The Designed Change Institute

I combined these thoughts and methods and began to notice that I could make better decisions in my life when I felt relaxed and pleasant, so I took time to change my feelings and enjoy. That's different from Pollyanna, who made believe. I was affirmed in feeling perfectly awful, as long as I wished. Just don't believe what you think or observe at those times. During those serene times ("for today" is the expression in Al-Anon) I could both enjoy my life and think and act in ways that I could trust represented who I really am, not out of distorted intensities like guilt, anger, loneliness or fear.

Over the next several years I discovered that stress caused illnesses, and noticed things like the personal isolation that was a major part of the treatment for tuberculosis. There was even some evidence that the recovery program of AA would work effectively for tuberculosis patients (the founder of the National Council on Alcoholism was both and recovered from both through AA, and others affirmed the discovery). All of this came to an end through the use of antibiotics.

It was a phrase in my family, "my resistance was down and I got a cold", and we worked to build up that old resistance. Over the years, when I found myself in a "helper" role in life, and a staff member at a mental hospital, I continued to notice the connections among various illnesses and various feelings, like sadness and sore throats. Being a huge man, I was often asked to help calm down an unruly and psychotic patient, and I did what everyone does on a hospital ward. I talked of ease and calmness and in a short time the psychosis would abate and the patient would calm down. In fact (this was the days before drugs) if the patient were put in a straight jacket the calming would be much longer in coming. And, me being a resourceful and risk taking person, would see the patient later and talk about what the patient was saying while psychotic. More times than not the psychosis would begin to return. Then I would shift his focus to serenity and watch it go, then back to the feelings which supported the psychosis. Some patients were delighted when I offered that they take over, and in and out of psychosis they would go. I began to find that they could use some of what I learned in AA and Al-Anon to make serenity and clarity part of their lives. This developed into our DCI program of "Client Directed Recovery", which works like magic.

Learning more about feelings led to the physical wellness work which we do. Feelings are physiological events in the body. They are things that the person does, while we learn to believe that they happen to us. That's not surprising, since once you do something, like create a feelings state, and then you associate that with something else, like how people respond when you feel that way, you have now rehearsed an association and created a behavior pattern. That means that every time you think, "I wish they would act this way" it restimulates the feeling and, lo, they do! Now you will notice that they learn to "push your buttons" by placing a restimulator before you. They now "make you feel this way". Simply add this to childhood experience with illness (everyone pays attention to your illness, or to poor sick grandma). Now you have a system of behavior in which your body automatically holds those feelings which cause illness for you, and lo and behold you are sick and loved for it.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that the Designed Change Process was developed for. You have more to say about your illness than you have been led to believe.