If hormone problems have ever made you ill, you know the madness I’m talking about.  If you have ever been sad for so many reasons and for no reason at all, you understand the madness.  If you are a young girl or woman troubled by extremely painful periods, missing hours or days of your life in a haze of pain and pain killers, you know the madness.  If you have hot flashes and night sweats, feeling heat rising off your body during that meeting at work or waking up soaking wet and having to change your pajamas and sheets, you know about the madness.  If you suffer from chronic skin problems and food allergies, or intolerances that cause stomach pain and nausea or other discomforts every time you eat, you know about the madness.  If you have ever become very angry at the drop of a hat and screamed at those you love and then later, with much shame and regret, realized it was really a trivial matter, then you too understand this madness.  Insomnia, exhaustion, mood changes, constant weight gain, depression, and anxiety are all part of the madness.

The madness is often connected to our hormones.  Those little microscopic amounts of substance can give us the time of our lives or make a ruin of them.

Hormone Problems often get Started Early

The beginning of the female cycle in adolescence is for many the start of a life of stress, pain, depression or worse.  Over the course of my practice I have seen many women begin their adult lives with hormone problems and other health issues that have never been resolved and have only worsened over time — sometimes for life, often because of the very solutions they have been offered.  Most of these early onset conditions, and their underlying concerns, were never diagnosed correctly. These young women have either been offered no solutions or solutions that include the birth control pill to “regulate” their cycle, or anti-depressants to “fix” their moods.  Women come to me in their 40s and 50s on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, which they’ve been taking since their teen years. As a result, they have been unable to stop using them because the root cause of their hormonal problems or other health condition was never found.

The young girl who was once miserable with a flooding cycle and horrible cramps is now a nervous, anxious woman in her 30s or 40s, exhausted and stressed, possibly diagnosed with thyroid nodules, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome or other hormonal problems.  This woman is likely taking anti-depressants and has often turned to other drugs and chemicals to survive.  She may smoke marijuana or drink wine at night to sleep and then drink copious amounts of coffee or take caffeine pills or drink energy drinks to be able to get through her busy schedule.

Or, as one of my patients described it, she had to “Elvis it” to keep going. To her, that meant alcohol at night to sleep and caffeine all day to stay awake. This woman was in graduate school trying to keep pace with her schoolwork and not understanding her exhaustion. She expressed dismay at how her body seemed to betray her when she needed it the most.

Often women in their 30s have young children and are exhausted by work and home responsibilities. These women also know that if they don’t get it all done no one else will.  The child rearing phase of life can be challenging, and many of the women I meet do not know there is help available. It is not normal to feel completely wrung dry all the time — this should be the time of your life!

The beginnings of more serious health issues have already taken root by the time you reach your 30s and 40s.

By now you may have struggled for years with nagging health concerns, doing your best to self-medicate or trying to ignore your growing health issues.

By the time they reach their 50s or 60s, many women have had a hysterectomy because of fibroids or continued heavy menstrual flow, leading their doctors to determine that their female parts are no longer useful and should be removed! Women are told they are in menopause now and do not really need these organs anymore, or other such questionable logic. This often leads to synthetic hormone replacement therapy, which carries its own health risks and complications.  For some women, this time of life can be fraught with ill health.  It is not uncommon for someone to be prescribed two or three blood pressure meds and possibly a statin drug for high cholesterol along with an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug.

This same woman could be battling pre-diabetes, high blood pressure or a full-blown case of diabetes, with stubborn weight that now won’t ever let go.  She is often exhausted, hot flashing, experiencing insomnia and facing even more serious health issues like osteoporosis and heart disease, often because of unbalanced or deficient female hormones.

If You Found Yourself Described Above…

There are answers to hormone problems at every stage of life. These aren’t medical “take a drug” or “remove a body part” solutions. The answers lie in understanding what has caused your body to become unbalanced and unhealthy and in doing the work to help it to recover.

One of the first actions I take with my patients with hormone problems is to have them become informed on their bodies and their conditions. If you have hormone problems, YOU will do most of the work to recover your own health. If you’re doing this blindly, on a “just tell me what to do” basis, you may have limited results.

