Thyroid Disease: Awareness of the Emotional Component

Hello and welcome to Meta-Moments! In this post, we will finally introduce the third book in my series of essential literature. I am so excited to talk about Metaphysical Anatomy because it provides perspectives that are outside the box. Metaphysical Anatomy categorizes various diagnoses and disease processes with the intention of not discussing the disease itself but instead connects to the emotional trauma associated with those diseases and may even make symptoms worse. For instance, using a prevalent and pragmatic topic in Meta-Moments, epigenetics is the science of how genes are turned on and/or off based on the signals the cell receives from the environment. Now think more macroscopically and imagine you are the cell and emotional trauma is the environmental signal. Consequently, such a signal may influence the expression of your genes that results in pathology. Essentially, your perception of your environment creates the signals that turn your genes on and/or off.

I have decided to cover a disease state that is quite common, one that I see in a fair amount of my patients as well: thyroid disease. Please pay close attention to the emotional processes and behavior patterns that go along and even exacerbate thyroid disease. Also, recognize that although these behavior patterns may be long-lasting, it does not mean that you do not have the opportunity or the power to change these behavior patterns. By being more aware of your behavior patterns that may be exacerbating the disease, you can begin to make different choices; hence, your epigenetics can change. Radically accept that you are not stuck with any particular diagnosis for the rest of your life. It is possible to heal yourself from a disease process while not necessarily relying on surgery or pharmaceuticals.

I am a living example of this concept. I suffered from peptic ulcer disease for about 25 years, starting from 16 till I was about 44 years old. I gratefully owe my successful convalescence and cure from peptic ulcer disease to Metaphysical Anatomy. Applying all that I read in Metaphysical Anatomy wholeheartedly resulted in being cured of my condition. However, I want to stress that although substantially possible, it was no cakewalk. I had to learn to recognize that my behavior patterns were a result of my symptoms. Once I stopped creating the same behavior patterns repeatedly that I will soon discuss, I began to notice that my symptoms slowly. I stopped behaving or reacting in a similar way to my environment, and now I am symptom-free. I do not take any medication specifically for the acid in my stomach, which is pretty exciting!

Let’s now begin our discussion on Metaphysical Anatomy and thyroid disease. If you suffer from thyroid disease, you may display a propensity towards a deep fear of not being heard and being misunderstood, so you communicate your opinions with great urgency. You fear you will not have enough time to say what needs to be said. You invest a great deal of energy, making sure that you’re understood. You have a deep unconscious fear of being attacked if your intentions are misinterpreted. You feel undermined and attacked by those who should have listened to you and protected you. Instead, you have felt attacked and threatened in your territory. This left you feeling that nowhere is safe. You also seem to have a fear of not receiving your fair share of love and acknowledgment. This can often cause you to become more aggressive to ensure that you received the love and acknowledgment you deserve.

Oppression equals respect and being heard; that’s safety. You may have a fear that if you speak up, you will make things worse and, in some cases, you may provoke an argument. As arguments are your parent’s way of communicating, this pattern is overlapped into your relationships. The family used confrontation to communicate. Communication has been expressed aggressively and forcefully and was motivated by fear of not being heard. This may be one of the many reasons why you became aggressive when you needed to express yourself. You also seem to be more aggressive when you feel out of control in your environment. The aggression seems to be compensating for feeling ridiculed and embarrassed, and you are trying to reclaim your personal power. You sought influential people using aggression to control and manipulate people and their circumstances. You may be submissive and resort to a state of numbness and needing to hide in other cases.

You feel blamed and wronged for many faults and problems in the family life. You incessantly find the need to justify your intentions and goals before you are allowed to make your own decisions. You make sure that your side of the story is understood to avoid possible attack and blame because you often get caught up in the drama. You may find yourself in circumstances where you feel vulnerable to a potential attack where you swallow your words and keep your opinions to yourself until you can’t take it anymore. Then you may go into an explosive raging fit when your truth is twisted.

These outbursts can be pretty intense because of the long-term suppression of your opinions and needs. The bigger the thyroid problem, the more challenged and threatened you felt during childhood. You suppressed anger, and it has become a shield of protection against your environment and the people that might potentially harm you. There is a great deal of trauma related to deprivation and scarcity. This could be love, food, attention, or security. You learned if you do not act quickly, you will miss out on having these met. This could also be related to ancestral trauma where they didn’t act quickly enough, and traumatic consequences followed. Yes, this familial predisposition passed down from your ancestors is because of epigenetics. Trauma related to an ancestor that was attacked or abused when they had an urgent message to deliver or share. Trauma related to their cry for help that was never heard.

Let’s explore some possibilities as to what led to these behavior patterns. What happened in the past when you expressed yourself? How did influential people make you feel? What happened that made you use aggression to be heard and respected? Where’s this pattern stemming from? You’re overcompensating by using anger to get the attention and respect of others due to the lack of attention in your adolescent years.

Trauma related to scarcity is also associated with ancestral trauma, lack of love, attention, food, and security. Trauma is also associated with not acting quickly enough resulting in disastrous consequences. You used anger to express boundaries and say no, and the anger is driven by a deep fear of not being heard and respected. Who made you feel you needed to protect yourself by using rage or running away? Explore trauma related to feeling helpless to change or take control of your circumstances and being stuck in a fight or flight mode. Why do you fear speaking your truth? What would happen? What happened in the past? Did either of your parents have the same fear or pattern? You may have learned that conflicts are the only way to communicate.

Trauma related to feeling stuck and/or conflictive during abusive circumstances. Do you feel helpless and unable to change? How did you feel and did how these circumstances affect you? You’re searching for disruption in communication with others and a journey led by uncertainty and a lack of indirection. Did your mother want a boy instead of a girl? Was she under a great deal of pressure to please her husband and family by delivering a boy? That’s a possibility. Could it be trauma related to a daughter in your family? Could it be trauma related to a miscarriage or feeling like a failure? Do you feel that bearing children will give you the importance you’re searching for?

Those are all the possibilities that could be related or at least somehow affected by your thyroid disease. Again, as I said, you will not just cure your thyroid disease by suddenly making affirmations and understanding what’s going on. It’s about how your disease pattern worsens or improves when you continue to manage your same behaviors repeatedly that led to the problem in the first place. Again, we can go back to my diagnosis of peptic ulcer disease, but I’m also extremely open to other diagnoses that you might want to pursue and investigate. There are so many kinds of diagnoses in Metaphysical Anatomy, i.e., chronic back pain, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and migraines are all great topics to discuss. Do you suffer from any of these? If you are interested in a diagnosis process that you would like me to review at some point, please leave a comment, and I’d be happy to do so! Thank you!