February 8, 2025 • 25 mins
In her follow-up interview with Dr. David Hanscom, Brenda Stockdale explores the profound impact of reducing chronic stress on healing and managing illnesses like cancer and autoimmune disorders. She shares insights from pioneers like Dr. Lawrence LeShan, whose approach encouraged terminally ill patients to live authentically and passionately, often resulting in unexpected recoveries. She highlights the importance of behavioral medicine techniques, such as diaphragmatic breathing, guided imagery, and self-awareness, in promoting safety physiology and allowing the body to heal. She underscores universal principles of healing—connecting with oneself, letting go of stress, and finding purpose and meaning in life. Download the transcript. As the Director of Behavioral Medicine at regional and nationally recognized cancer centers, Dr. Stockdale synthesizes relevant research into clinical practice through the design and implementation of evidence-based biobehavioral programming. As a result of this rigor, her work is nationally recognized and endorsed by leading specialists in multiple disciplines. For two-decades her programs have been implemented in major cancer centers and other healthcare organizations. In addition to her private practice, Stockdale is a consultant for corporate and health care organizations and developed a health psychology program for primary care settings specializing in preventive medicine, autoimmunity and stress-related conditions. She is the author of “You Can Beat the Odds: Surprising Factors Behind Chronic Illness and Cancer.” For more information, visit: https://www.brendastockdale.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The following podcast is part of the Mind, Body, Spirit
dot fm podcast network.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Are you ready to unlock your clients unlimited intelligence? Sensation
based Sematic coaching is a groundbreaking approach to helping people
maximize their personal and professional potential. If you're a coach, therapist,
or anyone who works with people, discover the Sematic Coaching
Academies on demand course Unlocking Human Potential. In just two hours,
you'll earn your Trauma Aware Practitioner certification and gain the
(00:32):
tools to make a lasting impact. Register now at Sematic
Coachingacademy dot com slash Unlocking Human Potential.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello and welcome to Back in Control Radio with Doctor
David Hanscom.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hello, Lo, everybody, welcome to another episode of Back in
Video with Doctor David Hanscombe. I'm your host, Tom Masters,
and our guest today is doctor Brenda Stockdale. She's the
director of behavioral Medicine at regional and nationally recognized cancer centers,
and her work is nationally recognized and endorsed by leading
(01:16):
specialties in multiple disciplines. In addition to her private practice,
she is a consultant for corporate and healthcare organizations and
developed a health psychology program for primary care settings, specializing
in preventive medicine, autoimmune and stress related conditions. She's the
(01:37):
author of You Can Beat the Odds. Surprising Factors behind
Chronic Illness and Cancer.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Welcome being you, Tom. I want to welcome Brenda Stockdale
back to the podcast. We taked her for half an
hour a few minutes ago, and she's the director of
behavioral medicine at a regional and nationally recognized cancer center
and she's presented relevant research in the coldical practice through
the design and invitation of evidence based biobehavioral programming. The
(02:05):
main thing is that she has worked after Bernie siegelho
is a well known book called Love Medicine Miracles. He's
also written other books on visualization and healing and Brendan
As we talked, more and more ideas came up about
things to talk about. But we're trying to pull out
of here. What would the characteristics that allow these cancer
patients to survive? And we discussed chronic stress a little bit,
(02:28):
and we don't know all the factors that do contribute
to cancer, but we focused a little bit on the
people that had a lot of stress realize, but were
still able to thrive in spite of this trust. Now
that includes living through cancer, because chronic stress does cause
lots of diseases. Brenda discussed a little bit with her
about with lupus and that basically resolved using the same principles.
(02:51):
But the bottom line is the same. Chronic attack on
your body causes things like automing disorders as well as cancer.
Your body breaks down, and we don't know the exact
cause and effect. Was there a strong correlation between conic
stress and cancer. There's also a remarkable group of people
that in spite of huge amount stress still thrivee. They
still have cancer that can be quite events and still live.
(03:14):
And so I want to tease out of Brenda Moore
is how to live better or just stay alive at all.
So you just mentioned in our conversation offline about this
gentleman who proposed a way of living life to maximize
the time that you had left to live and people
(03:35):
would start to live, which is the whole reason I'm
talking to you. Is who's that person again, Brenda? And
what was the story?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, doctor Lawrence Lashan, And he was a clinical psychologist
and back in the fifties he was working with folks
who had an average of about three months to live.
So the focus was not beating the odds. The focus
was not beating cancer. It was simply, if you've got
this time left, let's do as much as we possibly can.
(04:09):
So the focus was He would meet with some people
maybe once a week, some people three times a week,
for varying lengths of time, as they discussed how they
may have felt alienated from their deepest dreams or desires
through their life, how that could be possibly that challenge
(04:30):
met with the few months that they had to live.
