On Mental Health and People Who Just Won’t Leave You Alone

There are people who are absolutely determined to do you some good. Whether you actually want them to is largely beside the point. They know what’s wrong with you, what you’re doing wrong, and how you could improve your life. And because they mean so well, even a polite “No, thank you” isn’t necessarily enough to discourage them.

I encounter this particular species especially often in the world of esotericism and the wellness industry. There seems to be a solution for almost every problem. And if you happen not to have a problem, someone will surely come along and explain why that’s a problem in itself.

Some recommend healing crystals, others swear by special vibrations, while still others insist that all you need to do is align your thoughts correctly and the universe will finally start taking care of your personal affairs.

The universe must be an extraordinarily busy place.

I have no desire to deprive anyone of their beliefs. If someone sleeps better with a piece of rose quartz under their pillow, they’re welcome to it. As long as the stone isn’t too large, it probably won’t cause any serious sleeping problems.

Things only become difficult for me when personal belief turns into universal truth. And when the desire to do something good for oneself develops into an irresistible urge to inflict the same goodness on everyone else.

I discovered just how far this can go through a book my partner Tanja gave me.

She enjoys reading Louise L. Hay, and I have no objection to that. If those books give her confidence or offer ideas that help her in everyday life, I’m perfectly happy for her. One day, she suggested that I really ought to read one myself.

So I did. At first, with some interest, even. Not everything in it struck me as completely unreasonable. After all, the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes can influence our well-being is hardly a revolutionary claim.

Then, at some point, I turned to the back of the book.

There I found a table listing illnesses and physical complaints alongside their supposed emotional causes. According to this table, certain diseases could be traced back to particular negative thoughts or attitudes.

I was rather stunned.

Here is someone suffering from an illness, and along comes another person to explain that, fundamentally, it’s their own fault. They’ve been thinking the wrong thoughts, feeling the wrong feelings, or failing to resolve some emotional conflict properly.

Of course, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask how psychological stress might influence physical illness. We absolutely should. But turning that question into a table where almost every ailment comes with its corresponding mental offence strikes me as a remarkable display of arrogance.

Especially since this approach offers its advocates one decisive advantage: it’s almost impossible to disprove.

If someone recovers, the method worked. If they don’t, they obviously haven’t been thinking correctly, haven’t let go sufficiently, or haven’t managed to overcome their inner blockages.

The theory remains untouched. It’s the sick person who’s got something wrong again.

A wonderful arrangement. At least for the people selling it.

For those desperately searching for an explanation, however, it can be genuinely tempting. The idea that we can influence our fate through the right mental attitude promises a sense of control in situations where we often feel frighteningly powerless.

Anyone who is ill, in pain, or has spent years hoping for relief doesn’t necessarily want to hear that medicine has yet to find a satisfactory answer. A clear promise sounds much more appealing.

And that’s precisely why the people making such promises ought to handle them with particular care.

Not everyone who spreads nonsense knows they’re spreading nonsense. Some probably believe it themselves. But a claim doesn’t become scientifically sound simply because someone delivers it with sufficient conviction.

And to avoid any misunderstanding, I’m certainly not denying that psychological stress can cause or aggravate physical symptoms. Quite the opposite. I’ve experienced for myself just how closely the two can be connected.

For years, I suffered from serious stomach and intestinal problems. I now know that stress played a major part in them.

Headaches were another longstanding feature of my everyday life. Not the occasional mild headache, but frequent, pounding pain for which I took considerable amounts of painkillers.

Eventually, I spent some time at a clinic specialising in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy. Part of the treatment programme involved movement therapy.

My initial reaction was something along the lines of: Exercise? What’s that supposed to do for me?

But since I was already there, and movement therapy was part of the programme, I went along with it.

The first thing I learned was that movement therapy doesn’t necessarily mean sport. We stood around, moved according to instructions, shook out our arms and legs, and generally engaged in something that, to an outside observer, might have looked like a rather peculiar form of collective flailing about.

And suddenly my headaches disappeared.

Just like that.

I was astonished. This was the very treatment I’d expected practically nothing from. And yet I experienced a remarkable improvement.

Apparently, muscle tension had been a significant factor in my headaches. The movements probably helped release that tension.

My consumption of painkillers dropped dramatically afterwards.

Whether taking so many painkillers had itself contributed to my headaches, I don’t know. Increasing my intake again just to settle that question didn’t seem particularly appealing. After all, there’s no need to conduct every possible experiment on your own body.

What I took away from the experience, in any case, wasn’t a new philosophy of life. I’d tried something that initially seemed rather pointless to me and discovered that it helped.

That’s certainly worth thinking about.

Psychosomatic medicine is not nonsense. Physical and psychological processes influence each other. Stress can cause or aggravate symptoms. Relaxation and movement can help. And sometimes the connections are considerably more complicated than we initially imagine.

