What is the Green Solution for Toxic Thinking?

Is Someone Driving you Nuts? Fifteen insights on how to stop thinking about someone who’s driving you crazy. Have you ever found that you just can’t stop thinking about someone and what they did or said, and how bewildered or hurt you were by their actions? When someone hurts us, our children, or someone we love, gossips behind our back, or simply acts crazy in ways that confound us, we can get stuck thinking about it for hours or days. We’re washing dishes, we’re driving, or we’re walking the dogs and we can’t stop thinking about how unkind, untrue and self-centered the things they said were. Their image, their words, keep resurfacing to mind. Five hours, five days, five weeks later, there they are – we see their face in front of us, even when we haven’t seen them in all that time. (Just to be clear, I’m not addressing how we deal with trauma or abuse here — situations which require professional help and intervention — I’m talking about the day-to-day interactions we have with others that leave us mentally sputtering.) How can we stop feeling embroiled in other people’s craziness? How can we stop thinking about a person or situation — or what we should have, could have, done differently — when the same thoughts keep looping back, rewinding, and playing through our mind again and again? Or maybe, for you, it’s not about a person, it’s about what you got or didn’t get, what you need but don’t have, what just isn’t right in your life. (Usually, of course, there is a person involved whom you feel deserves blame for whatever is wrong.) Toxic cyclical thinking. Most of us know that this kind of ruminating is both emotionally and physically harmful to us. In fact, studies show that a ruminating mind, a wandering mind, is an unhappy and unhealthy mind. When our monkey mind is unhappily fraught with replaying altercations, resentments or losses, we marinate in a cascade of harmful inflammatory stress chemicals and hormones that are linked to almost every disease we can name. Increasingly, scientists can pinpoint how ruminating plays a role in disease including depression, cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disease. The stress chemicals we wallow in are far worse for us than the thing that actually happened to us in the first place. Moreover, toxic thinking just doesn’t feel good. It’s like getting caught on a spinning, centrifugal-force ride at the fair that was fun for a few minutes, and now it just makes you feel sick and you want to get off. But you can’t. We work so hard to remove whatever is toxic from our lives. We buy organic, we avoid unhealthy foods, we remove chemicals from our home. We eat green, we clean green. We buy organic cosmetics. But we put very little concerted effort into trying to go green in our minds. When our thoughts are relentless and pervasive, how do we Green the Mind? What is the green solution for toxic thinking? In researching and writing my last book, The Last Best Cure, I developed a number of insights on how to stop myself from spinning stories, ruminating, worrying, and replaying thoughts about someone or something. These fifteen small but powerful sayings work for me – many are based on teachings from today’s leaders in mindfulness psychology and meditation. Choose the ones that resonate most with you. 1.  “Less said, More time” is my own personal motto. Saying less and letting more time pass when we’re dealing with a difficult, reactive person is almost always a smart move. It allows us to simmer down, and let it go, take the high road. Often, with time, the thing we’re annoyed about just falls away. 2. “Let’s just wait and see what happens next.” We often feel the need to respond and react to difficult people or situations right away, which is why we stew so much over what to say or do next. Buddhist psychologist Sylvia Boorstein suggests that instead we simply give ourselves permission to wait and see what happens next. 3. Move Away From the Blame Game. Picking apart past events and trying to assign blame (including blaming oneself) is rarely productive. Bad things and misunderstandings most often “happen” through a series of events, like a domino effect. No one person is usually entirely to blame for the end result. Sylvia Boorstein has a saying that helps to remind us of this truth: “First this happened, then that happened, then that happened. And that is how what happened happened.” 4. “Try not to fall into other people’s states of minds.” Another Sylvia Boorstein nugget that pretty much says it all. 5. “Deal with Your Biggest Problem First.” Buddhist meditation teacher Norman Fischer suggests that no matter what’s happened, the biggest problem we face is our own anger. Our anger creates a cloud of emotion that keeps us from responding in a cogent, productive way. In that sense, our anger really is our biggest problem. Deal with yourself – meditate, exercise, take a long walk, say less and give it more time, whatever it takes – before you deal with anyone else. 6. “When You’re Angry it Wrinkles the Mind.” This Sylvia Boorstein teaching follows along the same lines. “You can’t think clearly or be creative or thoughtful about how best to handle any situation when you’re mad. Anger wrinkles the mind. If you want to think clearly, you can’t be mad at anything.” 7. “Don’t Try to Figure Others Out.” This is another Norman Fischer teaching. Ask yourself, if others tried to figure out what you’re thinking, or what your motivations are, how right do you think they’d be? They probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what’s really going through your mind. So why try to figure out what others are thinking? Chances are extremely good that you would be wrong, which means that all that ruminating was a colossal waste of time. 8. Your