More of that acceptance and the shock to the medical community,
the patients, the families, and to Lawrence Lashawn was that
these individuals had stopped dying. I met him, he was
on our board, he was on our advisory board at
(04:50):
Getting Well, and I met him in the nineties. This
is forty years later, and he said some of those
people were still alive who had just three months to live.
And Bernie drew from Lawrence Lashan's work. He mentions his
work in love, medicine and miracles. So it wasn't a
denial of the mortality. It wasn't a denial. These people
(05:12):
weren't doing these things because they thought they would live.
In fact, one woman she had always wanted to take
a trip around the world, but it would require all
her resources, meaning her children wouldn't get an inheritance. But
she sold her house, she sold everything, she took a
trip around the world for those three months that she
supposedly had left. But when she came home, she was
(05:34):
cancer free and had to go live with her children.
And so the joke was, there's a price for everything.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
You know xactly right.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Well, I mean, let's talk about this for a second,
because this is a big deal. So my whole thing
the same, I think called the doc journey Michelle. Look,
this is not a self help process. This is finding
your own version of connecting to who you are. So
the first time is connecting positive and negatives, just connecting
with what's who you are, not to your facade of
(06:05):
who you think you are, just connecting to who you are,
what you want, making your needs known. The second part
is the confidence we're using the tools actually make that happen.
Then the third part is creativity of actually literally reprogramming
your brain. So healing starts with connection. It doesn't end
with connection, but it starts with connection. So connecting to
who you are what you want is a lot less
(06:27):
stressful than trying to be somebody who you who you
think the world wants you to be.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
You said it very well.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yes, So you notice that these people that So you
notice that people healed, They were encouraged to live the
last three or four months of your life doing exactly
what they wanted to do, meeting their needs, and they
started to live. Is that what you just said?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yes, And these individuals were truly remarkable, And I'm oversimplifying
Lashan's process. He had an elegant scientific method with the
way he would work with people. And his book it
was You Can Fight for Your Life was one of
his books. The other it was Cancer as a Turning Point,
(07:11):
actually has his workshop in the back. So he until
his death, I believe he had twice a year he
would meet with people for retreats to work very intensely
on the same kind of process he worked with individuals
on back there in the fifties. So, and it's many
(07:32):
of the questions that you are asking individuals to take.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
This is his book steng print. Yes it is, it is, okay,
it is so.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
The first one. You can Fight for your Life, but
it's Cancer as a turning point that actually has this
slice in the back of his actual workshop, and that
would give you the elegant scientific method that he actually.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Used rather than this to now have some modern neuroscience
is unbelievably technical. Looking clear the mitochondrial there's like one
to two thousand mitochondria per sell. There's thirty trillion cells
in the body, and the smallness is incredibly small, incredibly intricate.
But they can now literally peer right into mitochondria. There's
(08:18):
like eight hundred different proteins. They have their own mitochondri DNA.
I mean, the technology is stunning the last ten years,
but what it's doing is confirming everything you just said
that are constant stress or threat physiology. The mitochondria breaks down,
it can't heal, and there's this inability of the amotochondria
to heal itself is at the core of all chronic disease.
(08:41):
And the same thing which we talked about the hedonistic
lifestyle of just well let me let me switch gears
for a second. So this comes to the core of healing,
is that it's not I look, say you sign up
for the doc journey, It's not about David hanscom fact
connect with your disbelief. You've been bounced around. Why should
you believe me? Is that doing a process and healing.
(09:02):
It's not about fixing your pain because you're trying to
fix the pain pains running the show. Just like you said,
if you're trying to save your life, saving your life
is running the show. So instead of connecting with your
life and passion and purpose, whatever you have left, that's
the answer, not trying to fix your cancer. Do I
have that right?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yes, because that promotes that kind of forward thinking, that
stressful thinking, but that really brings in this passive volition
and that is that's really the key. And I think
you also mentioned earlier when you were talking about connecting
with the self. You know, that is one of the
(09:42):
things that Bernie and if we listen to his audios
and his imagery, that he was really encouraging people to
go deep, what were they really feeling, accepting those feelings,
leaning into it, and even learning to label or identify
those feelings. And that helps correct for you know, a
(10:02):
tendency we have, especially in our culture, toward intellectualization, where
we're really not paying attention to how we feel or
the risk of alexothymia.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Well, part of the promise. We're centrally overloaded. We have
an awful out of data coming in every day, and
so just trying to process the One of my mentors
put out really simply that the human brain did not
evolve to process this much information per day, just did not.
So just processing your dentity input it calm stresses if
you want, is pretty overwhelming. So we're not connected with
(10:37):
what we want. We're just trying to deal through the
day's worth of data. And the biggest factor we talked
about a bit earlier is that people can do the tools.
I can express a variety and relaxation and meditation or whatever,
and it doesn't work unless you can truly let go
and relax. So it's a letting go process and then
(10:58):
moving forward. I mean, you do this every day. We
call it dynamic healing. So we get stressed every day.
