Emotional Wellbeing / Releasing Suppressed Emotions

My Path To Forgiveness

A Key Component Of Healing

The content of the HealingT1D website is for educational and information purposes only. It does not contain medical advice. The contents of this website are not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please always consult with your doctor, physician, or other qualified healthcare professional before making any adjustments to your routine or healthcare regime. HealingT1D and all associated with it will not be held liable for any risks or issues associated with using or acting upon the information on this site.

Summary: Navigating from anger to forgiveness has been a journey steeped in trauma and healing. Initially resistant, I harboured deep resentment towards medical professionals and life’s injustices. Therapy and a compassionate doctor finally validated my pain, enabling me to soften and eventually forgive. Insights from Jung and experiences like a retreat and Ramadan underscored the transformative power of forgiveness in my healing journey.

Having just posted on anger, it is obvious that the next thing I am likely to write about is forgiveness. Unfortunately, it has not been so obvious or easy for me to make that transition from anger to forgiveness. I held a lot of anger in my body, my mind and my soul for years. I was angry with myself, my family, doctors, hospitals, the world, God. And I was damn sure that I was never gonna forgive any of them for anything!!

Angry With The World… And Every Medical Professional I’d Ever Seen!

I used to believe that forgiveness should be earned through regret, remorse, apology, demonstrations of understanding and compassion for the hurt caused. For me, the majority of my trauma revolved around the medical treatment I received for my Type 1 Diabetes as a child. Back in the 1980s, medical treatments were pretty barbaric. Syringes were the size of horse syringes today. Medical interventions for hypos involved brutal and intrusive processes for getting sugar back into your blood. Quantity of life (life continuing) was always valued over the quality of life.

I became so angry that the whole medical profession and the whole world colluded to perform these practices on me and deem them to be okay. After all, if these practices didn’t have the label ‘medical intervention’ placed on them – if someone were to stab sharp bits of metal into your body multiple times a day without explanation – it would be deemed to be a criminal act or an act of torture. But it was okay because, in my case, it was a medical treatment.

Interestingly, in the end, it was a doctor that helped me to normalise my medical trauma. I went to see him for help with anxiety and depression that I was struggling with at the time. He took a case history from me and then, without even a heartbeat, confirmed that I would obviously have Complex PTSD from my childhood experiences. It turned out that, during his training, he had worked in the children’s ward of his local hospital and had witnessed firsthand what children like me had gone through. He knew the trauma it caused because he had witnessed it.

My doctor’s open acknowledgement of my traumatic experience enabled me to start shifting. I was then able to mourn my loss in therapy, rather than continuing to sit in my pain. I softened. That softening enabled me to start loving. I could start loving myself. I became an observer of my life. I saw my own humanity for the first time. I realised how I have made more than my fair share of mistakes. How I had caused pain and suffering to others and needed their forgiveness. I also realised the pain that my lack of forgiveness was causing me. It was ensuring my wounds stayed open and were unable to heal. And I needed to forgive myself for that too.

I ended up seeing how my lack of forgiveness was causing so much of my own suffering. I intuitively knew that I needed to forgive to heal. This was confirmed by Kelly Turner in her amazing book ‘Radical Remission’ (see my blog post here for a more detailed explanation). I was the one who was carrying too much old stuff around on my shoulders and in my body. I needed to put that weight down. But I could only reach that point once my story had been truly heard.

My Route To Forgiveness

When I think about my route to forgiveness, I am reminded of Carl Jung’s writing in his memoir ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’…

I have witnessed such an evolution in my path to forgiveness. It has been simultaneously both a direct route and a long and winding path.

Forgiveness Is For Yourself, Not The Other Person

To start with, I fought. I fought the idea of forgiveness. How dare anyone require me to forgive! I was wronged! People deserved to pay for what they had done to me and withholding my forgiveness was the only just punishment I could think of.

