Love, Eros, better known to the Romans as Cupid. Eros is the God of Love and he's also been associated with creative energies.

One of the most famous myths about Eros is the Myth of Eros and Psyche.

The story begins with the mother of Eros, Aphrodite, the gorgeous Goddess of Love... Although Aphrodite was extremely beautiful herself, she became jealous of a beautiful mortal girl, Psyche.

Aphrodite, in a fit of rage (ever notice the Gods are always in a fit of rage in these stories) ordered her son Eros to fire one of his arrows into Psyche's heart, cursing her to fall in love with the ugliest man on earth.

Eros flew down to find Psyche, fully intending to follow his mother's orders, but instead he fell in love with her. He captured Psyche and took her with him. The two enjoyed great love. However, their love only existed in the dark; Psyche was not allowed to shine light on Eros.

Psyche's sisters came to visit her and began questioning her relationship with this man whom she had truly never seen. Psyche then began to question it, and she soon became convinced that she needed to see him. One night, Psyche lit a lamp and allowed the light to shine on Eros while he slept. But Psyche accidentally spilled the lamp oil onto Eros and he awoke and in a fit of rage (again with the rage) he vanished.

Psyche was heartbroken and began roaming the earth, looking for Eros. She was given three tasks to complete in order to reunite with Eros. One of which was a trip to the underworld. Through a reconnection with nature, she completed all three tasks and was reunited with Eros.

I like to blog a myth here and there because I know that myth has a unique ability to access a deeper knowing that exists in all of us. It hits upon collective unconscious energies that have been passed down through the ages. Psyche's struggle is truly timeless; it's in our DNA.

Psyche experienced love with Eros, it was only when she began to distrust her own experience that she lost this connection. She found it again when she connected to nature. Possibly the more we can connect to nature and the natural harmony of things, the more we shall experience vitality and the life giving creative energies of Eros. 

I got this book in the mail over the weekend, but I didn't begin reading it until last night. I'm sorry to report that I am almost finished with it and my ride with Katherine Russell Rich will soon be over...

Katherine's memoir through breast cancer at age 32, divorce and career is witty (I have literally laughed out loud), informative (well researched info on cancer) and empowering. She's brave and honest as hell.

I highly recommend the book for young female cancer survivors, and young female cancer patients. Please get a copy for yourself or a loved one- they will thank you!

The Red Devil

Love & Light,

Regina

We have all heard stories of spontaneous remission, but this information can be difficult to find actually documented/written down. Its difficult to find in the written word because these happenings border on the mystical and the unexplainable, and this usually brings forward fear and uncertainty. The unexplainable and the mystical are two things that tend to make most human beings and especially classically trained physicians fairly uncomfortable. We like to live in the illusion that all can be explained by what we can taste, touch, smell and see. 

Caryle Hirshberg, a biochemist and co-founder of the remission project at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), has been researching cases of spontaneous remission from cancer since 1985. IONS now has the largest collection (3,500) of medically reported, documented, remission cases. Hirshberg discovered during her long search, which included detailed reviews of the psychological and medical literature, patient interviews, physician interviews, and other resources, that there is no one thing that heals everyone.

Healing is individual for all people, and healing does not always mean a physical healing. An ill person has to find what is true for them, their truth, and understand what this illness may wish to communicate. After years of research, Hirshberg's final conclusion was borrowed from Shakespeare, "and this above all, to thine own self be true."

Hirshberg explains that the remission stories she heard were all different. What helped to heal one person would likely be irrelevant for another, but in listening to multiple stories she began to see a common thread. For each person, it is a journey of self discovery. For each person, there is a time of tension, confusion, and even terror.

A colleague of Hirshberg's, Hans Schilder, focused his research on the psychological aspects of spontaneous remission cases. Schilder found that "prior to a spontaneous remission", patients got "in touch with something ‘essential' to them".

In one case, a woman with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had been suffering a traumatic divorce and shared with the researcher that she felt like she had literally been "swallowing everything." She received chemotherapy and after three months, the tumors did not decrease, they increased in size and so did her pain. The doctors then recommended more chemotherapy!!

The woman decided she needed to take a vacation first and go on a mountain trip with a new friend. While on vacation, this "new friend" left her alone for several days, and in the words of the patient, "the way he did it was unacceptable."

The woman resolved to find her way down the mountain on her own!! For three days, she was alone and walking, but she reported that during this time she began to feel her anger dissolve. She later realized that she had forgotten to take her pain medicine, and noticed that her pain had significantly decreased. She also noticed her belly felt differently, and it was later confirmed, by her doctor's palpation and by ultrasound, that the tumors in her abdomen had decreased.

There is not any one single mechanism that was healing for of Dr. Schilder's patients or Hirshberg's remission cases. Dr. Schilder said, "It's not what they do, I think, so much as who they are. But in these patients, the self who begins is a different self than the one who comes out of it".

