Bezpłatny fragment - YOUR BODY DOES NOT READ TEXTBOOKS. IT READS LIFE.

Copyright and Intellectual Property Protected. ©Ewa Danuta Bialek

The statements contained in this guide represent the professional opinions of the author, who has dedicated more than 50 years of her life to this work.

The purpose of this guide is not to provide any diagnosis or recommend treatment for any particular disease. It is a record of the author’s many years of research and practical work aimed at understanding how her own body functions. This information solely aims to educate, and every individual must work with a licensed healthcare professional.

The observations presented in this book are based on the author’s own clinical work, scientific education, and life experience. The author intends this book to encourage readers to observe their own bodies more attentively, not to replace medical diagnosis or treatment. Additionally, they encourage readers to report any observations to medical professionals. These professionals will then document the observations in the patient’s medical record and inform relevant personnel or appropriate authorities about any unobserved or undescribed events.

How do we come to know our identity?

This Is Where Your Fascinating Story Begins

Over the years, very few of us stop to wonder who we really are. We live from day to day, usually constantly rushing. We do our work mechanically, without deeper reflection on its meaning and without asking ourselves why we do what we do rather than something else.

Yet the process of getting to know ourselves begins automatically in early childhood. A small child instinctively explores their own body, looking at their hands and feet and trying to understand how they are built and how they work. Then comes the moment when they also test their voice. They squeal or scream, checking where the sound comes from. Every external body part arouses their fascination and curiosity. This also applies to the natural openings of the body: the nose, mouth, and ears. Little ones enthusiastically push small objects into them, terrifying their parents and often ending up needing medical intervention to retrieve their lost treasures.

During adolescence, a young person’s attention shifts toward appearance. Hair, nails, and the changing, maturing body become important — especially the breasts in girls. Today’s generation increasingly seeks to emphasize these changes. Teenagers want to accentuate their legs, buttocks, or breasts. They use cosmetics to make their eyes look larger or their lips more pronounced. Revealing clothing also becomes a way of manifesting oneself: short shorts, ultrashort skirts, and tightly fitted clothes designed to show the world everything that looks best. Often, this is blind following of fashion rather than genuine concern for well-being. Piercings appear in the ears, nose, eyebrows, or navel, while the skin becomes increasingly covered with tattoos. Attracting others” attention is the primary purpose of these modifications, rarely their connection to health.

In all this rush toward physicality, we devote dramatically little attention to our psyche. We forget what lies within: our thoughts, emotions, and spiritual dimension.

Introduction

This book was written with a reader in mind who is curious about themselves — someone who wants to understand the mechanisms governing their own organism and reach the true roots of their problems. When publishing my previous works, I repeatedly received messages from you about how much you valued the depth of this message. For years, as a passionate seeker, I have translated science and medicine into language understandable to everyone, guided by a deep need to offer help in difficult human dramas.

It is not my intention to address these words to specialists. They usually deal with only one fragment of the functioning of the organism or with a specific symptom. I am interested in the whole person — in how they experience themselves and how they experience illness. If you want to better understand what is happening within you, this book is for you. If, however, you are looking only for an analysis of symptoms or a specific diagnosis, consult a physician. I relate to what is troubling you by looking for its source in your personal history. No one knows that history better than you! It is precisely from it that everything you encounter throughout your existence flows: from healthy relationships to the condition of your body.

For years I have been concerned with my own health — observing it, supporting it, and above all, taking full responsibility for it. Life taught me this. It is a lesson drawn from my personal experiences of illness since childhood, but also from choosing a professional path connected with medicine, immunology, and diagnostics. Despite my enormous passion as a researcher and discoverer, working within the system led me to burnout. I found no answer there to my fundamental question: why am I ill? It was only my encounter with managerial and organizational psychosynthesis that made me understand the reason for this crisis. The answer was not outside me, in other people or procedures. It existed within me, in my own story — in traumatic childhood experiences that, year after year, step by step, shifted the metabolism of my organism into a mode of pure survival.

For a long time I have been deepening my knowledge of myself on many levels. This concerns not only the biological messages of the body, but also the soul — our spiritual nature and the depth of the human being. I wrote about this in books on personal development, and especially in those devoted to illnesses that reveal the hidden signals sent by the organism. One such signal is a physical symptom — the language through which the body communicates with us. Unfortunately, instead of discovering the cause of that signal, most of us run to the doctor to silence it as quickly as possible.