Of course, I heard people say that forgiveness was not for the other person but for yourself. That meant nothing me. All I knew was that if I forgave, they would be off the hook and the wrongs would never be righted. But I did do due diligence. Whilst holding the anger and the hate, I also looked at it. I talked about in therapy. I understood what positives holding onto the anger gave me. I fought until my voice, my experience, was heard and validated. When that happened, the fight wasn’t as strong. There was less of a need to have my wrongs righted. I improved. I felt better. But I still didn’t forgive. To be honest, I forgot about it and moved on. What happened was what happened and there was nothing else that could be done.

The idea of forgiveness revisited me when I went on a weekend desert retreat in November last year. A whole section of the retreat was dedicated to forgiveness. I still clearly remember one of my group talking about how she just forgives everyone, as soon as they hurt her. I still remember how I reacted. I almost balked at her suggestion. How on earth could she do that? Why on earth would she do that?!?!

I did my best to take part in the retreat’s exercises on forgiveness but, to be honest, I just felt this blankness, this numbness. This feeling demonstrated to me that I I didn’t really know what forgiveness was and I certainly didn’t know how to do it. But, interestingly, those questions showed a spark, the start of a curiosity into the concept of forgiveness. I let that percolate in my psyche from that time on.

The Theme of Forgiveness During Ramadan

Then, last month, Ramadan was celebrated where I live. Forgiveness is one of the main themes of Ramadan and I think with good cause. A world where forgiveness comes first will always be more beautiful.

I witnessed instances of forgiveness occurring throughout my life. The Universe kept putting the idea in front of me until I could no longer turn away. It felt like the time to try forgiveness for myself.

GET HEALINGT1D’S FUTURE ARTICLES IN YOUR INBOX!

Get the latest musings and findings straight to your email inbox.

GET HEALINGT1D’S FUTURE ARTICLES IN YOUR INBOX!

Get the latest musings and findings straight to your email inbox.

Natalie Leader

Natalie is a blogger with Type 1 Diabetes. Natalie's special gifts are questioning the status quo and being a rebel. She is using these gifts to question medical 'knowledge' and find a true cure for Type 1 Diabetes.

Carrying the Anger of Diabetes

From Anger To Increasing Peace

Summary: Diabetes has been my unwelcome companion. From childhood defiance to adult acceptance, my journey has been coloured by anger, frustration, and questions of fairness. Through grief and healing practices like yoga and psychotherapy, I’ve made more peace. Diabetes, though challenging, gifted me resilience, mathematical prowess, and a deep appreciation for life’s complexity. Now, peace, love, and joy are prevailing more often.

When I was little, starting from maybe five or six years old, I used to do everything I could to avoid being diabetic. I believed that, if I pretended hard enough, diabetes would just go away. In this vein, I used to tell my dad that I no longer wanted to be diabetic. I insisted that, from that moment on, I wasn’t going to have injections or blood tests anymore. My dad always responded, in a light but matter-of-fact tone, with “Okay, then. But, just so you know, your fingers and toes will probably fall off so you’ll need to make plans for that.”

And that was the end of the non-diabetic dream (at that time, anyway!!). In its place, came anger and tears, frustration and resentment. Why wouldn’t I be angry? Suddenly, it’s impossible to have any real level of control in my life. The rules of diabetes are far outweighed by the exceptions to those rules. I looked around at other people and wondered why the hell I ended up with this. I didn’t ask for this. Why me? What had I done so wrong?

The Angry Diabetic

How angry was I? Let me count the ways… One one thousand, two one thousands…!!

There were so many things that made me angry. Of course, there were the usual culprits that I think are so common in the lives of diabetics…

Giving the same amount of insulin three days in a row for the same meal and ending up with three completely different blood sugar readings.
Having someone ask for the millionth time if I got diabetes because I ate too many sweets as a child (um, no... I only started solid foods less than a year before I was diagnosed!).
Having your endocrinologist set your targets, you hit them, then they just raise the targets without saying so much as 'well done'.
Being told off by a (usually non-diabetic) doctor for some perceived fault in your blood sugar management when you've already tried everything humanly possible to correct or improve it.
Being told off by a (usually non-diabetic) doctor for some perceived fault in your blood sugar management when you've already tried everything humanly possible to correct or improve it.
Having the embarrassment of a hypo in a public setting. And then the requirement to give reassurances to the witnesses who feel they went through 'so much' watching you hypo (try being unconscious instead!!).
Asking... "Why me?"