For this reason, I wrote a book for women who have hormone problems (or want to avoid them!). The book is easy to read, and:

• Clarifies all the common medical diagnoses and other information you may have been exposed to but not fully understood.
• Shows you how your body is designed in a beautiful way that can give you great joy—rather than the negative image so many women have of their bodies.
• Teaches you the most important basics of how to be a woman and stay healthy, or how to recover your health if you need to.

You can pick up an ebook or paperback from Amazon here, or drop by the clinic and I’ll autograph a copy for you.

I have devoted most of my life to researching about and treating women with debilitating hormone problems. If you are suffering from this kind of problem, please contact me and I’ll help you in any way I can to get you back to the healthy, happy, beautiful life you should be experiencing.

How frustrated are you by your own body? Does it have a stubborn health condition like blood pressure, IBS or PMS? Is it overweight? Is there something about your body that drives you nuts, but you’ve almost given up finding out why or if something could be done about it?

I think I can make it clear why you’re frustrated and at least steer you toward some solution.

In a world where engineers can create working quantum computers and keep a manned space station in orbit for over 18 years, scientists are still incredibly frustrated by bodies. The reason for this is that the wrong scientific model is being used by doctors and researchers.

Scientific model: a representation of an idea, an object, a process or a system that is used to describe and explain phenomena that cannot be experienced directly.

The Medical Model:

The scientific model used in medicine is the body as a biological machine. In this model, the parts of the body work together to create overall function. Parts that get damaged or wear out from old age need to be repaired or replaced. If a body is ill in some way, it means that the machine is broken and needs to be repaired. Repair is accomplished by changing the chemistry with drugs or changing the structure with surgery.

This model is very effective for injury, acute illness, infections and the like. You can easily determine what health problems work well with this model. It’s the list of health problems where medical doctors get good results.

Where the model does NOT work with is “chronic” (continuing or repeating) health problems. This again is obvious, because medical doctors can do nothing with these other than manage the symptoms with drugs (PMS and hormone imbalances, digestive problems, pain, fatigue, depression, weight, diabetes, blood pressure, etc.).

Chronic problems are accurately represented by an entirely different scientific model. This is overlooked by the medical community, probably because only their old model works with pharmaceuticals— which is what their business model is based on.

The Chronic Model:

This could also be called “The accurate model” as it comes closest to how the body really works.

In this model, the body is seen as an organization of over 37 trillion cells, each one independently alive. These cells live an average of about three months, and our bodies replace about two million cells per second. Looking at your face in a mirror? How old is that face? How about three months!

Our environment is very stressful to a body. You don’t realize how many toxins are in the air and water, how much stress we’re all dealing with, how bad the food can be, the effect of drugs, and on and on. You don’t realize this because bodies are designed to hide stress and symptoms as much as possible. Your body is being damaged almost continuously; you just aren’t aware of this.

Your body is at its core really a mechanic. It is constantly repairing and rebuilding itself. If your body can keep up with the repair and rebuild work, you stay healthy. If it can’t, or if some damage to its “mechanicing ability” happens, then you will develop a chronic health condition.

If science turned its attention to how to use this model to help bodies restore their own healing ability, we wouldn’t be living in a society where over half the population has a chronic health condition— and maybe you wouldn’t have PMS. If science and government publicized the toxins and foods that cause so much misery, these things would change to everyone’s benefit.

Don’t hold your breath, however.

What you can do:

If you have a chronic health problem, it can be very helpful to recognize some facts:

1. There is no medical “cure” or solution for your problem available from conventional health care. If it’s advisable to control your symptoms (blood pressure, diabetes, etc.) then you should take advantage of the excellent medical technology for this. Just understand that there is no final solution coming from this area.
2. The solution to your problem comes from your own body regaining its ability to heal. The only doctor expert enough to make this happen is… your own body. No one else, no matter how well educated, has the slightest idea what needs to be done in your specific case. If you need help, you should look for like-minded practitioners who have expertise in testing the nervous system and using functional labs.
3. In some cases, reducing overall stress can give your body enough additional resources to recover. Try it! Stop eating sugar, junk food and refined carbs. Eat regularly, don’t skip meals. Stop eating milk and cream. Quit alcohol and/or recreational drugs of all kinds. Get active several times each day. Make yourself get enough sleep. Avoid stressful people as much as possible.
4. Supplements without testing are so hit and miss that it’s hard to even make recommendations. Stick with basic digestive enzymes and probiotics.
5. If you have a serious condition, my experience is that DIY has little to no chance of success. You will need to find an expert in helping bodies to heal their own conditions.