A Q. and A. with “Between the Covers” on What Compelled me to Write The Last Best Cure

I recently spoke with Melanie Brevis, blogger at Baltimore County Public Library System, and we had a great chat! Between the Covers with Donna Jackson Nakazawa Baltimore author Donna Jackson Nakazawa discusses her latest book, The Last Best Cure, on Wednesday, April 16 at 7 p.m. at the Perry Hall Branch, sponsored by the Friends of the Perry Hall Library. The award-winning science journalist and writer recently answered questions for Between the Covers about her book. Before The Last Best Cure, you authored another book about autoimmune diseases, The Autoimmune Epidemic. What insights or new knowledge did you gain between that book and The Last Best Cure? What was going on in your life prior to writing these books? The Autoimmune Epidemic focused on how modern chemicals in the world around us and in our diet are overwhelming the human immune system, contributing to rising disease rates and chronic illnesses. The Last Best Cure takes this research a step further and investigates “psychoneuroimmunology,” a new field of study that investigates how mind states, such as anxiety, fear, worry, rumination, anger and pain, can end up damaging our immune function in much the same way as environmental chemicals. Prior to this, I was struggling with my own health crises. The Last Best Cure is my chronicle of a one-year doctor/patient experiment to see if altering my mood state might shift my inflammatory markers and perhaps even improve my physical well-being.  The Last Best Cure has received much critical praise, described as a book that will offer hope for recovery, and change and save lives. What is the most important insight or piece of information you want readers to take away from your book? I want people to know that there already exists an understanding as to how we can activate the healing potential of the brain. Understanding how to do this gives us powerful tools, ways to change the messages our brain is sending to our cells and our body. Everyone deserves to live the life they want, and these tools can help us all achieve a greater sense of well-being, and even joy. You were already an award-winning science journalist and writer when you began writing these last two books. What was it like writing professionally about a topic that was also very personal to you? Were there any “aha” moments for your own life as you were writing? At first, I was only going to write about my personal experiences in the introduction to The Last Best Cure, but my editor thought readers would want to read more about how I also went on this transformational journey myself. She thought it would help convey to readers that we can all take this journey, no matter what physical or emotional health challenges we face. There was so much that I realized along the way about adversity, self-respect and how they play a role in adult illness. Now I’m profoundly grateful to have taken this journey: Life is sweeter, relationships are better and it’s a better, more meaningful way to live. In addition to being about healing and recovering personal joy, The Last Best Cure is a story about a health epidemic. What steps do we need to take now to secure a better health outlook for future generations? We need to absolutely, completely and radically change how we view the doctor/patient relationship. If we keep up the current “medical factory” model we’re going to see very little progress in managing chronic health issues. Right now, 133 million adults in America have chronic illnesses, not counting the 22 million with addiction – and these numbers are rapidly climbing. The tools to help patients participate in their own healing and facilitate greater well-being exist; it just requires that physicians incorporate new practices into their doctor/patient paradigm. In order to do this, we must change the way we as a society view treatment, health care and the doctor/patient relationship. Are there any new books in the works? Yes, one due out at the end of next year called Childhood Interrupted: How Adversity in the Past Writes the Story of Our Future – And How We Can Change the Script (Atria/Simon & Schuster). It’s a deeper, more extended study of how childhood adversity can create changes in the brain and in our immunology that impact our health long into adulthood – and what we can do to reverse those effects as adults. I’m telling cutting-edge stories of science, about how even very common forms of childhood adversity can reset our immune system to be more stress-reactive, sparking a state of chronic low-grade neuroinflammation for life. I want to help readers understand how the stress we meet in childhood can determine our lifelong “set point” for emotional reactivity, inflammation, disease and depression – and what we can do to reverse the impact of early adversity and trauma years later, in adulthood, to regain our physical and emotional well-being. How long has the Baltimore area been home to you? What do you like best about living in this area? My family moved to Baltimore four years ago from Annapolis; my mom and my husband’s parents were already living here, so it just made sense. What I like best about Baltimore is its people. Baltimoreans are real, genuine, honest, intellectual, creative, smart and energetic. They’re committed to their community and engaged in making this a better place to live. We love it here. It’s a vibrant place to be.  