Yet, as responsible human beings, we are more than biology alone. Remaining at the level of pure physicality reduces us to the role of a defective organ or broken object that needs to be taken in for repair. We have handed responsibility for our lives and health over to people who do not know our history, including our family history, and who focus only on the malfunctioning fragment. Does your identity really have no meaning to you? Would you rather have someone from outside treat you like a car mechanic, replacing parts or filling a cavity in a tooth that arose for a reason known only to you? Does your psyche remain calm when you hand your body over for a routine “inspection” and blindly trust that nothing will happen to it, even though you do not look after it yourself?

My own many years of experience showed me an entirely different path. A traumatic childhood and the lack of full care from both parents caused me to begin becoming ill. As a child, I struggled with severe abdominal pain, for which I was prescribed Gelatum Aluminii for years. The medicine did not help, and years later I received an official diagnosis: gastric and duodenal ulcer disease. Other illnesses followed. No one spoke then about a psychosomatic basis; what is more, such an approach was ridiculed, with patients being referred to psychiatrists with suggestions of hallucinations or mental illness.

Neglecting the causes, however, does not eliminate the symptoms — their traditional treatment merely masks the problem. It causes the organism to transform the pain into something else, simply to divert attention from destructive emotions hidden underneath. I, meanwhile, have always been a deeply feeling being, and over the years I learned to name and describe these states precisely.

It was from this very attentiveness that my books were born. As children, we do not receive from our parents or from school an “instruction manual” for ourselves. In this respect, we spend years feeling our way in the dark. Only Life brings us unique experiences, and we must learn to deal with them “live.” There is no ready-made set of rules for the human being, because each of us is unique. When the body experiences a crisis, it will not tell us: “Wait a moment, I’ll look in the textbook and find the solution in the appropriate chapter.” Such a book does not exist. Life creates the scenarios, and your body responds to them. Sometimes a reaction remains at the level of emotions, which quickly subside, allowing you to return to balance. But when the stimulation is continuous, intrusive thoughts join in. You analyze a given situation endlessly, trying to virtually “get back at” the person who hurt you, even though you may have seen that person only once in your life.

In reality, the problem concerns you, your reaction, and its constant repetition. In this way, you build a pattern. As human beings, we rarely stop to consider that our violent response arises from an original pattern and an old, still-living wound. At first, this pain hangs “in the air,” smoldering somewhere deep inside. Over time, however, it creates a habit that, through its emotional energy (e-motion — energy in motion), literally carves a physical wound into the body. This is how my erosions and ulcers came into being. True healing therefore does not consist in “protecting the wound with a bandage” in the form of the aforementioned gel. It means reaching the very cause — your reaction — and healing by revoking that pattern.

This book was born from an inspiration that came when, after many years, I looked at the architecture connecting all of my creative work. My works are not solely about psychosynthesis — psychology with a soul, which I used to understand myself. Nor are they textbooks about individual illnesses, prevention, or education. Although for years I developed a model of “education for the future,” intended to prevent the need for therapy, in order to describe it I first had to look closely at my own experience of illness and step back several times in order to revoke it. Above all, my books are about Life, about You, and about the essence of your identity.

Usually, when writing a new book, I would choose a notebook with squared or lined pages. I carried it with me, kept it beside my bed, and held it in my bag while traveling on the city bus. For THIS particular book, however, I chose a completely blank notebook — without lines.

When I began to wonder about this choice, I understood that human life has no predetermined columns or squares. It simply unfolds. My notebook without an imposed structure turned out to be perfectly suited to what was meant to emerge within me through inspiration. I wanted to record this “unfolding” — living reactions to what everyday life brings, sudden reflections, and pure inspirations. You will not find dry, textbook knowledge or rigid instructions for everyday use here. I want you to understand that you are the cause of what happens and what fate brings you, but also the heir to earlier, transgenerational experiences. This understanding will allow you to reach the patterns encoded within you, change them, and break the cycle of family dramas. Of course, only if you desire to do so. There is no compulsion here. This is your free choice.