Under these obvious losses, though, were the more nuanced ones. The shame of feeling less than normal, of being ‘different’. The times when you miss out on the spontaneity of life as you’re having to think about where your next meal is coming from or if you have enough medication for that spontaneous, unplanned event. It also certainly adds extra dynamics to your dating life and long-term relationships. There are losses everywhere and the grief is felt.

Loss And Grief

I’ve been on a long journey since then. I have got to know the anger in me. I have sat bravely with it when it has roared out in pain. I have given it a voice when I wanted to shut it down most. I have learnt that, under the anger, there exists a gentle soul who is crying out in need. As the old adage says…

The loss that I found hardest of all to come to terms with and grieve was the ever-present distrust of my body. I was living with a physical entity that somehow had a mind of its own. And an existential uncertainty existed in my life that I was aware that my peers did not have.

I couldn’t trust my health. I couldn’t trust that I would be well at any point in time. And I couldn’t trust how long I might live. At eleven years of age, my diabetic consultant told me that I should expect to lose one year of life for every ten years of diabetes I lived through (More recent data suggests it may be more bleak than that.) I had therefore already lost one year of my life, when I’d barely got started. A very sobering thought for someone so young. In that way, my mortality was ever-present to me in a way it wasn’t for other children. Each unconscious hypo (which were pretty common for a brittle diabetic child in the 1980s) reminded me of this lack of invincibility.

Processing The Anger

I have learnt that it’s okay to feel angry. In fact, I now believe that it is vital to feel it. I suspect that deep-seated, unfelt, unexpressed anger may contribute to the development of T1D in the first place.

I have grieved the losses. I have ranted and raved. I have moaned and whinged. I have wept. I have cried out ‘It’s not faaaaaaaaair!’ a multitude of times, both as a child and as an adult. But all of this has also enabled me to make peace with my diabetes.

Personally, I have found a combination of yoga for mental health psychotherapy and the Hoffman Process (in that order) to be most useful for healing my anger. I honestly believe that my body was holding the majority (if not all) of the anger that I hadn’t been able to work through. I have witnessed my insulin requirements reduce with each step along the path to healing my anger.

It hasn’t been easy but I have now got to a place where I am truly grateful to have diabetes. It has made me an excellent mathematician (insulin-to-carb ratios, anyone?? Or, my favourite, my parents testing me on multiplication sums, like 16 x 17, to check I was back to normal after a hypo!).

On a deeper level, though, diabetes has encouraged me to look after myself and my body in a way that I suspect a non-diabetic body wouldn’t have. It has shown me the necessity of defending my needs and the value of true relationships – those who love me enough to willingly help me when I’ve needed it. Diabetes has also given me a fascination and awe for the complexity and beauty of the miracle that is the human body. I also love how it has become my invitation to the journey of healing, something that lights me up in a way that the usual routine of life never will.

Sure, I still have times where I am frustrated, angry even, and want it all to go away. But those moments are no longer long-lived They are now frequently and easily replaced with peace, love and joy.

GET HEALINGT1D’S FUTURE ARTICLES IN YOUR INBOX!

Get the latest musings and findings straight to your email inbox.

Natalie Leader

The Neuroscience of Diabetes

Showing How Neuroscience Highlights The Fundamental Connection Between Emotions and Physical Health

Summary: Candace Pert’s ‘Molecules of Emotion’ profoundly shifted the author’s perspective on Type 1 Diabetes, revealing its mental and physical connections through neuropeptides. Pert’s research on peptides bridging emotions and bodily functions challenges conventional views, suggesting holistic treatment integrating mental health and physical care is crucial for natural healing.

