When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

The potential for wholeness and health resides in all of us, affirms Dr. Gabor Maté in When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. But disease is often the body's way of saying "no" to what the mind cannot or will not acknowledge, warns the author, who quotes the latest scientific findings about the roles stress and individual emotional makeup play in the causation of cancer and other chronic illnesses. Maté is a medical doctor and bestselling author of Scattered Minds. This work offers stories from his own patients in the belief that insight is more helpful to people than advice. Natalie, for example, develops multiple sclerosis after years of marriage to a drunken and emotionally abusive husband. In another case, a 74-year-old man diagnosed with cancer experiences spontaneous remission. His own body mobilized formidable immune responses to defeat the disease. "If we gain the ability to look into ourselves with honesty, compassion and with unclouded vision, we can identify the ways we need to take care of ourselves," says Maté, who invites us all to be our own health advocates by pursuing emotional competence in seven areas: acceptance, awareness, anger, autonomy, attachment, assertion, and affirmation. If a link exists between emotions and psychology, he says, not to inform people of it will deprive them of a powerful tool. --Carolyn Leitch

Author: Gabor Mate M.D.

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Year: 2004