We have adversity every day, and so you just want
to process that empirically, realizing this is what you have
to do to stay alive. And then but it's not
who you are you drive the tools to process adversity.
It's when you get angry about having adversity, when you
(11:19):
blame the adversity for your peace of mind. So, okay,
people somehow, I mean think about this. People somehow feel
put upon when they have adversity. But every living creature
has to process adversity to stay alive. You have to
find food, you have to find water, you have to
defend yourself. That's every living creature has that mandate, including humans.
(11:42):
So when you're surprised about having adversity, I'm going, well,
what do you expect? So it's the anger factor. There's
always a tipping point of healing. Not that processing anger
heals you, but it prevents you from healing.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And that's well said. And we see even what you
mentioned earlier about hedona happiness versus eudaimonic happiness, Victor Frankel
speaks to exactly what you said. Through that horrific experience
in the Holocaust, he was in three different concentration camps.
(12:20):
He lost every member of his immediate family, with the
exception of his sister Stella. He lost his neurology practice
at the whole thing. But his point really was in
observing the suffering around him, was that individuals were able
to withstand the disease and deprivation of the camps. When
they could find meaning in suffering and connect to that
(12:45):
self worth, not self esteem, but self worth and find
that meaning and suffering. So it wasn't to your point.
Imagine if you're angry the whole time, right, So we're
no one's looking for adversity, but we can all expect it.
And so when it's happening, how are we handling the
(13:06):
meaning that we're bringing to it? Is it some kind
of punishment? Is it, you know, something that we think
that we're paying for something from the past, or we
feel that we're entitled to never have any suffering. So
what's the meaning that we're bringing to the suffering and
that can help us with that eudaemonic sense of well
(13:26):
being even when the stakes are high and things are bad.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Can you back up with the audience just for a second,
Can you just briefly give an overview of who Victor
Frankel is?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yes, he was. He wrote Man Search for Meaning, and
the Library of Congress calls it one of the top
ten most influential books of all time. There it is,
I love it awesome. And so he was a neurologist,
psychologist who is in prison in three, if not four,
(14:08):
at least three concentration camps, including the most infamous Auschwitz.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Also fantcy about him is that he so when you
get out of the camps again, he would doing the
worst of the worst situation you ever can imagine. He
did going to He did not go into a victim role.
That's I don't think I could do that, probably.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Right, right, amazing, amazing, amazing individual.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
But a couple of things that was one another pale
which is a little off topic, which blew me away.
He says, in spite of all the horrible physical things
that are being done, that the worst part of the
whole ordeal is not knowing when it was going to end.
Do you remember that? Yes?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And that's like pain illness.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Yes, right, So what happens in medicine we tell people
you have have you heard the term m us by chance?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yes, from you. I've learned that from.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
You medically unexplained symptoms, which means the doctor is saying, well,
we know you're hurting, we know you're suffering, have a
good life. Will help you but the best we can.
But if you look at the physiology of chronic disease,
which you were discussing indirectly right now, is that in
safety physiology body regenerates and heels. In stress physiology, it
breaks down. And so what happens is that every symptom
(15:28):
is explained on the basis of threat. Physiology should be
medically explain symptoms. And I actually quit my practice because
of this, because surgeons were operating on structures that had
nothing to do with the pain. And for instances, take
lack of sleep actually causes chronic pain. Lack of sleep
surgeons don't ask that question. So my personal mission is
to bring medicine back on line, just to connect with
(15:50):
the data right in front of them. So you looked
at Victor Frankel, say, well, he's just tough. He could
get through it. But is the meaning he gave him,
which is a profound effect in your physiology, which is safety.
So when people came out of the camps, they get
upset because people weren't compassion enough for them. You can't
put words into the kind of suffering. So if you're
(16:10):
listening to somebody's suffering out of the concentration camp, you
can only say so much. And if your attitude is well,
you're not being compassionate enough, that means you're again angry.
So he lived at ninety years old and thrived at
a very high level, whereas many people came out of
the camps that survived, but they certainly didn't thrive because
they could not let go of the anger. So with
(16:35):
your let's go to your jump way in the future
again or back to the present where we go to
the Exceptional Cancer Survivors group. You just mentioned that people
found meaning in their lives, they connected, and you're talking
about the work of last Sean in the fifties. It
sounds like Bernie carried that forward. So as you this
jump right to the current day with your research on
(16:55):
what you're saying, I'm assuming I mean the healing concepts
are all the same, whether you have my style or
your style, burning style or his style is all the
same concepts. So it's not a magic formula. The body
knows how to heal. So jumping to the current day
with your work, how do you teach people how.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
To heal well? I think for me, each person, of course,
as you know, is such an individual. So while we
have principles, you know, these common denominators, we look at
behavioral medicine research and that's why we have these behavioral
medicine codes because collectively these methods have been shown to
(17:36):
improve outcome from all conditions as well as all lower
all case mortality. So these are insurance codes. So we've
got the data. The data is there. It's simply how
do we mobilize it?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Well, ext I'm going to say, just rent just for
a second. Many of the interventions are not covered by insurance, right, but.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Under these behavioral medicine codes that these are little known codes,
they're seldom used. Okay, therefore they're based on the physical diagnosis. Okay,
whatever that physical diagnosis is. And basically your program falls
under that rubric of behavioral medicine. You have a dynamic
(18:19):
behavioral medicine program. So technically, well we're you know, submitting
that and it goes to the medical not the mental
health portion of the policy.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
So there's no mean Can I stop you for a
second again and just rent?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Well, as you know that this is the part that
medicines really missed, is that mental chronic disease and physical
chronic disease are the same thing.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Anxiety depression, ohshid, bipolaris schizophrenia and other psychological diagnosis a
result of sustained information stress physiology, and your brain is inflamed.