I warmly invite you, then, into the following chapters. Together we will explore what is unknown, what cannot be contained within rigid frameworks, patterns, or lines. Life is, after all, a natural phenomenon that escapes all limitations.

Responsibility for our own health

Although the titles and content of my previous books often include the names of illnesses and descriptions of diagnostic procedures, specific medical cases are not my main concern. The consistent thread running through all my work is responsibility. Responsibility for one’s own life and health.

I do not understand it, however, as toxic self-blame for every ailment. To me, it means reclaiming the right to ask questions — including questions of ourselves. It means carefully observing our own organism, seeking knowledge, and genuinely participating in medical decisions. This message pulses through my writings on immunity, the thyroid, statins, stress, relationships, and aging. It returns in every epilogue.

I cannot accept a situation I have witnessed repeatedly: when, as a patient, I ask questions, the doctor verifies them through a physical examination, glances at the test results, and then all that knowledge disappears into a void. Nothing from this process is shared with me.

As a patient, I have the right to know what has emerged from the consultation and what direction the diagnostic and treatment process will take — before it happens at all. I do not want to be treated like a mannequin that can be examined while the conclusions are kept to oneself. Not long ago, I heard in a doctor’s office: “That information is in the backend of your Internet Patient Account.” Well, at least it is reassuring to know that the system already contains my first and last name rather than merely the statistical number of a disease entity. Nevertheless, no one explains to me what was detected during the examination. I am handed referrals for further tests without a word of explanation. No one asks me what I think about it, what I feel, or what I have been observing in myself for months. No one checks whether I consent to procedures that have been planned entirely without my voice.

For years I have lived and worked within the holistic medicine approach — in health education and promotion as well as in actual treatment. I belong to international societies of personalized medicine and serve on global editorial boards. For decades I have participated in international scientific conferences, where my contribution is sometimes recognized as innovative. I even have the feeling that, because I read the dots between different specialties, I am more up to date with the latest scientific findings than the average physician confined to a narrow discipline.

I am interested in the HUMAN BEING. A human being trying to understand themselves at the intersection of biology, psyche, and life experience. Someone searching for answers to the questions: What is health really? How do we avoid losing it in the frantic rush of life? How do we find our way back to it?

I deeply believe that beneath every diagnosis there is a human being with all their complex biology and psychology. I see this person much more deeply than the superficial behaviorism that still dominates the academic mainstream. Depth psychology, transpersonal psychology, and psychosynthesis have been around for more than a century — modern science can no longer afford to ignore them.

My fundamental specialty, to which I have devoted several decades of my life, is immunology. It does not exist solely at the level of laboratory slides and cells. When we come to know ourselves more deeply, we reach the “immunology of the soul” — the very source of our identity. This is a process that unfolds through self-knowledge. After all, this maxim has been with us for thousands of years.

Closing our eyes to what we feel and how we react dramatically impoverishes medicine. It turns the human being into an object of observation — one who, moreover, is absent “in real time.” Such an arrangement can never satisfy the other side of this process. It certainly does not satisfy me, sitting on the other side of the desk.

I want to be visible in the doctor’s office. Not hidden behind a monitor, not as half a face emerging from behind a computer. I want to be heard. I demand space to tell the story of my symptom, because every pain has a past. My text is a manifesto of non-consent. It is a rebellion I have been describing for years, and today I bring it into practice during every medical consultation. I truly exist. I demand to be seen, heard, and included in decisions concerning my health and my life. Being responsible for them, I clearly and unequivocally make my voice part of everything that happens to my body.

Defensive walls and barriers and their consequences

Only recently did I understand that boundaries, barriers, or simply fences are built to protect our status quo from being hurt. This applies to situations in which they were created during childhood or adolescence. It is then that we begin to build “defensive walls.” They protect our true self, which is free and open by nature. We mummified it in order to survive childhood because there was no educational or developmental support for this deeper dimension of ourselves. That is why we created walls to protect our true self from annihilation.

This is also how my cough developed — as a defensive reflex, because my self, who I am, was trampled on, defiled, and battered “for life.” I could not express myself, what I felt, or the gifts and talents I had brought into the world and wanted to share with others. Unfortunately, people and circumstances did not allow this, and so what I felt was locked away as if inside armor, a cage, or a prison. In this way, the ways of expressing myself that were natural to me were stopped and restricted. This happened both at home and in my surroundings, including my school education.