Love and Light,

Regina

Illness and loss are some of the most difficult experiences we must traverse in life.

Cancer survivor and controversial author Susan Sontag (1988) suggests that illness is dislocating and confusing for the sick and the well. Sontag implies that illness is similar to a feared foreign country that no one wishes to visit.

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

Things once taken for granted are questioned; one’s body, once accepted, is doubted. Uncertainty abounds as one moves through this new territory. The experience for the ill and those close to him or her evokes feelings which are unfamiliar, unpleasant, and uncomfortable.

Kat Duff (1993) a woman with chronic fatigue syndrome explains, “There is often a feeling of exile, wandering, searching, facing dangers, finding treasures”. She additionally shares that illness defies “the rules of ordinary reality, [And] shares in the hidden logic of dreams, fairy tales, and the spirit realms mystics and shamans describe” (p. 13). One can have vivid dreams, visitations in fever-induced states, and experience isolation and reflection unlike any well time in their life. The experience can be scary, but also expansive and growth producing. When viewed from Duff’s perspective, illness sounds almost mystical. This territory is wide open for exploration.

Like the story of so many individual experiences with cancer, the myth of Inanna is a tale of both loss and transformation. The myth begins with Inanna, the Sumerian goddess as she learns that a sister goddess is suffering in the underworld and in need of help. Inanna, beautiful, powerful, giving and gracious resolves to descend into the underworld to help her friend. Inanna is the queen of heaven and earth, brilliant and strong but she truly has no knowledge, no lived experience in the underworld. She believes that the journey to the underworld will be challenging, but she will competently navigate the course and return to the upper world.
Inanna begins her descent and before long she arrives at the first gate to the underworld. The gate is dark and enormous, towering seven feet above Innana's head. At the first gate also stands a gatekeeper, he asks Inanna to first remove the red, blue, purple and green jeweled headdress she proudly dons in order for her to pass beyond his gate. Inanna is slightly reluctant but feels it is necessary to let it go for the time being, so she removes her headdress and continues through the gate. She travels a bit further down the path and reaches another gate. This gatekeeper asks Inanna to remove the magnificent necklace clanking around her long neck. Inanna calmly removes her necklace for the gatekeeper and is allowed to pass through the gate. She continues down the path and before long, she reaches a third gate. Then the third gatekeeper requests her breastplate for passage; this breastplate is textured gold beaten brass. It is handmade and simply stunning! Inanna loves it, but gives up yet another piece of power, another piece symbolizing herself, for admission further into the underworld.

The path continues to get darker; it becomes more cool and damp. She arrives at a fourth gate and here she removes her girdle. These losses continue for a total of seven gates; at each one Inanna leaves another symbol of her "upperworld" power behind. She finally enters the underworld stripped of most everything that defined her; she enters the underworld hovering close to the ground, hunched over and naked...

I tell this story because it reminds me of the passage into the world of cancer which is plagued with loss after loss. The re-telling of legend and myth have a unique ability to help us understand human suffering. (See any work by Joseph Cambell, Carl Jung, or "Tracking the Gods" by James Hollis) Our lives and specific challenges may be different from the Gods, but the pain is the same. The suffering is not unique.

Love and Light,

Regina

Many cancer survivors finish treatments and begin a waiting game. They wake up each morning and check to see if the person they were before cancer has returned; they keep waiting to recognize themselves.

The truth is, the "old you" is still here, but not exactly. You are not exactly the same person you were prior to cancer. You are a bit different now, and you likely have the scars to prove it….and that is ok.

Some of the same people you used to hang out with may not be coming back either. Cancer, like any significant trauma often serves as some kind of weed out system. It is difficult not to take this personally, but sometimes, for whatever reason - people just can not hang.

We are indeed physically scuffed up after cancer, but I believe we are psychologically stronger than we were before it. You may not feel that way at first; you might feel tired as hell and even pissed off about all of this continual loss!!! "How much more do I have to lose?!!???"

Even if you don't feel like a bad ass survivor, you are one. The work after cancer is about acceptance and integration. To move on, you've got to move through.

Lots of people try to stuff their experience for a while after cancer. They try to pretend it didn't happen and just move on, which is understandable as the experience was likely quite painful. But "stuffing" doesn't work because it did happen. You did have cancer- both you and your cells know it happened.

You have to move through it to move on. This means talking about, writing about or exploring what you really went through, how it's changed you, and what you felt about all of it - the treatments, the relationship changes, your body changes- everything! You're ultimately getting to know you through it. This sounds like a bad book title: "getting to know you through cancer" but really, you will. This part of healing from cancer is a really important part of moving on and creating a life free from obstructions and moving into one that you truly want to live!

Love and Light,

Regina