Successfully recovering from a chronic health problem such as PMS in our current society isn’t easy or simple. But if you understand what I’ve told you in this post it IS POSSIBLE. You just must start by understanding the bankrupt nature of medicine regarding chronic problems and realize you must look elsewhere for help.

Find out more

Here is a webpage with a short summary of what I do.

Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (very practical information).

Here is a link to a book I wrote about women’s hormones in every stage of their lives (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book I wrote about my treatment technique (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book my office manager wrote on staying healthy long-term (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a free online health survey that you can submit for a phone consultation on your health

Here is a link to request a new patient appointment

If you have a health problem with no solution other than to manage the symptoms, I can recommend that you stop accepting this and start researching a real solution. In many, many cases there will be a way back to health for you.

I wish you the best of luck, and offer you any help or advice I can.

 

If you have a chronic health problem and are going to a conventional medical doctor, you may be in trouble. Your problem might be blood pressure, diabetes, depression, hormone problems, thyroid, autoimmune, IBS, GERD or other digestive problem, etc.

You may also have no idea you’re in trouble.

Why should you think you’re making a mistake? After all more than half the population is managing chronic health conditions using drugs through the medical system. And, it’s paid for by insurance. Where is the problem, here? Your doctor will put you on drugs to manage your diagnosed condition for the rest of your life.

The problem is that your overall health will deteriorate from the stress of the untreated cause of your chronic condition and the stress of the drug. As additional problems from this stress show up, they will be treated with additional drugs, and your condition will continue to decline.

You probably already know this. First, you likely have friends and family members who have been put on additional medications as their health decreased. Second, if you’re reading this blog you likely are interested in how to effectively avoid this trap and actually get well.

Could Functional Medicine Doctors be Your Solution?

You may have heard about a relative newcomer to health care called “Functional Medicine Doctors.”

Functional medicine doctors are most often medical doctors who themselves are fed up with the standard treatment protocols for chronic illness and want to offer a better solution. They use some medical and some alternative forms of treatment, and use special labs designed to show underlying causes rather than to just prescribe drugs.

A functional medicine doctor will look for causes of stress behind your chronic condition and attempt to treat those causes instead of just treating symptoms.

The only problem with the brave new world of functional medicine doctors is that many of my patients tried functional medicine doctors without result before they found me.

I’ve heard some good reports and I know that the functional medicine doctor approach can be an improvement over conventional medical treatment. But I don’t believe functional medicine doctors are the entire solution that is needed.

What Conventional Medicine Doctors and Functional Medicine Doctors Have in Common:

Both are looking for a solution to a symptom by looking for ways to repair a biochemical machine called a “body.”

The medical doctor uses the scientific approach. This is a pre-packaged course of treatment proven with scientific studies. The doctor makes a careful diagnosis, then follows the scientifically proven treatment protocol. For many illnesses, injuries, infections and other accidents of life, this approach produces fantastic results and saves lives.

However, for most chronic illness, the treatment may stave off death or disability but without hope of restored health.

The functional medicine doctor looks for underlying toxicity, diet problems, oxidative stress… things that could be causing the stress leading to the body failing to heal. Special functional lab testing and good clue-sleuthing are used to find these causes. The functional medicine doctor treats these causes in an attempt to reduce the stress, build the health of the body and eventually reduce or eliminate the symptom.

A Third Solution to Recovering Health from Chronic Illness

Your body is made of about 37 trillion cells, each one is independently alive. This collection of living cells is organized into something you can walk around in by an “onboard intelligence” that runs your body, so you don’t have to. Otherwise you’d have no attention left for anything else.

This intelligence is in charge of maintenance and healing for your body.

A chronic health condition is caused by a stress that your body can’t handle. This stress causes your body to fail to keep up with its own maintenance. This leads to increasing damage, until finally you develop a symptom.

Two important things to remember about this:

1. Your body intelligence knows what is wrong, what needs to happen and in what sequence to fix it.
2. Your body never stops doing everything it can in an attempt to heal, even if it’s failing.

So, here’s a new, third solution to chronic health problems: don’t just treat the symptom (medical doctor), and don’t just treat random underlying stresses (functional medicine doctor).

