When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (2021) by Gabor Maté, M.D.
A healthy body is a balanced body; a body that is able to achieve homeostasis. There are a lot of factors that can trigger imbalances in the body that can lead to disease, and one significant trigger can be that of stress (such as, but not limited to, emotional repression, trauma, isolation, threat to safety, and other toxic relationships/environments). Dr. Gabor Maté challenges our cultural separation of mind from body, as well as Western medicine’s approach to trying to isolate disease in order to treat it, thus failing to acknowledge the bigger picture of how interconnected all of our internal systems are. Dr. Maté outlines biological structures to exemplify this complex interconnectedness and validate his hypothesis identifying emotional stress as a possible link in the onset of chronic diseases (such as autoimmune, gastrointestinal, cancers, and neurological disorders), and further advocate for a more holistic approach to treatment and healing that includes concurrent biomedical AND psychological interventions such as the biopsychosocial model or the psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology (PNIE) discipline.
How did I hear about this book: I read it a couple of years ago and wanted to re-read
Would I recommend it to colleagues: Definitely
Would I recommend this to clients: Yes. Dr. Maté is able to articulate the anatomical interconnections of each of the systems (to include the impact of emotions to stimulate changes in system responses) in a way that I have not been successful at regurgitating. So, since there is so much he says better than I can, I would find it helpful for some of my clients to get that information from him.
How do I apply this content to my work: The findings in this book relate so much to what I do, that it’s hard to succinctly identify.
For starters, as a social worker, I was trained to assess my clients from a biopsychosocial(spiritual) model. It has been ingrained in me to facilitate person-in-envrionment treatment.
Second, as an addictions counselor, I’m trained to facilitate an ASAM 6-dimensional assessment that evaluates a client’s condition (and its severity) based on acute intoxication/potential for withdrawal, biomedical conditions, psychiatric/cognitive conditions, motivation for change/risk for relapse, recovery environment, and any other person-centered considerations. Additionally, I work as part of a multidisciplinary treatment team to concurrently address each client’s complexity of needs as they embark on a long (and often multi-phasic) journey through recovery. It would appear that this model of treatment parallels that which Dr. Maté is encouraging throughout the book.
And finally, my certification as a dance/movement therapist has me looking at body-based interventions to support the health and healing of my clients’ mental health/addiction conditions by way of integrating mind and body. As part of these interventions, I do my best (while staying within my scope of practice) to understand and educate my clients about the various systems in their bodies and their roles in keeping us healthy/helping us survive so they can better understand their own interoceptive, exteroceptive, proprioceptive, and neuroceptive experiences so they can respond appropriately.