I have always loved writing about any subject, yet in high school I was forced to write “to dictation.” I DID NOT MATTER AT ALL, just as my opinion, expressed for others, did not matter! They — the teachers — did not want to listen to it. Only their truth was considered correct! It was similar at university, although I enjoyed learning, discovering new fields, and, above all, searching for depth.

For years, I had no voice because my voice was trapped in my throat. I had to adapt, accept what others proclaimed as the “truth,” both in education and in treatment.

For many years I accepted what was “handed down as something to believe,” and I even believed that others knew more than I did. I was there only to listen and silently follow instructions.

At the same time, for years I was being shown another process, concerning the physical consequences of the dramatic situations in my father’s and mother’s lives, which ended tragically for both of them. In my mother’s case, however, it was a long-term process in which stress-related diseases emerged, including a diagnosis of cancer and years of vegetating caused by improper treatment of the consequences of radiation sickness. In my father’s case, it ended in a heart attack. As a result of this kind of “treatment,” my mother became a person with a first-degree disability, while my father died from the consequences of being treated in an inhuman way — not as a human being — and from his organism’s resistance to it.

Looking at this long-standing drama, my fascination with the medical methods of that time gradually lost its solid foundations as I entered adulthood. I tried to save the picture by studying clinical diagnostics and immunology. They were helpful, but insufficient within that picture. It was as if someone had placed them inside frames that could not be crossed — limiting them to what had been described, established, and incorporated into a paradigm that was not to be changed.

It was then that professional burnout came to me. It was not caused by the fact that I disliked my work. Quite the opposite: I constantly wanted to learn more and more. Yet increasingly, new barriers and limitations appeared. Others were given what I had been expecting for years. I had pressure in my throat and lungs, limiting my ability to express myself, like mucous bonds holding everything in place: because I had been forbidden to speak about myself. Then depression, helplessness, and a lack of hope for the future appeared.

That was precisely the turning point — and at the same time, psychosynthesis came into my life.

Psychosynthesis — hope for the new and for me to come into view

Slowly, step by step, my body began to show me what was good for me and what was destroying me.

I found a new job, and almost immediately I was sent as a replacement for someone else to a nine-month program for managers at the Leadership Development Center. Classes were held once a month and lasted an entire week. It was there, right at the beginning, that my future teacher of psychosynthesis uttered a fundamental sentence that resonated within me for decades to come: “You will never discover new oceans until you lose sight of the shore.” Immediately afterward came a second saying that became engraved in my heart: “You cannot manage others until you learn to manage yourself.”

Over the following years, I learned the difficult art of directing my own life. I discovered those “new oceans,” leaving the familiar, safe shore behind without regret. I became the helm, the sailor, and the ship. I understood that pure knowledge has no boundaries, but only when combined with living experience does it become true wisdom.

My inner compass knew exactly where it was leading me. I learned to read its signals while simultaneously healing my traumatic childhood. That was how I began to discover the messages coming from my body. I established a close, intimate relationship with it. I entered into a dialogue with it, asked questions, and — amazingly — received clear answers and guidance about what to do in specific situations.

For example, when, according to the principles of psychosynthesis, I was working with my Inner Little Girl, she gave me a brilliant piece of advice: “Jump over problems like you do in hopscotch.” She also suggested that I replace the word “problem” with “matter.” Why? Because problems are most often created in our own minds, whereas a matter simply “comes into being” — you act, resolve it, close the subject, and move on.

This profound inner knowledge proved invaluable when, in 2007, I was overwhelmed by terrible, chronic pain throughout my entire body, which almost completely prevented me from functioning normally. Many years earlier, I had met an Englishwoman named Jenny in Warsaw, from whom I learned the basics of psychosynthesis before she returned to her homeland. And it was Jenny who, years after our last meeting, suddenly sent me John Sarno’s book Mind-Body Prescription. That book opened my eyes. I understood that what I was experiencing was neurological tension pain — a condition known as fibromyalgia.

Armed with this knowledge and the diagnosis I had made myself, I went to the Rheumatology Institute in Warsaw. At first, the doctors laughed at me. How dare a patient diagnose herself? Yet after two weeks of examinations, the head physician invited me into her office, reached out her hand, and said: “You diagnosed the problem correctly.” I answered briefly: “I have known myself since childhood and have observed my body for years.”