And so again anxiety and anger are physiological states. And
and so that all sorts of papers now showing that
it's a physiological process not and mean psychology comes into
(19:05):
play with thoughts. But the bottom line is your body
responds to thoughts with a physiological threat response. So again,
so that's why it's so frustrating as a physician that
they quote won't diagnose mental health code. It's the same process.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
And you're right because and everything is split up into
different arms. Well, we both could go there for quite
while with that, right, with that part of the problem.
But I think in this case it just speaks to
the evidence, you know, to how much there actually is
for this constellation of methods. So depending on the person,
very much like yourself, we'd work with stopping the bleeding,
(19:45):
you know, the first thing which is to stop stop
the get the system, the autonomic nervous system involved, so
the parasympathetic can can come online. So I use for
some people handheld temperature ble so they can learn to
warm their hands from maybe seventy two to ninety four
degrees in just a matter of minutes. They might listen
(20:09):
to a five minute autogenic audio on my website might
download that to help them, and so those little measures
learning to breathe, diaphragmatically, practic warming their hands starts to
give them a sense of that control over physiological processes.
They may not have thought we're under their control, so
(20:32):
that is useful. And then imagery medical imagery has been
really helpful because when we imagine that scene, sports psychology
has done a lot with this. But when we imagine
maybe that safety scene, maybe that beautiful scene in nature
or physical residence where we're really safe and relaxed, that
(20:55):
becomes indistinguishable from the actual biological experience of being there.
So the limbic brain receives those messages from the visual cortex,
the auditory cortex, the sensory cortex, and it sends out
a chemical message to every cell, nerve, and fiber of
our being, so that it's indistinguishable from the experience. When
(21:18):
folks can leverage that in just a few minutes, sometimes
that's a shortcut to being able to recognize that sense
of safety in the body without so much work. So
kind of starting there is a nice way to level
the playing field. And everybody's different, as you know, so
(21:40):
what works for one person isn't isn't great for another,
but everybody finds their niche for experiencing that state of
well being.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Well, I appreciate your insights. We just really sort of
touched the surface here a little bit, but you know,
I just want the bottom line is what Brenda and
I are doing are different versions of the same principle.
As you said, the magic word. These are principles of
healing through universal There are thousands and thousands of research
papers saying this is what you do to heal, and
(22:13):
the medical profession right now Unfortunately, for instance, in spine shurty,
the data shows only ten percent of spine surgeons neuro
and ortho of spine surgeons follow the data what you
should do to optimize the outcome of surgery, which is
basically calming down the body, putting into safety physiology. Then
when you do surgery in a body in safety physiology,
the body heals nicely, less pain, better outcomes. And then
(22:37):
if you operate the presence of threat physiology, not only
do the wounds not heal as well, they actually have
a forty percent chance of making the pain worse even
with a perfect operation. So you have a fire up
nervousy is in that are plugging in body parts anyway,
the long way of saying that what Brenda is doing
and what the general principles are is calming down your
nervous system and then rerouting it. And so, how do
(23:02):
i'd like to make sure we can access your services?
You have a website which is.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
It's Brenda Stockdale dot com.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Okay, and you wrote a book, yes, you.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Can beat the odds. Yeah, Surprising Factors behind Chronic illness
and cancer.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
And then you live in Atlanta now yes, okay? And
do you do online work?
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yes? I do you do?
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Okay? And can you do that across state lines?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I'm just working yeah, in this capacity more as a
help coach.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Right. So I'm excited that we sort of ran across
each other by accident on Facebook, and I'm super excited
to meet you. And we're both evolving our processes and
we're both continue to evolve. So it's great to have
you on board. You and I always am really clear.
I think the doc journey process is a foundation, but
I can't do it. You do. I'm a surgeon, and
(23:56):
you're much nicer person than a surgeon. So Jill, you'll
enjoy working with her a lot more than me. But
in general, you know, I think the doctrine's foundational stuff.