This third approach is to let your body be the doctor, so that the health care professional becomes a knowledgeable assistant. By testing your nervous system directly it’s possible to get key information on what your body considers to be a priority and to test possible solutions. Combined with the functional medicine doctor approach of functional labs and excellent sleuthing, this is a new and effective method of allowing your body to overcome chronic health problems.

In this model, the solution to chronic health conditions is to allow your body to run its own treatment program, helping it to move past “stuck points” until it has regained its ability to heal without assistance.

This approach is called Evectics^SM. (“Evectics” is a 19th century word that meant “the method of obtaining health.”)

Find out more

Here is a webpage with a short summary of what I do.

Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (very practical information).

Here is a link to a book I wrote about women’s hormones in every stage of their lives (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book I wrote about my treatment technique (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book my office manager wrote on staying healthy long-term (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a free online health survey that you can submit for a phone consultation on your health

Here is a link to request a new patient appointment

If you have a health problem with no solution other than to manage the symptoms, I can recommend that you stop accepting this and start researching a real solution. In many, many cases there will be a way back to health for you.

I wish you the best of luck, and offer you help or advice if you need it.

We live in a society of drugs. The Mayo Clinic reports that 70% of the US population takes at least one prescription medication. Over the counter drugs? We make about 3 billion trips to the store each year to buy them.

In my practice, we only use only non-pharmacological treatment, so I got curious one day and started asking our patients, “Do you know how drugs work?” No one had a single answer.

So, since there’s a 70% chance that you are taking drugs, it might be useful for you to know a bit about how they work.

A drug gets in between the intelligence that operates your body for you and your physical body and forces certain things to occur:

BODY INTELLIGENCE –> DRUG –> BODY FUNCTIONS

This can work well, or it can be a disaster. Drugs are a lot like auto-correct on your phone:

The auto-correct is IN BETWEEN you (the intelligence) and the final text. You lose control of what you intended to say. But unlike auto-correct, your body doesn’t have the luxury of being able to catch the error and fix it. It must live with the mistake.

The main problem with drugs is that they take the control away from the intelligence that is responsible for the operation and maintenance of your body. Drugs grab the wheel away from your body, and you may or may not stay on the road. In my non-pharmacological practice, I let the body be the doctor and follow its instructions.

When I was 15, I got a summer job as a “worker” at a camp in the Missouri Ozarks. It sounded fun, until I found out that the “workers” were tasked with installing a 100-yard long water pipe out to a new bathhouse. We were given shovels, picks and it was recommended that we drink plenty of water. A good idea as the temperature was in the high 90’s under a broiling sun. Halfway through my second day, the boss hailed us and asked, “Anyone know how to fix a tractor?” Everyone looked at each other, wishing oh-so-much that tractor mechanic was on their resume to get them out of the sun. I considered myself to be mechanically minded (though cocky would be closer to the truth) and raised my hand.

It was an old, red farm tractor and it wouldn’t start. I proceeded to remove the starter motor from the engine and disassemble it (in a nice and shady workshop, by the way). I don’t recall the exact problem, but it must have been simple as I was able to repair the starter and fix the tractor. This got me a whole string of fix-it jobs and kept me off the ditch-digging project for the remainder of the week.

Let me take you back to that moment when I first put a wrench on the bolts holding the starter motor to the tractor: I was one worried kid. Honestly, I’d never even been close to a farm tractor. I wasn’t experienced as a car mechanic; I’d barely worked on bicycles. I knew that once I started taking parts off that tractor that I wasn’t certain what would happen, and I just hoped for the best.

This experience of “hope for the best” is familiar to medical doctors. Let’s explore why this is true.

Despite all the hype, bluster and news stories of scientific marvels, no one remotely understands how a human body works. I think we are fooled by the tremendous advances of knowledge we’ve had into imagining we know much more than we do, because in reality we haven’t scratched the surface.

A body, like any other organism, is a physical structure controlled by a living intelligence. Right there, we’re in deep trouble. What’s an intelligence? Where did it come from? How does it work? How does it decide what to do in the operation and repair of the organism? Almost all the current answers to these questions are in the area of philosophy, not science. If you look back at the history of any science, there was a time before it became a science when it was a philosophy (astronomy, for example). This tells you we are in the stone age of understanding regarding intelligence.