A moment later, the system once again tried to put me back in my place. I refused the standard treatment that was routinely prescribed at that time for rheumatic diseases: steroids and powerful psychotropic drugs.

I feel and know that it was precisely then that my wounded Little Girl and the Orphan Child — two subpersonalities with which I had worked for so long — finally emerged from the shadows into the light. I gave them the full right to speak. They were already strong enough to grow up and, step by step, take control of my life. Of who I truly am.

At that time, Polish rheumatologists hardly diagnosed fibromyalgia at all — it was almost unknown in our country. Officially, the healthcare system left me to fend for myself. Yet at the same time, I began experiencing something extraordinary. Almost every question I asked of reality was followed almost immediately by an answer or a signpost. It was like the biblical: “Ask, and it will be given to you.” My Creative Child was reclaiming the strength that had been blocked in childhood and establishing direct contact with the Source of Life.

During this crucial period, I became involved in numerous initiatives and symposia on psychosomatics at Jagiellonian University. At the same time, I was helping to lay the foundations of the emerging fields of integrative medicine and holistic education in Poland. My great authority — even since my teenage years — was Albert Schweitzer, the famous physician from Lambaréné, and his philosophy of the “Reverence for Life.” His attitude showed me the broader, most important context: that health (well-being) concerns both the whole of ourselves and the world around us, as well as the human mission embedded within it.

Over time, my Little Girl underwent a profound transformation — she became the Guardian of Synthesis. She has accompanied me ever since. Thanks to her, in every difficult situation I look for a deeper meaning. For me, health and illness are a particularly important field of this Synthesis, especially in the context of autoimmune diseases, which I have struggled with for years. Conventional, symptom-based medicine has no answer to them. It is fragmented into narrow specialties, with little exchange of information between them, and the patient is treated as an object or subordinate rather than as a partner in conversation.

That is precisely why I left that safe shore behind forever. I sailed out onto new oceans. And thanks to this, today I am closer than ever to connecting all the dots. I bring together hard science and its specialties with a deep understanding of the human being from within. Grounded in psychosynthesis, I finally see the whole.

The path of synthesis

At first glance, it may seem that my books touch upon too many subjects that are far removed from one another. What could stress, fibromyalgia, and autoimmune diseases possibly have in common with relationships, the energy of words, child-rearing, educational models, or entrepreneurship with a soul?

And yet, all these threads are merely gateways leading to the same neighborhood. They are pillars of one and the same structure, threads stitching the fabric into a coherent whole. That whole is education for mature responsibility for one’s own health, life, and self-awareness. A conscious human being begins to recognize the inseparable connections between how they think and what they feel, what they do, what surrounds them, and how they treat others. And above all — how they treat themselves.

Health cannot be mindlessly received from the outside. It cannot be given as a gift or bought with a prescription. I made the following sentence the motto of one of my books: “Health is created and maintained. You cannot possess health in the same way you possess things.”

As I explored psychosynthesis and other scientific disciplines, I noticed that education treats upbringing as a key element of human development — as an entry ticket to taking one’s place in the world. Yet it is worth going one step further and expanding this process to include self-education, whose foundation is self-awareness. This element is dramatically lacking today. In the modern world, young people increasingly blame their parents for mistakes in upbringing and sever their relationships with them. As theoretically independent adults, they do not want to take responsibility for what happens to them in life. They choose the shortcut. When something goes wrong, it is easiest to blame their mother, father, teachers, or the educational system. They forget that life shapes our choices, but what we do with this sculpting material and how we develop from it is ultimately up to us.

For generations, no one educated us about ourselves. We lacked an upbringing that would prepare parents for their most important task: raising a human being for society. After all, we do not raise children for ourselves. Young people complete their education and go out into the world to create their own homes and bring subsequent generations into the world. The process repeats itself. Parenthood is the most responsible mission on Earth — a mission unfolding over many years, whose fruits often cannot be seen immediately unless they are observed with full awareness.

Society is a merciless mirror. It reflects what is happening in our homes, nations, and throughout the world. We see the results of the absence of fundamental emotional education every day: in school classrooms, on city streets, and, on a macro scale, in international relations.