Not Cured, But Healing

Hi All, I wrote this for the PBS website, Next Avenue, and have recently had a number of requests to share it. So, I’ve included the essay here, and a link to the original below. I’m Not Cured, but I Am Healing After years of pain and chronic illness, an author finds relief through breakthrough research on how the brain affects the body. Donna Jackson Nakazawa is the author of the award-winning Autoimmune Epidemic. Her new book is The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy and My Life. More than 133 million American adults — 1 in 2 of us — suffer from a chronic condition, including autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, digestive disorders, migraines, back pain, depression, diabetes, cancer and chronic pain. A recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that those of us in our 40s, 50s and 60s are twice as likely as our parents were to suffer from debilitating chronic conditions in middle age. I’m one of those statistics. I’ve spent much of the past decade navigating my life around health crises. Twice I’ve been paralyzed by Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disease similar to multiple sclerosis, but with a more sudden onset and a wider array of possible outcomes. Other diagnoses — low blood cell counts, thyroiditis and the need for a pacemaker — have also complicated my health and my life. When my kids were younger I coped with bouts of being bedridden by turning my bed into a playground, scattered with board games, Legos and books like A Wrinkle in Time and The Lord of the Rings. One day, my son’s grade school teacher sent home a paper in which she’d circled a line he’d written: “My Mom is the most determined person I know. She’s more determined than Frodo.” Above all I longed for a normal, ordinary life, that lovely, irreplaceable, gorgeous mess of moment-to-moment reality — to play hide-and-seek with my kids again, to bandage and kiss a skinned knee while rushing to get out the door to a meeting. I was sure that if I could walk again, tie my kids’ shoes, drive, cook dinner and type, the joy of living would return in high definition. If I could just get back to ordinary life, it would be miracle enough. But I was wrong. Even after I’d regained the strength to haul myself up the steps — albeit by death-gripping the rail — and drive, cook and write, I was different. Yes, I was profoundly grateful, but it still felt like a half-life. A maybe life. One day I found myself lying down at the top of the stairs, exhausted by carrying up the laundry basket. That’s when it hit me: These should be the best years of my life. My time to enjoy my kids, who would all too soon be gone. My most productive work years. But the days were whizzing past. Illness, I realized, had become my joy thief. New Ways to Activate Healing As a health science journalist, I’d authored an award-winning book, The Autoimmune Epidemic, on how modern chemicals were overwhelming the human immune system, contributing to rising disease rates. I’d been working with the chronically ill for years, lecturing to groups and exchanging thousands of emails with patients. I knew how many Americans were suffering, despite having benefited from the best that Western medicine had to offer. Like me, their lives had been saved, but they felt robbed of joy. Recently, I’d been investigating “psychoneuroimmunology,” a new study of how mind states, like anxiety and pain, trigger a cocktail of stress hormones and inflammatory chemicals that damage our immune function in much the same way as environmental chemicals. Research has linked high levels of stress-related inflammatory biomarkers to a greater risk of chronic pain, depression, heart disease, digestive illnesses, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis. On the other hand, patients who practiced meditation, mindfulness, yoga and breath work showed decreased inflammatory biomarkers. Brain-body techniques, like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction — learning to quiet the churning mind through yoga, breathing, loving-kindness meditation and noting and naming our moment to moment habits of mind — help us to separate ourselves from our thoughts, calm our nervous system and change our biology. Our worries and ruminating thoughts no longer cause the same inflammatory stress reactions. Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis who underwent training in this technique achieved at least a 50 percent reduction in pain. I was intrigued by the idea that here was something I could do, without taking a pill or risking side effects, that might help activate the healing potential of my own brain. Could mindfulness, meditation and yoga alter my stress response, brain and cellular activity? To find out, I teamed up with Dr. Anastasia Rowland Seymour, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Program in Integrative Medicine. We embarked on a one-year experiment to see if altering my mood state might shift my inflammatory markers and perhaps even improve my physical well-being. I chronicled the experience in my new book, The Last Best Cure. I wasn’t expecting miracles. I simply wanted to turn off what I’d come to call the “Pain Channel” and tune into the “Life Channel” before the best years of family life were gone. Echoes of Childhood Stress in Adult Illness Along the way, however, something unexpected occurred. I stumbled upon an important new area of research linking what are known as adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, to a greater likelihood of facing chronic health conditions in adulthood. ACEs include experiencing, before the age of 18, emotional and physical neglect or chronic humiliation, sexual or physical abuse, living with a depressed or alcoholic parent or suffering the loss of a parent to death or divorce. For instance, women who have experienced ACEs face a much higher likelihood of being hospitalized with an autoimmune disorder as adults. Similar relationships exist between adverse childhood

