When I was diagnosed with cancer, all I wanted to know, was what percentage chance I had of survival…

I wanted my DOCTOR to tell me how much I should believe in my future. 

That was a long time ago. Before I realised, that whatever you BELIEVE, you will CREATE. 

Thankfully, my doctor was a smart man, and he told me; ‘If I said you had a 99% chance of survival, and you turn out to be the 1% that lives, how is that any different to if I said you had a 1% of survival and you turn out to be that 1% that survives?’ He told me, your probability doesn’t matter, what matters is, THE OUTCOME. 

Since then I have studied A LOT. I’ve realised that the placebo effect is a real thing, and that people who believe in their diagnosis, often define themselves and their future by it. 

In mental health, sometimes it can be a relief to finally be told by a doctor that there is something wrong with you.

What a relief to be validated. 

The problem with that is, once we label ourselves, we tend to limit ourselves to the label. 

Every diagnosis has a cause. Every symptom has a reason. Not all causes and reasons are what you think! 

Many ‘diagnosis’ are actually symptoms. 

Got IBS, or digestive issues? These are symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system and anxiety. 

Got ADHD? This can be a symptom of high levels of stress in early childhood. 

Anxiety, depression, PTSD, and their various associated mental health diagnosis all have a root cause, and those root causes are usually experiential, environmental, emotional or generational. 

Welcome to the crazy new age thinking… that your healthy development is actually affected by your experiences. 

And here’s the next crazy new age suggestion… that it is possible to recover, heal, repair from many mental health diagnosis and physical diagnosis which the medical and drug industries cannot cure… by using experiential, environmental and emotional therapies. 

I want to break some of those down… 

• Experiential:

Simply means creating a different experience than the ones you have had in the past. Experiences are how our unconscious mind learns what is safe, and what we are capable of coping with. 

• Environmental:

Simply means the feel of the surrounds including people around you. Are you surrounded by support, love, care, nature, animals? Or anger, chaos, mess and cement. 

• Emotional:

Were you taught to safely express emotions in a healthy way, and did those around you model healthy ways to express emotions? We can create safe ways to express, share and receive emotions and release those which have been held in. 

When our experiences, our environment and our emotions are not healthy, we end up with diagnosis…

Your diagnosis IS NOT who you are, and it is not the limitation of what is possible. It is simply the symptom that something has not been right in the past, and that change is needed. 

Some doctors recommend lifestyle changes like diet and exercise when patients have physical health issues, but no one seems to recognise that our experience of life is as much a part of our health. Often when people have a diagnosis and I ask, what was going on when the symptoms started… it’s interesting to listen to people tell me that their symptoms began after a notable life event, like loss of a job, death in the family, moving house, divorce or other emotionally draining experience. 

You are not your diagnosis… you have potential for much more than a webmed list of limitations… and like many other people… as Louise Hay says “you can heal your life”.