So, with no understanding of intelligence but with the technology of drugs, we’re able to take control away from the body and force actions and changes to occur, but we don’t really know what we’re doing. Thus, the same drug that creates a near miracle in one patient can kill the next one.

We are missing an entire area of the technology we need to make drugs safe and effective: The ability to work WITH the intelligence running the body rather than bypassing it. Therefore, doctors “hope for the best” and put you on one drug after another, rolling the dice with every prescription. I’ve avoided the dice-rolling with a non-pharmacological practice for the past 25 years.

There is a good comparison between my tractor repair and your doctor’s prescriptions: we both were hoping for the best.

I think good advice would be:

1. Only take drugs as a last resort and get off them as quickly as possible.
2. Take responsibility for your own health and thoroughly research any drug before you start it.
3. (Should be #1) Work to have a healthy body that doesn’t need drugs to start with.

Here’s hoping for the best!

Find out more

Here is a webpage with a short summary of what I do.

Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (very practical information).

Here is a link to a book I wrote about women’s hormones in every stage of their lives (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book I wrote about my treatment technique (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book my office manager wrote on staying healthy long-term (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a free online health survey that you can submit for a phone consultation on your health

Here is a link to request a new patient appointment

If you have a health problem with no solution other than to manage the symptoms, I can recommend that you stop accepting this and start researching a real solution. In many, many cases there will be a way back to health for you.

I wish you the best of luck, and any help or advice I can offer.

A lot of times we can feel lost. I know I do sometimes. It isn’t that we don’t know what to do because for most of us that is all too clear. It is just that we may not have ever stopped to really examine why we do the things we do.

I know we do the things we do because we are supposed to and we have to pay the bills or people are waiting on us to finish the project, but really why do we do the things we do every day? Do you have a purpose in your actions, or do you feel lost, pushed off from the shore and floating or moving too quickly in the current we call life?

I know I can feel lost sometimes. It isn’t that I don’t know what to do, because for most of us that is all too clear. It is just that we may not have ever stopped to really examine why we do the things we do.

There’s the “have tos” such as paying bills and going to work. There’s the “supposed tos” that our family and friends expect from us, and those things we do just because we’re used to doing them. There’s the “must do’s” where we succumb to impulses and compulsions, like eating sugar, junk foods or making a snide remark.

And then, finally, there’s our own actions and decisions and creativity and the things that uniquely make us ourselves.

When I find I’m adrift or pushed away from being and doing those things I want and spending my life doing the “have-tos, supposed-tos and must dos,” I see it is a sign that I need to take a pause and reflect. I have learned that a pause can mean everything and can allow me the space to examine, to really see. You can take a pause.

When I am in the pause, I step back a good way— maybe a mile, maybe more— till my life looks like someone else’s life. Sometimes if I can move far enough out from it, my life will look like characters in a movie. It helps me see. I push the pause button and I can see the players, the plot, the action and where it is headed.

Doing this helps me remember that life is a game. A game that I have made my part in, and a game that I can change if it’s not what I want. It puts things in perspective for me and that is usually what I need to decide where the pieces go next. My pause makes my moves more conscious and more aware. Hopefully less reactive.

I like to view my life as a game, very similar to an amusement ride, that you can get off anytime, you can keep riding, or you can change the ride or rides altogether. I have the power.

If you don’t know what your game is, it’s easier to choose a goal or a purpose (a game!) from a distance rather than in the heat of living it. If you are afraid to even choose a game, that is where you need to start, because you must have a game in order to be out on the field. You can start any game and then change it; the key is to start. You do have the power to be exactly where you want to be and the power to decide to change where you want to be. If you want to change it, change it. You can even have the game of having no game, as long as you have decided that’s what you want.

You can find that your game has become someone else’s. Life is hard sometimes and goes fast and before you know it you have a game that has many players. It can seem like it’s someone else’s life; someone else’s game. But it is still your game; you’ve just stopped making the decisions and moving the pieces and become a player only. You just need to take that pause and sort it out for a minute. You are the master of the game.  Some of the moves are easy and can be done quickly and without too much fuss. Others may need multiple steps and some alternative planning and may take some time. The important part is that you make the plan and that you create your own game.

Time will pass anyway; that’s part of the game. You will be several steps ahead if you start now to create your own game and keep it up. If you are not the person you planned to be or are not where you planned to be now, fix it if you want to. If you are happy that is good. If you want to make some changes, make some changes. Where do you see yourself in five years, in ten years? Have you lost your way or are you on track? Do you need or want a new purpose; one that makes you get out of bed in the morning with energy and joy?