But the fact that psychological stress can affect physical health doesn’t mean that every sick person has brought their illness upon themselves by thinking incorrectly.

That would be rather like concluding that, because rain makes roads wet, every wet road must have been caused by rain.

Things become even more interesting when a treatment genuinely helps, even though the explanation for why it works may be completely wrong.

Which brings us to the placebo effect.

Someone receives a treatment that has no specific therapeutic effect on their condition, yet afterwards they genuinely feel better.

How is that possible?

Researchers have been investigating this question for a long time. Expectations, previous experiences, and the entire context of treatment can influence how we perceive symptoms. Certain placebo effects even involve the body’s own opioid systems.

That’s remarkable. Apparently, our brains can influence physical processes without requiring written instructions from us.

Of course, that doesn’t mean every illness can be cured with the right expectations. Relieving pain is not the same as eliminating its underlying cause.

Nor is every improvement following a treatment necessarily a placebo effect. Sometimes symptoms improve on their own. The human body has the annoying habit of not always conforming to our explanatory models.

Nevertheless, I find the phenomenon fascinating. Because it shows that a genuine improvement can occur even when the explanation someone gives for it is wrong.

An effect doesn’t become unreal just because someone explains it incorrectly. But an incorrect explanation doesn’t become true simply because someone experiences a genuine effect.

And then there’s the nocebo effect, the placebo effect’s rather unpleasant relative. Negative expectations can intensify symptoms or, under certain circumstances, even bring them about.

Which brings us back to Louise L. Hay’s table of illnesses.

What happens to someone who is already suffering and is then told that their illness is an expression of an unhealthy mental attitude?

Perhaps it makes them even more anxious. Perhaps they develop feelings of guilt. Perhaps they begin constantly wondering which thoughts they’ve been thinking incorrectly this time.

Whether this actually makes their physical symptoms worse cannot be stated as a general rule. But such a message can certainly place an additional psychological burden on someone.

So here we have a person who supposedly wants to guide someone towards healing, and their first contribution is to hand them a generous helping of guilt.

You’d think someone who was already suffering might have enough to deal with.

But these ideas are no longer limited to explaining why we become ill. Apparently, we can now work on how we think, feel, and live even while we’re asleep.

Tanja likes listening to guided meditations as she falls asleep. Some of these recordings promise not just relaxation but a comprehensive improvement in mental well-being. Supposedly, negative thought patterns are dissolved during sleep and the subconscious mind is supplied with new, positive messages.

I have to admit, I find that prospect rather unsettling.

So a complete stranger announces that they intend to start tinkering with my subconscious while I’m asleep.

And I’m supposed to find that reassuring?

Let’s assume, for a moment, that I believe them. Surely I’d first want to know whether this person has the faintest idea what they’re doing.

And if they really were capable of influencing my thoughts while I slept, the next question would immediately arise: How do I know what their intentions are?

Might I wake up the following morning with an irresistible urge to transfer my entire savings to them?

And if they don’t know what they’re doing, I certainly don’t want them messing about in my subconscious either.

Fortunately, there’s good reason to doubt that this sort of nocturnal brainwashing works anything like the way some providers claim. The brain does process certain stimuli during sleep, but that doesn’t mean you can implant arbitrary beliefs in a sleeping person’s mind.

I find that rather reassuring.

What I find less reassuring, however, is the practical experience of listening to these recordings.

Someone speaks very slowly, very calmly, in a voice suggesting that they’ve already fallen asleep themselves.

And sometimes I really do start feeling wonderfully drowsy.

Until the affirmations begin.

Then I hear statements such as “I have only healing thoughts,” “I love myself,” or “I am completely happy.”

Such affirmations are usually spoken in the first person. The listener is supposed to adopt them, as it were, as their own thoughts.

An interesting arrangement. A complete stranger tells me what I supposedly think about myself, and I’m apparently not meant to wonder whether any of it is actually true.

Instead, I’m wide awake again.

Not because my subconscious has been successfully reprogrammed, but because I’m annoyed that someone is trying to dictate what I’m supposed to think and feel.

I was just about to fall asleep!

Sometimes I suspect the best guided meditation would be one where the speaker simply shuts up after five minutes.

During one of those sleepless nights, I finally had an idea.

If apparently anyone can appoint themselves to the noble task of soothing other people to sleep with comforting words, why shouldn’t someone from Hesse have a go?

So I created my own guided meditation.

In the Hessian dialect.

Forty-five minutes long.

Complete with breathing exercises, relaxation instructions, affirmations, and everything else that goes with it.

I found the very idea of speaking gently into complete strangers‘ subconscious minds rather appealing.

In the recording, I explain that the whole point is to talk directly into the listeners‘ subconscious while they sleep, so they’ll wake up in a good mood the next morning.