Candace Pert’s book ‘Molecules of Emotion’ [1] has revolutionised my understanding of my Type 1 Diabetes. I first read this book whilst I was at university (as a mature student!!) and was blown away by the concepts in it. This book truly inspired me to start thinking that healing Type 1 Diabetes is possible.

Who Was Candace Pert?

Candace Pert was an American neuroscientist who was most famous for having discovered the opiate receptor in the brain. This receptor is the place where endorphin – a type of neuropeptide responsible for feelings of euphoria, pain cessation and analgesia, amongst others – binds in the human body in order to become effective. Through her discovery in the 1970s, the field of neuroscience was transformed. Until then, it was assumed that peptides and their receptors were only found in the body – in the bloodstream and cerebrospinal fluid. For many years, Candace Pert held highly esteemed research positions with the National Institute of Health. Here, she further explored and developed the scientific knowledge of the peptide system and how emotions work in the human brain and body.

The Psychosomatic Network

Candace Pert’s research focused on a particular kind of molecule in the body called ‘peptides’. Peptides are small molecules that are made up of a string of amino acids.

Peptides were originally thought to exist only in the body and were responsible for communicating messages from one part of the body to another, potentially far-reaching, part. However, Pert and her team have identified that these molecules in fact exist in both the brain and body and can even be produced in the brain itself [1].

Indeed, this is the case for insulin. Insulin, as I discussed in my article here, was originally thought of as a hormone that was produced solely in the pancreas and solely for use in the digestive system to break down food into glucose to be used or stored. However, insulin and insulin receptors have now also been found in the brain, although the source of the insulin (whether from the brain or the body) remains unclear [2, 3].

The idea of the brain running on neurons and the body running on peptides is now defunct. In its place, Pert and colleagues [4] outlined the concept of a psychosomatic network, which is powered by peptides. In this network, peptides are the messengers that take information from one part of the body to another, where they are received onto receptors on cells that adapt their output in response to the information received.

Emotions In The Psychosomatic Network

Pert has conducted a large amount of research on the role of neuropeptides in the brain, particularly in the limbic system. The limbic system is responsible for attachment, affect regulation and aspects of emotional processing.

Two of the main components of the limbic system are the amygdala and the hypothalamus. These two brain regions have been found to have neuropeptide receptors that exist in a density forty times higher than that in other areas of the brain [5].

Pert [6] therefore hypothesises that neuropeptides are the ‘obvious candidates for the biochemical mediation of emotion’. She further suggests that, since these neuropeptides are found distributed throughout the body and in all of the major organs, body and emotions are highly interlinked via these neuropeptides. Pert [1] therefore believed that the mind and body could not be understood as distinct entities but were, instead, part of one system that she named the ‘bodymind’.

Emotions Influencing The Immune System

What is particularly interesting for me is when Pert [5] discusses how she can no longer differentiate between not only the mind (emotions) and the body, but also between this combined psychosomatic (brain/body) network and the immune system. Neuropeptides have been found to penetrate the immune system, as much as the endocrine and nervous systems, existing in mutual close physical and communicative contact [7].

Specifically, emotion-affecting neuropeptides, like insulin, have been found to directly control the routing and migration of monocytes, which are pivotal in the immune system. One of the roles of monocytes is to communicate with beta cells, which are responsible for making insulin in the pancreas.

Indeed, Pert [1] discusses how the cells of the immune system also possess receptors for neuropeptides and also make the neuropeptides themselves. In other words, the cells of the immune system are also producing and receiving the chemicals that are responsible for emotion.

Insulin As A Peptide

As I discussed in my post here, insulin has now been re-identified as a neuropeptide [8]. Pert [1] outlines two reasons for this:

Insulin works in the body via the pancreas and this is a location where neuropeptide receptors have been found.
In the brain, insulin has been found to be received by insulin receptors in the limbic system, namely the amygdala and hypothalamus.

Thus, insulin can, like other peptides, now be seen to directly link emotions and the body in a bi-directional relationship.