Thank You Readers – The Last Best Cure hit #10 in Bestselling Books in Health Memoir

Thank you readers, I just found out that last night THE LAST BEST CURE hit #10 on AMAZON in BESTSELLING BOOKS IN HEALTH MEMOIR! That made me smile, and I realize I have all of you to thank for spreading the word, one woman, one reader at a time! In gratitude, I thank you.http://amzn.to/1dIIyVd

Talking on NPR about The Last Best Cure

I really enjoyed a great discussion today with Dan Rodricks, the host of the NPR show, Midday, on WYPR, Baltimore’s Public Radio station. Dan is smart, genuine, and asks great questions. We really delved into why I wrote The Last Best Cure, the science behind it, and how I hope it can help readers with chronic conditions. You can listen to the entire show by clicking on the podcast at this link: http://wypr.org/post/last-best-cure. This photo has nothing to do with this show — I am just reposting it here because I like it and it makes me smile!

From Point A to Point A

We all grow up thinking that a successful life is about trying to get from Point A to Point B. From right here where we are to some distant point or goal in the future. And yes, having goals and aspirations is important. That’s why we set so many resolutions in the New Year. But as I spent the holiday with my family and reveled in having our son home from college, and our being all together again, and seeing friends we rarely get to see, I realized that what I am slowly learning — late in life — is how to get from Point A to Point A. From being here to being right here. Letting go thoughts about getting to Point B, wherever it might be. Savoring the very small movement from Point A to Point A.

Two Wise Teachers

I spent this weekend at a two day meditation event with one of my dearest friends, and together we soaked in the amazing wisdom of Syliva Boorstein and Sharon Salzberg, who came together to teach as a duo on this snowy, rainy weekend in Washington DC. My favorite nuggets: Sylvia Boorstein’s teaching, “May I meet this moment fully, May I not complicate it, May I meet it as a friend.” Sharon Salzberg’s teaching: “The most important moment of meditation is the moment you sit down to do it.” And Syliva Boorstein’s teaching about how to handle being in busy, harried family life and not lose one’s hard won peace in the midst of it: “Try not to fall into other people’s states of mind.” I find this really wise as I raise teenagers… My deepest gratitude to these two wise teachers. I am particularly grateful that at the end, I received the joyful gift of a warm hug from Sylvia Boorstein, who was so kind to say such lovely things about The Last Best Cure when it came out last spring. As I told my friend Elizabeth, who is one of those wonderful kinds of friends who always keeps me honest with myself, as I grow older, I hope to become more like Sylvia Boorstein — she pretty much glows with metta. And to please remind me, when I am overreactive and small of mind, by saying, “Remember, you want to glow like Syliva Boorstein.” Sometimes, just to meet someone whom you admire so much, whose teachings you follow, and to see how their presence changes those around them — because their compassion and loving kindness comes from such a deep wellspring the whole room can sip from it — well, that is a teaching in and of itself. Thank you Sylvia Boorstein and Sharon Salzberg (whose fabulous new book is just out, Real Happiness at Work).