And if, by some remarkable coincidence, they happen to remember my bank account number and feel an overwhelming desire to send me money, they should, for heaven’s sake, not resist the impulse.

A little extra would be perfectly acceptable, too.

I also tell the story of a friend who has spent decades regularly falling asleep in front of the television while documentaries are playing.

If everything we hear while sleeping really became permanently embedded in our subconscious, this man ought to be one of the most intelligent people on the planet by now.

I can assure you that there’s been no sign of that so far.

Naturally, my meditation also includes an extensive physical relaxation exercise.

I count slowly down from ten to zero, explaining which parts of the body are supposed to relax along the way.

At seven, we suddenly have a plate of ribs and sauerkraut. Admittedly, that has very little to do with the listener’s body, but as long as their own ribs are still safely inside their chest, there’s no reason for concern.

Later, even the backside relaxes, with consequences that are both audible and detectable by smell.

And eventually we reach the affirmations.

For these, I’ve come up with something rather special.

I also use the first person:

I feel wonderful. My bank account is bursting at the seams. And I am the most modest person in the entire history of humanity.

It’s astonishing that I still haven’t been featured in any historical documentaries.

Naturally, I repeat these statements at considerable length.

Very considerable length.

I admit that it took quite some effort to record the whole thing without repeatedly bursting into laughter.

But a guided meditation must, after all, be delivered with the appropriate degree of solemnity.

At the end, I wish the listeners a good night and tell them to finally go to sleep.

When this doesn’t work immediately, I gradually become impatient.

And eventually sign off with a resigned:

“Well, don’t, then.”

Whether my meditation actually helps anyone fall asleep, I have no idea. I rather doubt it. But that wasn’t the point.

What interests me is the casual certainty with which some people believe they have a duty to improve everyone else.

They’ve discovered a method, read a book, attended a seminar, or stumbled upon some revelation that has changed their life.

That’s lovely.

But why does that so often lead to the conviction that the rest of humanity must now live accordingly?

Perhaps it’s genuine excitement at having found something that helps them personally. Perhaps it’s the need to have their own convictions confirmed. And sometimes, financial interests probably play a part as well.

After all, there’s good money to be made from promising people that they can become happier, healthier, and more successful.

What’s particularly convenient is that the goalposts can always be moved.

If someone isn’t happy yet, they obviously haven’t worked hard enough on themselves. If they’re still ill, they must have some unresolved inner blockages. And if they question the method, they’re probably just not ready to embrace it.

An offer becomes an obligation.

And someone seeking help becomes someone who must justify why the promised help hasn’t worked.

Yet there’s an enormous difference between wanting to help someone and needing to be proved right by helping them.

Anyone who genuinely wants to help must also be able to accept that their help isn’t wanted. Those who can’t might want to ask themselves whom their efforts are really intended to benefit.

Nobody should have to feel ashamed of being ill. Nobody should have to justify being sad, anxious, or exhausted. And nobody is obliged to try every method offered to them simply because someone else is enthusiastic about it.

You’re allowed to say no.

And you’re allowed to admit that you don’t know something.

Perhaps that’s one of the hardest exercises of all. We want explanations, preferably simple ones, and ideally ones that give us the feeling that we’re in control.

But sometimes things work without our fully understanding why. Other things sound convincing and don’t work at all. And about some questions, we simply don’t know enough yet.

Living with that uncertainty can be frustrating. But it’s still better than filling every gap in our knowledge with some comforting-sounding claim.

Perhaps that’s why I was so taken with a little present Tanja brought me recently.

A Tegut supermarket opposite the clinic where she’s currently undergoing rehabilitation was closing down. During the clearance sale, she spotted a bottle of shaving oil and apparently thought it might make a nice present for me. And if you can pick up a bargain at the same time, so much the better.

Printed on the packaging, in large letters, were the words:

ZERO BULLSHIT.

I liked the slogan immediately.

The shaving oil presumably isn’t intended to improve my subconscious. It’s simply supposed to help me shave. A remarkably modest ambition compared with the promises made by certain businesses in the wellness industry.

Perhaps that’s precisely what appeals to me.

Not every little thing has to change my life. Not every product has to turn me into a better person. And not everyone who wants to contribute to my well-being therefore needs to know how I should live.

Sometimes it’s perfectly sufficient for something to simply do its job.

And if someone once again insists on telling me how I ought to think, feel, sleep, or live, I’ll continue to reserve the right to decline politely.

If they refuse to accept that, I can always recommend my Hessian meditation.

Forty-five minutes.

Very slowly.

With affirmations.

And should they subsequently experience an irresistible urge to transfer money to me, I certainly won’t stand in their way.

Zero Bullshit.

At least while I’m asleep.

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