The world is big. You can see this from your vantage point a mile or two above your own story. There are so many people playing so many games and going so many places! When you are down in it, you can seem so small and sometimes your role may feel irrelevant. It isn’t of course, but it sure is hard to see the forest for the trees.

That is why it’s good to take that pause and distance yourself a little or a lot. Things can look very different from this new perspective. You’ll be able to see the stuck places, and where to push and in which direction that loosens up the area. You can see how to change; because after all when you change the whole story changes.

Write your story and make the ending you want. Do you want to travel or start a new business or be an artist? Do you want to lose weight or make a new friend or get married? Do you want to buy an island in Alaska or move to the mountains? Do you want to start a llama farm or write a book? What do you want? Whatever it is, if you can see it and you really want it, make a plan. Just start with that.

I can hear you all falling right back down to earth, smooshed into the impossibilities, the lack of money or education in an area or all the reasons why it can’t happen.

You know, it isn’t the reasons why it’s so impossible that are keeping you from your island or your farm or your book tour. It’s because you are listening to them and believe them! There are so many reasons why something cannot be done, but all it takes to overcome this is the one real intention to do it that you created up there during your pause. At the end of the day, that is all that matters. Back out again from your life, pause, put the purpose back up there and start to plan how it can be done. Don’t listen to the voices in your head or those around you that tell you it can’t be done, unless you wrote them into the plot and you just wanted to give yourself some more hurdles to overcome.

Find those that support you and put wind in your sails. Move those other pieces off the board. You know the ones— the negative people, the ones who invalidate your goals and you. The vampire people who don’t want you to play, let alone win. You don’t have to have them in your game. Gently move them aside. Find the ones who love you for you, who help you be a better you. Find those you trust and who trust you, who are here to do good in the world and leave it a better place for having been on the playing field.

We have a finite time here and we cannot know how much we have left. It can be gone in an instant, our game, this life. Live it hard and live it well. Change it when you want and make it yours. It always was. If you forgot, remember; maybe for the first time. Love yourself.

And the next time you pause a couple miles out, you will look down and discover you are being exactly what you want to be.

Love for the journey.

Compassion is generally seen as necessary for any successful society, and many religions espouse compassion as a vital ingredient in human interaction.

But what is it compassion really? And how do we have compassion for others and then ultimately, for ourselves? I wrote a blog post last week about grace, about forgiving yourself and others. I think that grace is a part of compassion. Caring, and giving quarter where perhaps none is deserved, is where compassion is needed the most. Maybe it’s most needed because it isn’t deserved. Having compassion is necessary in so many parts of our lives.

Compassion isn’t needed when all is good, the folks are doing what they are supposed to and we’re all happy. Compassion isn’t called for, necessarily for the “good” in our lives and in the lighter parts, but it is called for mostly in the dark parts. The parts where we are hurt the most and where we cannot see the light. This is where I find it the hardest to find compassion.

I believe it would be a mistake to think of having compassion as weak. It doesn’t take strength to strike someone down when they are at their weakest or when they have made the biggest mess of a situation. It takes strength to not retaliate or condemn. It doesn’t take much strength to hate, it does take a lot of strength sometimes to love.

I had a person once, that I was considering hiring, who had gone behind my back to someone close to me to question my integrity and say some pretty nasty things about me. The person was also seeing me professionally to help her with her health. The friend she had spoken to called and told me what happened. The next time I saw this person I knew about her negative words and the venom she had spat in my direction; but she was unaware that I knew. I had the choice to treat her kindly and maintain a compassionate attitude, or I could confront her and address it angrily. I chose the former and didn’t bring it up or change the way I treated her.

I had always treated this person with respect. For her to behave this way towards me meant that she was truly defensive and frightened of life and of ME! So, I chose to love her. I did not pretend. Had she addressed me about her criticisms I would have kindly told her what I thought but she did not. I treated her kindly and professionally and asked how I could continue to support her in her health goals. She answered and we had a nice visit. Someone close to the situation and who knew what was happening, saw our exchange and wondered about it out loud to me later after the woman left.