Toxic upbringing produces equally dramatic health consequences. Physical-level mistakes, such as poor nutrition or forcing a child to eat “because they must be hungry,” can later result in obesity. In turn, living under the terror of constant pressure, rigid commands and prohibitions, blame, and emotional coldness can, over time, lead to self-harm in adolescence, depression, suicide attempts, as well as autoimmune disorders — or, put most simply, destructive stress-related diseases.

If, as adults, we see that something in this world is not working, we have both the power and the responsibility to change it. For our own good and for the good of others. This is precisely what global responsibility for the state of the world means. It applies to every sphere, from education and medicine to the governance of nations. We are responsible for our life choices and for how we respond to reality.

Autoimmune diseases have become a particularly powerful mirror for me. Reflected in it is the entire complexity of the human being, as well as everything that enters us from the external world and drastically alters our metabolism. In autoimmune conditions, the body activates primordial mechanisms of fighting and survival, except that in this frenzy it begins to treat its own tissues as a mortal enemy. These diseases make it clear that our organism does not function independently of the biography that is part of it. The body is a direct biological response to every stimulus in life.

Health is not a matter of one diseased organ, or even of an individual human being. It always relates to a larger whole. It is a long-term process: attentive monitoring of the signals coming from the body, an ongoing dialogue with it, and observation of our own emotional responses. After all, our emotions have an obvious, measurable impact on all metabolic pathways. They influence the quality of relationships within the family, our surroundings, and ultimately — the state of the entire planet. It is a network of interconnections that pulses throughout our lives.

Swallowing a pill takes only a second. A surgical procedure takes a few hours. These are brief, immediate episodes that are quickly forgotten. Building health, meanwhile, is like constructing a powerful skyscraper. First, you have to gather the right, solid materials; then organize the space around the construction site; and finally integrate the building into the entire architecture and bloodstream of a modern city.

This is precisely the kind of thoroughness and vision with which we must approach the creation of our own well-being. It requires profound self-knowledge at every level: mental, emotional, and spiritual. We must finally understand that every destructive emotional reaction or chronic stress is nothing other than e-motion — energy in motion. This energy directly shapes our biochemistry, strikes the physical body, and brutally disrupts the natural, ingenious self-repair mechanisms with which nature has equipped us.

Health is created and maintained… Psychosynthesis for whole-person health; Immunology for the soul

Health in its broadest sense, as well as its disruption, is a multifaceted process of mutual interactions that must be continuously brought into harmony. On the one hand, this requires integration — the gathering together of many scattered elements — and on the other, their synthesis into an entirely new and better quality. This is where what is known as added value emerges. It is something far greater than a mere sum of parts. The whole system suddenly acquires unique qualities that none of its individual elements possesses on its own.

Psychosynthesis, which I have been practicing for thirty years, unlocked within me processes of integrating, uniting, and looking at the world through the lens of systems thinking. It taught me to see the broader context. That is why today, whenever I analyze any situation — and especially the dynamics of health and illness — I always ask myself the same question: how can I bring together what is invisible or scattered into one coherent whole? The essence of synthesis is, after all, finding the right place for each separate element within a larger structure.

Nature teaches us this highest quality most fully. We can endlessly break a tree down into its individual components, easily forgetting its essence. If we want to understand what it truly is, it is not enough to examine its roots, limbs, trunk, branches, or leaves. We must perceive the life pulsing within it and the process of growth taking place under the influence of the entire surrounding environment. This is precisely what it means to see the whole.

From my earliest childhood, I myself suffered from a wide variety of ailments. Our family — my mother, my brother, and I — lived under permanent, destructive stress. I was immersed in it continuously from the age of two. It all began on the day my father was arrested as a political prisoner by the Stalinist regime. He was taken away before our eyes, at gunpoint. For the next eight years, our home was constantly raided and we were intimidated, while the authorities systematically plundered our already modest possessions.

No wonder that, for as long as I can remember, my stomach hurt terribly. It hurt “for no reason and because of everything.” The only medicine available to me at that time was my own small hands. In the evenings, I would place them on my abdomen and hold them there for a long time, until I fell asleep. My child’s hands instinctively discovered the only way to soothe the panic and fear that had been relentlessly accumulating in my digestive tract since infancy.