Big News Coming! The Next Book!

I’m just about to announce my next book project — which I’ve signed for with Atria/Simon & Schuster. I’m going to be looking for interviewees for this one! So, stay tuned…I’ll be reaching out to you, my amazing, faithful readers. Subscribe to get my blog posts (option on the right) to stay informed and find out more!

The Ones Who’ve Helped us Along the Way

Yesterday I was struggling to manage a few swirling mind states — you know, those fears, resentments and regrets that well up, or at least they do for me. I just could not find any inner compassion for my own life mistakes. My suffering was mind-wrought, and doing me no good, but even knowing all that I could not manage my thoughts. Then I remembered a type of meditation that has helped me get unstuck in the past. It is taught by many but my favorite version is by John Makransky. It’s called “Identifying Benefactors and Receiving Love.” So I got it out again, that tape, as a rescue remedy (you can listen to his free 13 minute audio version at this link). It’s pretty healing stuff. Here’s how a “receiving benefactors” meditation works, in case you feel inclined to give it a try. Makransky asks us to first think of people in our lives whom we might think of as benefactors, those who have wished for our “deep well-being and happiness.”  Often, these are, he says, the people we most liked to be around at earlier points in our lives.  A dear aunt or grandparent, a friend of our parents, a teacher or professor or coach, someone whom it feels good to remember because we knew in our hearts that they wanted the absolute best for us.  We felt safe by their side. Thinking of my Own Benefactors I think of my Dad, of course I think of him. I think of how one day, when I was 11, a year or so before he died, we were sailing. As I took the tiller on that blue-green Chesapeake day, my Dad turned to my mother and asked — despite my buck teeth, my horn-rimmed tortoise shell glasses, my frizzy blond hair that inspired my brothers to call me “lampshade head” — “Isn’t she just so beautiful?”  As if he saw something incandescent beneath my profound gawkiness. Someone who believes we are beautiful, even when we are gawky and awkward, and who knows we need to hear it precisely because we are gawky and awkward, that is a benefactor. I think, too, of my father’s mother, whom we called GranMary. GranMary always called me “my darling girl,” no matter how old I was.  The last time I saw her shortly before her death, she patted my hand between her palms, and, caught in a moment of dementia, asked, “You are going to Jay’s play tonight, aren’t you?”  She was talking about my father, who had been dead for 30 years.  She was reliving one of those buoyant, excited moments of mothering: the opening night of the school play her son had written and directed — albeit half a century after the fact.  “Jay and I have been rehearsing his lines all afternoon!” she said with pride, leaning toward me, our knees touching between the sofa where she sat and the ottoman on which I perched.  “He has his lines down,” she said proudly, patting my knee. I recall how she turned and glanced around the room, as if expecting her son to come through the front door of her assisted living apartment.  How she somehow seemed to know who I was and yet not understand that I was also her dead son’s now grown daughter. “My darling girl.  You are coming to Jay’s play?  Oh, you must!” I wanted to go to my Dad’s play, yes.  See him as a 17-year-old, directing, acting, taking his curtain call via some kind of magical time reversal.  Or see him on any single day of his life – still alive.  But there is no such magical clock.  I think of how much my father’s mother loved him, how it broke her heart to lose her son without warning.  “The worst thing,” she once told me, in her earlier, lucid years, “is to lose your child while you still live.  It’s an unnatural pain.”  How she loved us all.  How she would tell us at the end of every family party or dinner or day, just that: “I love you all.” I think, too, of the aunt who comforted me through the years after my father’s death. My Aunt Nan wasn’t related to me, she was my parents’ best friend and our neighbor. When he died, the summer I was twelve, I began spending Saturday mornings at her house, making pancakes, and school day afternoons climbing the pine trees in the field in front of her driveway. We’d run around in her yellow Volkswagen Beetle; the same one in which she’d driven me to kindergarten seven years earlier — she’d also been my kindergarten teacher. She’d leave surprises for me in the mailbox, knowing I picked up the mail when I got off the bus. One day there was a small toy Leprechaun sitting in the mailbox, his pliable legs and arms crossed, as if he’d been waiting patiently for me. Years later, when I moved to New York, Aunt Nan tirelessly helped me to find my first walk up apartment. She’d moved to Connecticut, and on weekends I’d recover on her couch in the country in front of her fireplace. We often had a cup of tea together as she listened, patiently, dearly, to my stories of work and love in the city. One day I gave her a porcelain tea cup. When she died a year ago, her daughter said she had wanted me to have that tea cup back, and gave it to me. I keep it on my desk beside me and I always think of her when I see it, every single day. I think of my mother’s mother Gammer; how she was there to hold me with open arms the day my mother broke the news to my brothers and me that my dad had died.  I think of the New Year’s Eves I would spend with Gammer well into my twenties if I didn’t have a