It there's a whole process of relaxation, play lightness that
that I just don't do. Surgeons don't do that, and
so so yeah, so she's a great resource and please
(24:17):
go for you to access her. She's on my website
also under the clinical resources. And I'm very excited to
have you on the show and as a resource. Fantastic,
such a privilege.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
And I've recommended your resources and your books and your
online program and your group work to many people I
work with, so I appreciate you. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
All right, Well we'll stay in touch and thank you.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'd like to thank our guest, doctor Brenda Stockdale for
being on the show today and explaining the approach she
uses with her patients to help them heal. I'm your host,
Tom Masters, reminding you to be back next week for
another episode of Back in Control Radio with doctor David Hanscombe,
and in the meantime, be sure to visit the website
at www dot bacontrol dot com.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Thanks for listening today and join us next week for
Back in Control Radium
The following podcast is part of the Mind, Body, Spirit
dot fm podcast network.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Are you ready to unlock your clients unlimited intelligence? Sensation
based Sematic coaching is a groundbreaking approach to helping people
maximize their personal and professional potential. If you're a coach, therapist,
or anyone who works with people, discover the Sematic Coaching
Academies on demand course Unlocking Human Potential. In just two hours,
you'll earn your Trauma Aware Practitioner certification and gain the
(00:32):
tools to make a lasting impact. Register now at Sematic
Coachingacademy dot com slash Unlocking Human Potential.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello and welcome to Back in Control Radio with Doctor
David Hanscom.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hello, Lo, everybody, welcome to another episode of Back in
Video with Doctor David Hanscombe. I'm your host, Tom Masters,
and our guest today is doctor Brenda Stockdale. She's the
director of behavioral Medicine at regional and nationally recognized cancer centers,
and her work is nationally recognized and endorsed by leading
(01:16):
specialties in multiple disciplines. In addition to her private practice,
she is a consultant for corporate and healthcare organizations and
developed a health psychology program for primary care settings, specializing
in preventive medicine, autoimmune and stress related conditions. She's the
(01:37):
author of You Can Beat the Odds. Surprising Factors behind
Chronic Illness and Cancer.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Welcome being you, Tom. I want to welcome Brenda Stockdale
back to the podcast. We taked her for half an
hour a few minutes ago, and she's the director of
behavioral medicine at a regional and nationally recognized cancer center
and she's presented relevant research in the coldical practice through
the design and invitation of evidence based biobehavioral programming. The
(02:05):
main thing is that she has worked after Bernie siegelho
is a well known book called Love Medicine Miracles. He's
also written other books on visualization and healing and Brendan
As we talked, more and more ideas came up about
things to talk about. But we're trying to pull out
of here. What would the characteristics that allow these cancer
patients to survive? And we discussed chronic stress a little bit,
(02:28):
and we don't know all the factors that do contribute
to cancer, but we focused a little bit on the
people that had a lot of stress realize, but were
still able to thrive in spite of this trust. Now
that includes living through cancer, because chronic stress does cause
lots of diseases. Brenda discussed a little bit with her
about with lupus and that basically resolved using the same principles.
(02:51):
But the bottom line is the same. Chronic attack on
your body causes things like automing disorders as well as cancer.
Your body breaks down, and we don't know the exact
cause and effect. Was there a strong correlation between conic
stress and cancer. There's also a remarkable group of people
that in spite of huge amount stress still thrivee. They
still have cancer that can be quite events and still live.
(03:14):
And so I want to tease out of Brenda Moore
is how to live better or just stay alive at all.
So you just mentioned in our conversation offline about this
gentleman who proposed a way of living life to maximize
the time that you had left to live and people
(03:35):
would start to live, which is the whole reason I'm
talking to you. Is who's that person again, Brenda? And
what was the story?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, doctor Lawrence Lashan, And he was a clinical psychologist
and back in the fifties he was working with folks
who had an average of about three months to live.
So the focus was not beating the odds. The focus
was not beating cancer. It was simply, if you've got
this time left, let's do as much as we possibly can.
(04:09):
So the focus was He would meet with some people
maybe once a week, some people three times a week,
for varying lengths of time, as they discussed how they
may have felt alienated from their deepest dreams or desires
through their life, how that could be possibly that challenge
(04:30):
met with the few months that they had to live.
More of that acceptance and the shock to the medical community,
the patients, the families, and to Lawrence Lashawn was that
these individuals had stopped dying. I met him, he was
on our board, he was on our advisory board at
(04:50):
Getting Well, and I met him in the nineties. This
is forty years later, and he said some of those
people were still alive who had just three months to live.
And Bernie drew from Lawrence Lashan's work. He mentions his
work in love, medicine and miracles. So it wasn't a
denial of the mortality. It wasn't a denial. These people
(05:12):
weren't doing these things because they thought they would live.
In fact, one woman she had always wanted to take
a trip around the world, but it would require all
her resources, meaning her children wouldn't get an inheritance. But
she sold her house, she sold everything, she took a
trip around the world for those three months that she
supposedly had left. But when she came home, she was
(05:34):
cancer free and had to go live with her children.