She said, “How did you treat her so calmly and so professionally, so kindly? She is so negative and clearly does not mean you well! How can you look at her and not be angry?” I answered that she was my patient foremost and when that is the case I always come from a place of love. Yes, I was hurt that she had acted the way she did, but I just decided to treat her as I always had honoring that place of grace in her that I always saw and I chose to ignore the negativity she was creating. It was a conscious decision. It didn’t hurt me and shortly after, this person decided to seek help for her health in a different direction. This is a small example of compassion. One that was fairly easy at the time and did not hurt me too much to implement.

I can tell of a time I did not show compassion. It was extremely hard for me to even see that compassion was needed in the situation, so stuck was I on my own rightness. It seemed to me at the time that it would hurt me tremendously to have compassion in this situation. I regret greatly that I didn’t see more clearly and behave differently.  Regret in life sometimes can be a tough thing; especially if you cannot go back and do it differently. A very close friend had something tragic happen in her life that made her choose a different direction than I would have chosen for her. We argued about it and I tried to convince her to make a different choice. I was younger then and I did not understand how big a part compassion plays in our day to day interactions with others. I chose to be judgmental and headstrong and hold her decision against her and stand “strong” in my own personal belief that she made the wrong ethical and moral choice and that I was right, and she was wrong.

How condescending and stupid that sounds to me now in the rear-view mirror of 20 something years. I can hear myself asking “Well, how did that work out for you?” Not well. I lost the opportunity to win for both of us. I lost something that day that I never got back. We stayed friends but it was never the same. I always held the judgmental “holier than thou” space in the relationship and she died before I had a chance to get older and wiser. It breaks my heart to think of that; and how I can’t go back. What if I had had a softer heart for her and what she was experiencing. What if I tried harder and had put myself in her shoes? Really put myself in her shoes and walked in them for a time.

Most of us are not evil. The press, the politicians “the dividers” separate us into race and sex and religion and political party. We are, the polls say more polarized than ever on so many topics. But we are all just human beings. We are all people. I know that the answers to the questions we fight over and struggle with in our world today are not easy ones. Some of us feel very strongly about a lot of things— and I think we should. Developing compassion is an ongoing journey and so very needed right now in our world.

Have you ever tried to fully, completely understand a position so opposite from yours that it makes you feel crazy to even listen to it? It sounds so dumb or so ignorant or so something? Think of a view so opposite from yours that you could never in a million years think of understanding it let alone taking it on as your own. Yes, that’s the one! If I had really decided to take my friend’s perspective back then, and really understand her and why she made the decision she made, even if I totally disagreed, I could still have had compassion for her. And maybe, just maybe, we could have found some agreement.

Compassion is an attitude and a gift. It isn’t a condescending view that we are better somehow than the person in front of us. Doing that very thing, taking on and listening closely to another viewpoint completely opposed to my own, has enabled me to change my mind about many subjects I thought I could never change. It is a gift we can consciously choose to give each other.

I have changed some of my strong and long-held beliefs by listening and questioning with friends who were kind and had compassion for me and for my “crazy to them” ideas. It works both ways, you see. They were willing to listen to my strongly-held viewpoints and I was willing to listen to theirs; without judgement. And you know what? Sometimes both of us changed a little in each other’s direction. Sometimes after a time of introspection one of us came to understand the other’s reason for believing or acting as they did. Interesting. I think in these times with my friends, we had compassion for each other even when the other became passionate or even upset about a topic.

Do unto others as we would have them do unto us comes to mind. I know this isn’t easy or even natural. We have to overcome some very basic programming to just make this so, but I encourage you to try it. Examine your red lines. The line that you would never cross to show someone compassion and try it anyway. The fact you are even thinking about it is progress. We can’t all do it all the time and all at once, but we can start. Radical compassion. It doesn’t mean someone doesn’t take or shouldn’t take responsibility for a wrong. It doesn’t even mean it wasn’t wrong. It means your compassion opens a passage way in the universe for a possible redemption for them and for you; especially for you, if the wrong was done to you.

Radical compassion. Crazy sounding, right? Two very opposite words.

Opening the door to being compassionate allows the light to shine in and more possible solutions to surface. It opens a space in the universe where none existed previously. You can bring light to those situations around you that seem impossible. Try it. Let it happen.

I send you love and best wishes for finding and living with more compassion in your life every day. I wish you strength for the journey.

 

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”  Aesop