Years later, when I was considering the subject of my doctoral dissertation, it came to me on its own — naturally, as though it had been waiting for me all along. I chose to study the local protection of mucous membranes in the form of secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA). Today I know that this discovery remains relevant to this day. Secretory IgA is one of the most important biological links for understanding the diverse, gradually accumulating manifestations of my autoimmune diseases. At that time, no one in the medical community wanted to recognize that the source of my ailments lay in the powerful, chronic stress that constantly threatened my life.

That early childhood stomach pain was essentially the first signpost leading from cause to effect. The cause was all-encompassing terror. The effect accumulated slowly over decades, eventually manifesting as peptic ulcer disease of the stomach and duodenum. My father suffered from exactly the same condition under the conditions of imprisonment — I found a clear record of this drama in his prison hospital discharge report.

Wasn’t my body sending warning signals? It was not merely speaking — it was screaming loudly. Unfortunately, no one in the medical system ever addressed the real cause. For doctors, only the isolated symptom mattered, not what had triggered and sustained it every single day. The only person who attempted to save me — although completely unconsciously at the time — was myself. As a little child, placing my hands on my abdomen, I tried to quiet and comfort the panic and fear for the survival of myself and those closest to me.

In that dark period, completely on my own, I intensely practiced awareness of my body and sensations. My basic psychological needs — the need for care, a safe embrace, and emotional soothing — had no chance of being met. My entire environment was paralyzed by its own fear. I had to take care of myself. I had to care for my wounded body myself.

I also remember another reflex from childhood: monotonous, rhythmic rocking. In psychology, this behavior is known as institutionalization syndrome — a defensive mechanism found in abandoned children living in orphanages. I do not remember my mother ever hugging me or rocking me to sleep. So my body itself activated an instinct for nurturing. It was a desperate attempt at self-rescue and self-soothing by a lonely child.

A great satisfaction: 19 years after saying goodbye to fibromyalgia

My departure from the conventional approach and my refusal to take standard rheumatological medications did not make me afraid. Although from the outside it might have looked like madness, that moment when the system left me completely on my own did not take away my courage. Quite the opposite — it awakened a powerful determination in me. I understood that from then on, everything depended on me. I took over the baton and became the conductor of my own overture.

My body was extremely weak and in pain, but my spirit remained unshaken. My mind was clear, open, and absolutely focused on one goal: to be healthy. It was a challenge because the medicine of that time had never treated the causes of my illnesses. It focused exclusively on masking symptoms, which, in my view, completely blocked the road back from illness to health. Not long afterward, I actually wrote a book under exactly that title.

Knowing my health problems from my earliest years, as an adult, conscious woman I marked two strategic points on my own roadmap. The first was the period between the ages of two and eight — a time of powerful, daily traumas which, although intangible, became etched into my tissues. The second was the moment when the Institute of Rheumatology officially named my pain fibromyalgia. In the space between these two points, I could move in any direction: zigzagging, in a straight line, from one point to another, forward and backward. I could never lose my way because I was moving within my own history. I was the one making the decisions. This was the most important one: taking full responsibility for my health, my life, and its quality for the decades to come.

I discovered within myself a deep, unshakable conviction: from that moment on, I had to give my consent to anything done to my body. My decision was a logical conclusion — half of my life up to that point had been spent undergoing treatment, and its outcome was yet another disease of unknown etiology that brought me completely to my knees.

It would have been entirely understandable if I had never sought medical treatment. In my case, however, the opposite was true. For years, I conscientiously accepted everything that was “handed down to me as truth,” and as a scientist I coldly examined biological material as yet another laboratory case. The result of this blind discipline was total dysfunction of my organism and constant pain from head to toe.

Today marks exactly 19 years since the day I left the Institute of Rheumatology with my discharge papers in hand and stepped into my own, “self-coordinated care.” On this particular day — August 17, 2026, as I write these words — I had another rheumatological consultation, this time because of dryness of my mucous membranes. But today I behave completely differently than I did even a few months ago. In the past, when I mentioned my life journey, my doctorate in immunology, and my specialization in clinical diagnostics in medical offices, I was met with a wall. Doctors would only reinforce the patronizing message: “I’m the one in charge here.”