And so the joke was, there's a price for everything.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
You know xactly right.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Well, I mean, let's talk about this for a second,
because this is a big deal. So my whole thing
the same, I think called the doc journey Michelle. Look,
this is not a self help process. This is finding
your own version of connecting to who you are. So
the first time is connecting positive and negatives, just connecting
with what's who you are, not to your facade of
(06:05):
who you think you are, just connecting to who you are,
what you want, making your needs known. The second part
is the confidence we're using the tools actually make that happen.
Then the third part is creativity of actually literally reprogramming
your brain. So healing starts with connection. It doesn't end
with connection, but it starts with connection. So connecting to
who you are what you want is a lot less
(06:27):
stressful than trying to be somebody who you who you
think the world wants you to be.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
You said it very well.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yes, So you notice that these people that So you
notice that people healed, They were encouraged to live the
last three or four months of your life doing exactly
what they wanted to do, meeting their needs, and they
started to live. Is that what you just said?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yes, And these individuals were truly remarkable, And I'm oversimplifying
Lashan's process. He had an elegant scientific method with the
way he would work with people. And his book it
was You Can Fight for Your Life was one of
his books. The other it was Cancer as a Turning Point,
(07:11):
actually has his workshop in the back. So he until
his death, I believe he had twice a year he
would meet with people for retreats to work very intensely
on the same kind of process he worked with individuals
on back there in the fifties. So, and it's many
(07:32):
of the questions that you are asking individuals to take.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
This is his book steng print. Yes it is, it is, okay,
it is so.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
The first one. You can Fight for your Life, but
it's Cancer as a turning point that actually has this
slice in the back of his actual workshop, and that
would give you the elegant scientific method that he actually.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Used rather than this to now have some modern neuroscience
is unbelievably technical. Looking clear the mitochondrial there's like one
to two thousand mitochondria per sell. There's thirty trillion cells
in the body, and the smallness is incredibly small, incredibly intricate.
But they can now literally peer right into mitochondria. There's
(08:18):
like eight hundred different proteins. They have their own mitochondri DNA.
I mean, the technology is stunning the last ten years,
but what it's doing is confirming everything you just said
that are constant stress or threat physiology. The mitochondria breaks down,
it can't heal, and there's this inability of the amotochondria
to heal itself is at the core of all chronic disease.
(08:41):
And the same thing which we talked about the hedonistic
lifestyle of just well let me let me switch gears
for a second. So this comes to the core of healing,
is that it's not I look, say you sign up
for the doc journey, It's not about David hanscom fact
connect with your disbelief. You've been bounced around. Why should
you believe me? Is that doing a process and healing.
(09:02):
It's not about fixing your pain because you're trying to
fix the pain pains running the show. Just like you said,
if you're trying to save your life, saving your life
is running the show. So instead of connecting with your
life and passion and purpose, whatever you have left, that's
the answer, not trying to fix your cancer. Do I
have that right?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yes, because that promotes that kind of forward thinking, that
stressful thinking, but that really brings in this passive volition
and that is that's really the key. And I think
you also mentioned earlier when you were talking about connecting
with the self. You know, that is one of the
(09:42):
things that Bernie and if we listen to his audios
and his imagery, that he was really encouraging people to
go deep, what were they really feeling, accepting those feelings,
leaning into it, and even learning to label or identify
those feelings. And that helps correct for you know, a
(10:02):
tendency we have, especially in our culture, toward intellectualization, where
we're really not paying attention to how we feel or
the risk of alexothymia.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Well, part of the promise. We're centrally overloaded. We have
an awful out of data coming in every day, and
so just trying to process the One of my mentors
put out really simply that the human brain did not
evolve to process this much information per day, just did not.
So just processing your dentity input it calm stresses if
you want, is pretty overwhelming. So we're not connected with
(10:37):
what we want. We're just trying to deal through the
day's worth of data. And the biggest factor we talked
about a bit earlier is that people can do the tools.
I can express a variety and relaxation and meditation or whatever,
and it doesn't work unless you can truly let go
and relax. So it's a letting go process and then
(10:58):
moving forward. I mean, you do this every day. We
call it dynamic healing. So we get stressed every day.
We have adversity every day, and so you just want
to process that empirically, realizing this is what you have
to do to stay alive. And then but it's not
who you are you drive the tools to process adversity.
It's when you get angry about having adversity, when you
(11:19):
blame the adversity for your peace of mind. So, okay,
people somehow, I mean think about this. People somehow feel
put upon when they have adversity. But every living creature
has to process adversity to stay alive. You have to
find food, you have to find water, you have to
defend yourself. That's every living creature has that mandate, including humans.
(11:42):
So when you're surprised about having adversity, I'm going, well,
what do you expect? So it's the anger factor. There's
always a tipping point of healing. Not that processing anger
heals you, but it prevents you from healing.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And that's well said. And we see even what you
mentioned earlier about hedona happiness versus eudaimonic happiness, Victor Frankel
speaks to exactly what you said. Through that horrific experience
in the Holocaust, he was in three different concentration camps.