My Emergency Mental Repair Plan

Hi All, What a lovely week. On July 17th, I went to speak at the Arlington Central Library in Arlington, Virginia. I just wanted to say thank you to all of you wonderful readers who came out despite the record heat. I was so happy to see you. I loved telling you about why I wrote The Last Best Cure, reading excerpts, and most of all, your wonderful questions and the deep discussion that ensued. Afterward, I was moved by many of the conversations I had with you one-on-one while signing books. As is so often the case, those of you who shared your stories humbled me. The woman with terminal cancer, who told me she was searching for joy “no matter how much time I have here,” and that the book was helping her — that brought me to tears. The woman who told me that the research in The Last Best Cure made her realize, for the first time, that perhaps there might be a connection between the terrible trauma she experienced in her childhood, when she lost her 12-year-old sister in a house fire, and her current autoimmune struggles — that too, made my throat catch. The many people who told me of their deep physical and emotional struggles — with rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and so much else — reminded me, again, of how we all struggle and how we owe it to ourselves to search for joy, healing, well-being, in the face of that suffering. You are, to me, rock stars. So brave in your search for answers that lead to healing. Meanwhile I’ve continued with my “Last Best Cure Virtual Book Club Tour.” Readers have been asking me for quick tricks, things I do in the here and now to help me return to a sense of equanimity, despite whatever stressful situation I might be in. So I wanted to share with you a short list that appears in The Last Best Cure, on page 136. (A number of readers in my recent online Virtual Book Club Tour told me this list was their favorite page in the book!) If you’ve read the book up to page 136, then you’ll fully understand every step I refer to in the short excerpt below. Here goes: When I feel myself becoming overwhelmed I draw upon my newly developed emergency mental repair plan. I do best when I use several of my favorite tricks in sequence to switch my brain from SNS/negative floating brain/Pain Channel to PNS/positive floating brain/Life Channel. It goes something like this: Let out three rapid-fire exhales in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Or, three mindful sighs. Rock a little, just for a minute or two. I haven’t read this anywhere, I just came to this one day on my own. A slight back and forth, back and forth. I can’t hold a grudge or fear when I’m rocking. Maybe that’s why we rock children in our loaps, or why we rock on the porch as we age.  Our fears let go their tentacle hold. Roll my eyes just slightly up toward the top of my head as I’m focusing on the breath. I’ve stumbled across this by trial and error as well. When I do a little research on why this brings on a sudden wave of calm what I read makes sense. Rolling our eyes slightly upward triggers relaxation — that’s why when we sleep our eyes roll up toward the top of our head. Touch my fingers to my lips, gently, as I might if I were saying shhhhhhhhh to a small, distressed child. Touching our lips stimulates the parasympathetic nerve fibers that line them. That’s why babies love to self-soothe by breastfeeding, and suckling on their fingers, pacifiers, and baby bottle nipples. Imagine a golden white column of light streaming into my scalp and crown – traveling all the way down through my chest into my belly, touching every cell of my body, moving into my toes and finally shooting down into the ground. If I am not outside, imagine myself in nature. If I am very sad, I imagine the faces of the people who have really, really loved me. Surrounding me. Wishing the best for me. Focus on the sounds that surround me, whether real, or in my imagined scenery. Use word power. Name my habits of mind. Apply balm to the sting. 10.  Come back to the breath. This in breath, this out breath. If necessary, begin at the top and work my way down again. I use these strategies every day, many, many times a day, to return to who I know I really am. To re-arrive at the certainty that I am not my thoughts.