For the past few days, I have been using a completely new strategy. I enter the office not as a petitioner, but as an equal partner. I place a sheet of paper on the desk: former assistant professor at the Medical Academy and CMKP, PhD, immunology.

It is my passport to a conversation without a dismissive tone. I know this from my 30 years of practice in psychosynthesis and from the clients who come to me after reading my books on fibromyalgia. These people cry out for help. When I work with them, I do not interfere with the recommendations of specialists. We simply go back into their personal histories and follow the traces of trauma. Systemic medicine has a tremendous problem with fibromyalgia because it desperately tries to silence it with steroids and psychotropic drugs. For three decades, I have taught my clients precisely the opposite: to listen to the cry of the body and respond to it. That cry can be withdrawn — we can, for example, lovingly comfort and rock our inner child.

When I mentioned my history with fibromyalgia during today’s visit — because today it is only history — the doctor asked in surprise whether I had taken the treatment prescribed to me 19 years ago. I answered briefly: “No.” I told her about the care I had developed for myself.

A moment later, the doctor had an opportunity to examine me from the perspective of her specialty and see for herself the results of my twenty years of work. She saw a body that had been functioning completely free of pain for years. It was an invaluable moment. For me, it was proof that I had been right; for her, it was medical confirmation that I had accomplished something that, in the light of academic textbooks, seemed absolutely unbelievable. Especially at my age, when pathological changes are generally expected to become established rather than reverse.

I described what I had done in several books because I did not want to keep this secret to myself. I shared this knowledge with the world. Anyone with enough determination to recover and care for themselves on many levels can find it. I did this because I had absolute faith in the self-regulatory mechanisms of my own organism and in the fact that my life and mission are invaluable to the world.

Today the rheumatologist had tangible evidence of my journey before her. After 19 years, she could physically touch the truth about my body with her own hands during the palpation examination: no tender points, no fibromyalgia pain.

On signals from the body and how we respond to them

For years, my body sent me countless signals. One of the most distressing was what I called my “howling bones” — a dull, throbbing pain in my forearms and arms that literally drained all my energy. This symptom appeared shortly after childbirth. That was when I was first diagnosed with tetany and treated with magnesium and calcium. My body was giving me clear, specific clues, and I intuitively connected them with my current life situation, which each time required an immediate response from me.

Other important messages were my body’s sudden reactions to pharmacotherapy. It is commonly known that patients experience adverse effects, although they rarely connect them with the medications they are taking. In my case, the reactions were immediate and ruthless. One evening, I put the eye drops I had been prescribed into my eyes. During the night, I woke up with massive swelling of my face and lower jaw and a drastically swollen tongue. In the morning, without hesitation, I reported the incident by telephone to the adverse drug reaction registry and immediately discontinued the preparation.

Something similar happened when I was prescribed one of the osteoporosis medications available at the time. After the very first dose, a powerful, migrating pain struck my muscles. The symptoms began escalating throughout my entire body. The drug acted as a brutal trigger for a process that had been smoldering beneath the surface for years. That was when I saw, for the first time, the full and frightening picture of generalized fibromyalgia. Interestingly, exactly this type of muscle pain was clearly described in the medication leaflet as a rare adverse effect. To the system, I was merely a statistic; to myself, I was living proof that biological uniqueness cannot be contained in tables.

Years ago, when gastroenterologists were widely caught up in the trend of diagnosing Helicobacter pylori through painful tissue sampling during gastroscopy, I was referred for biological treatment. Once again, my unique biology protested — the therapy resulted in such severe stomach pain that continuing it became medically contraindicated.

As human beings, we are absolutely unique. Each of us carries a different history, different tissue sensitivity, different reactions to medications or to the electromagnetic fields generated by diagnostic equipment. Forcing us into rigid frameworks of laboratory norms and statistical experiences is a fundamental misunderstanding. It is an attempt to force a living human being to feel and become ill according to a predetermined, official template.

For me, conventional medicine and psychosynthesis meet at precisely one point. It is not the point of diagnosis or treatment protocol. It is a place called: attentiveness to one’s own experience. Psychosynthesis puts it simply: know yourself. I, as a scientist, diagnostician, and attentive observer, add: observe your body. It is exactly the same profoundly revealing attitude.