(12:20):
He lost every member of his immediate family, with the
exception of his sister Stella. He lost his neurology practice
at the whole thing. But his point really was in
observing the suffering around him, was that individuals were able
to withstand the disease and deprivation of the camps. When
they could find meaning in suffering and connect to that
(12:45):
self worth, not self esteem, but self worth and find
that meaning and suffering. So it wasn't to your point.
Imagine if you're angry the whole time, right, So we're
no one's looking for adversity, but we can all expect it.
And so when it's happening, how are we handling the
(13:06):
meaning that we're bringing to it? Is it some kind
of punishment? Is it, you know, something that we think
that we're paying for something from the past, or we
feel that we're entitled to never have any suffering. So
what's the meaning that we're bringing to the suffering and
that can help us with that eudaemonic sense of well
(13:26):
being even when the stakes are high and things are bad.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Can you back up with the audience just for a second,
Can you just briefly give an overview of who Victor
Frankel is?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yes, he was. He wrote Man Search for Meaning, and
the Library of Congress calls it one of the top
ten most influential books of all time. There it is,
I love it awesome. And so he was a neurologist,
psychologist who is in prison in three, if not four,
(14:08):
at least three concentration camps, including the most infamous Auschwitz.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Also fantcy about him is that he so when you
get out of the camps again, he would doing the
worst of the worst situation you ever can imagine. He
did going to He did not go into a victim role.
That's I don't think I could do that, probably.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Right, right, amazing, amazing, amazing individual.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
But a couple of things that was one another pale
which is a little off topic, which blew me away.
He says, in spite of all the horrible physical things
that are being done, that the worst part of the
whole ordeal is not knowing when it was going to end.
Do you remember that? Yes?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And that's like pain illness.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Yes, right, So what happens in medicine we tell people
you have have you heard the term m us by chance?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yes, from you. I've learned that from.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
You medically unexplained symptoms, which means the doctor is saying, well,
we know you're hurting, we know you're suffering, have a
good life. Will help you but the best we can.
But if you look at the physiology of chronic disease,
which you were discussing indirectly right now, is that in
safety physiology body regenerates and heels. In stress physiology, it
breaks down. And so what happens is that every symptom
(15:28):
is explained on the basis of threat. Physiology should be
medically explain symptoms. And I actually quit my practice because
of this, because surgeons were operating on structures that had
nothing to do with the pain. And for instances, take
lack of sleep actually causes chronic pain. Lack of sleep
surgeons don't ask that question. So my personal mission is
to bring medicine back on line, just to connect with
(15:50):
the data right in front of them. So you looked
at Victor Frankel, say, well, he's just tough. He could
get through it. But is the meaning he gave him,
which is a profound effect in your physiology, which is safety.
So when people came out of the camps, they get
upset because people weren't compassion enough for them. You can't
put words into the kind of suffering. So if you're
(16:10):
listening to somebody's suffering out of the concentration camp, you
can only say so much. And if your attitude is well,
you're not being compassionate enough, that means you're again angry.
So he lived at ninety years old and thrived at
a very high level, whereas many people came out of
the camps that survived, but they certainly didn't thrive because
they could not let go of the anger. So with
(16:35):
your let's go to your jump way in the future
again or back to the present where we go to
the Exceptional Cancer Survivors group. You just mentioned that people
found meaning in their lives, they connected, and you're talking
about the work of last Sean in the fifties. It
sounds like Bernie carried that forward. So as you this
jump right to the current day with your research on
(16:55):
what you're saying, I'm assuming I mean the healing concepts
are all the same, whether you have my style or
your style, burning style or his style is all the
same concepts. So it's not a magic formula. The body
knows how to heal. So jumping to the current day
with your work, how do you teach people how.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
To heal well? I think for me, each person, of course,
as you know, is such an individual. So while we
have principles, you know, these common denominators, we look at
behavioral medicine research and that's why we have these behavioral
medicine codes because collectively these methods have been shown to
(17:36):
improve outcome from all conditions as well as all lower
all case mortality. So these are insurance codes. So we've
got the data. The data is there. It's simply how
do we mobilize it?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Well, ext I'm going to say, just rent just for
a second. Many of the interventions are not covered by insurance, right, but.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Under these behavioral medicine codes that these are little known codes,
they're seldom used. Okay, therefore they're based on the physical diagnosis. Okay,
whatever that physical diagnosis is. And basically your program falls
under that rubric of behavioral medicine. You have a dynamic
(18:19):
behavioral medicine program. So technically, well we're you know, submitting
that and it goes to the medical not the mental
health portion of the policy.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
So there's no mean Can I stop you for a
second again and just rent?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Well, as you know that this is the part that
medicines really missed, is that mental chronic disease and physical
chronic disease are the same thing.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Anxiety depression, ohshid, bipolaris schizophrenia and other psychological diagnosis a
result of sustained information stress physiology, and your brain is inflamed.