Peptides Link The Mind And The Body

Neuroscience has proven that the mind and body are not disconnected entities but are, in fact, intrinsically related via the peptide network. This network brings emotions and the body into a direct relationship with each other.

Emotional strain, stress and trauma will have an impact on the body. Similarly, disequilibrium in the body (due to toxicity or illness, for example) will impact the emotions. Peptides are the units that carry this emotional information between the body and the mind. Insulin, being a peptide, therefore carries this emotional information bi-directionally between the body and mind.

Candace Pert in fact hypothesises that each separate emotion could in fact be linked to a particular peptide. Science has yet to prove this but, if it turns out to be true, the search would need to start to find out what emotion insulin is associated with. For example, does insulin production stop (or start) depending on the amount of happiness, sadness, anger or fear a person has? And is there a lack or excess of a particular emotion that causes or contributes to the development of Type 1 Diabetes?

The link between the physical body and the emotions is actually not a new idea. In the 1960s, Solomon & Moos [8] challenged the prevalent Cartesian dichotomy by highlighting how emotional states can significantly alter the course and outcome of biological illnesses previously considered to be purely somatic. However, whilst other autoimmune conditions were considered, diabetes was not under the microscope in that piece of research.

Understanding Type 1 Diabetes Anew

Candace Pert’s [1] neuroscientific work highlights how Type 1 Diabetes can no longer be understood as a purely physical condition. The body and mind are interrelated and therefore diabetes, like every condition that involves peptides, has both physical and mental components. This is really no surprise to the majority of diabetics. I myself know how the amount of insulin (and therefore the amount of glucose in my bloodstream) directly impacts my emotions. When I have high blood sugars, I am often angry. When I have low blood sugars, I can become tearful and feel unlovable.

Candace Pert’s work and my own personal experience strongly suggest to me that, in order to heal Type 1 Diabetes naturally, a combined mental and physical treatment plan must be implemented. Therefore, my approach to healing my Type 1 Diabetes will be multifaceted. Alongside the physical processes that I will be implementing over the next year or so, I also take care of my mental health via psychotherapy. I originally undertook it when I started suffering from anxiety and depression in my teenage years. I am now mainly free of anxiety and depression. However, I now use the therapeutic space to explore ways to heal my Type 1 Diabetes. I will talk about that more in a later post.

References:

Pert, C. B. (1997). Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. London & Sydney: Simon & Schuster. [LINK]
Brüning, J. C., Gautam, D., Burks, D. J., et al. (2000). Role of brain insulin receptor in control of body weight and reproduction. Science, 289, 2122–2125. [LINK]
Pert, C. B., Ruff, M. R., Weber, R. J., & Herkenham, M. (1985). Neuropeptides and their Receptors: A Psychosomatic Network. Journal of Immunology, 135(2), 820s-826s. [LINK]
Pert, C. B. (2002). The Wisdom of the Receptors: Neuropeptides, the Emotions, and Bodymind. Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 18(1), 30-35. [LINK]
Pert, C. B. (1997). Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. London & Sydney: Simon & Schuster, p. 33. [LINK]
Blalock, J. E., Harbour-McMenamin, D., & Smith, E. M. (1985). Peptide hormones shared by the neuroendocrine and immunologic systems. Journal of Immunology, 135(2), 858-861. [LINK]
Hendricks, S. A., Roth, J., Rishi, S., & Becker, K. L. (1983). Insulin in the Nervous System. In: D. T. Krieger, J. B. Martin, & M. J. Brownstein (Eds.), Brain Peptides. New York: John Wiley & Sons. [LINK]
Solomon, G.F., & Moos, R.H. (1964). Emotions, immunity, and disease: A speculative theoretical integration. Archives of General Psychiatry, 11, 657-674. [LINK]

GET HEALINGT1D’S FUTURE ARTICLES IN YOUR INBOX!

Get the latest musings and findings straight to your email inbox.

Natalie Leader

My Path To Forgiveness

Recent Comments:

Carrying the Anger of Diabetes

Recent Comments:

The Neuroscience of Diabetes

References:

Recent Comments: