Holistic Women's Health Psychiatry
In 2014 Stephanie Marohn interviewed Malidoma Somé, a West African shaman of the ancient Dagara tradition, for an article that quickly went viral, “What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital.” It looks deeply at spiritual emergency, that is, when a person is overwhelmed and disoriented by spiritual experiences. He asserted that people diagnosed as
In our culture, emotions are often seen as a nuisance, something to get over or around. Even worse, having emotions — other than a select few positively-associated ones — has been seen as a weakness, something that we should be ashamed of and must work to conceal. It may, therefore, come as a surprise to
Stop crying Danny! That tears are a bad thing is so baked into our social fabric that parents might find themselves renouncing crying without any awareness of the deeper implications. It might not even present as admonishment… “Don’t cry Sara, you’re fine, do you want a popsicle?” is drawn from the same pool of feeling-shaming,
“Ah…it’s global warming”. This trope has entered our vernacular, perhaps a catchphrase for the sense that something is really wrong on this planet. While there is an acknowledgement that we humans are really making a mess of things, what often accompanies that acknowledgement is a sense of helplessness. What can one person do? If I
The translation of emotions to physiology is becoming less and less “woo woo” and more and more scientifically validated. A landmark study1 of women with breast cancer was recently published that provides even more evidence of the power of emotions on disease outcomes. In this study, researchers measured markers of inflammation called cytokines and correlated
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