And so again anxiety and anger are physiological states. And
and so that all sorts of papers now showing that
it's a physiological process not and mean psychology comes into
(19:05):
play with thoughts. But the bottom line is your body
responds to thoughts with a physiological threat response. So again,
so that's why it's so frustrating as a physician that
they quote won't diagnose mental health code. It's the same process.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
And you're right because and everything is split up into
different arms. Well, we both could go there for quite
while with that, right, with that part of the problem.
But I think in this case it just speaks to
the evidence, you know, to how much there actually is
for this constellation of methods. So depending on the person,
very much like yourself, we'd work with stopping the bleeding,
(19:45):
you know, the first thing which is to stop stop
the get the system, the autonomic nervous system involved, so
the parasympathetic can can come online. So I use for
some people handheld temperature ble so they can learn to
warm their hands from maybe seventy two to ninety four
degrees in just a matter of minutes. They might listen
(20:09):
to a five minute autogenic audio on my website might
download that to help them, and so those little measures
learning to breathe, diaphragmatically, practic warming their hands starts to
give them a sense of that control over physiological processes.
They may not have thought we're under their control, so
(20:32):
that is useful. And then imagery medical imagery has been
really helpful because when we imagine that scene, sports psychology
has done a lot with this. But when we imagine
maybe that safety scene, maybe that beautiful scene in nature
or physical residence where we're really safe and relaxed, that
(20:55):
becomes indistinguishable from the actual biological experience of being there.
So the limbic brain receives those messages from the visual cortex,
the auditory cortex, the sensory cortex, and it sends out
a chemical message to every cell, nerve, and fiber of
our being, so that it's indistinguishable from the experience. When
(21:18):
folks can leverage that in just a few minutes, sometimes
that's a shortcut to being able to recognize that sense
of safety in the body without so much work. So
kind of starting there is a nice way to level
the playing field. And everybody's different, as you know, so
(21:40):
what works for one person isn't isn't great for another,
but everybody finds their niche for experiencing that state of
well being.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Well, I appreciate your insights. We just really sort of
touched the surface here a little bit, but you know,
I just want the bottom line is what Brenda and
I are doing are different versions of the same principle.
As you said, the magic word. These are principles of
healing through universal There are thousands and thousands of research
papers saying this is what you do to heal, and
(22:13):
the medical profession right now Unfortunately, for instance, in spine shurty,
the data shows only ten percent of spine surgeons neuro
and ortho of spine surgeons follow the data what you
should do to optimize the outcome of surgery, which is
basically calming down the body, putting into safety physiology. Then
when you do surgery in a body in safety physiology,
the body heals nicely, less pain, better outcomes. And then
(22:37):
if you operate the presence of threat physiology, not only
do the wounds not heal as well, they actually have
a forty percent chance of making the pain worse even
with a perfect operation. So you have a fire up
nervousy is in that are plugging in body parts anyway,
the long way of saying that what Brenda is doing
and what the general principles are is calming down your
nervous system and then rerouting it. And so, how do
(23:02):
i'd like to make sure we can access your services?
You have a website which is.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
It's Brenda Stockdale dot com.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Okay, and you wrote a book, yes, you.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Can beat the odds. Yeah, Surprising Factors behind Chronic illness
and cancer.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
And then you live in Atlanta now yes, okay? And
do you do online work?
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yes? I do you do?
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Okay? And can you do that across state lines?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I'm just working yeah, in this capacity more as a
help coach.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Right. So I'm excited that we sort of ran across
each other by accident on Facebook, and I'm super excited
to meet you. And we're both evolving our processes and
we're both continue to evolve. So it's great to have
you on board. You and I always am really clear.
I think the doc journey process is a foundation, but
I can't do it. You do. I'm a surgeon, and
(23:56):
you're much nicer person than a surgeon. So Jill, you'll
enjoy working with her a lot more than me. But
in general, you know, I think the doctrine's foundational stuff.
It there's a whole process of relaxation, play lightness that
that I just don't do. Surgeons don't do that, and
so so yeah, so she's a great resource and please
(24:17):
go for you to access her. She's on my website
also under the clinical resources. And I'm very excited to
have you on the show and as a resource. Fantastic,
such a privilege.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
And I've recommended your resources and your books and your
online program and your group work to many people I
work with, so I appreciate you. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
All right, Well we'll stay in touch and thank you.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'd like to thank our guest, doctor Brenda Stockdale for
being on the show today and explaining the approach she
uses with her patients to help them heal. I'm your host,
Tom Masters, reminding you to be back next week for
another episode of Back in Control Radio with doctor David Hanscombe,
and in the meantime, be sure to visit the website
at www dot bacontrol dot com.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Thanks for listening today and join us next week for
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