Our Psychological Immune System is Innate

February 9, 2022
The Psychological Immune System

Last October my foot started to hurt. I have an old injury on that foot and ankle, so assumed it was that. As the pain continued to increase through time, I tried new shoes, more strength training, and all sorts of tape and support. It continued to get more painful. Then Tim, my husband, suggested I have it x-rayed. Guess what? There was a fairly sizable stress fracture! It never would have healed the way I was treating it. I was interfering with the physical immune system built into my body and never even knew it.

Today I am going to introduce you to your psychological immune system. Please remember a time when you cut a finger, or injured your hand in some way. It may have hurt like the dickens at the time, as well as while it was healing, but for the most part, I suspect all you had to do was clean it, protect it and trust your physical immune system to go to work and heal it. There was nothing you could do to speed the healing, but plenty you could do to interfere with the healing, like get it dirty or pick at the scab.

Now, please remember something that caused you stress within the last 48 hours. Notice how your body feels, and how many things you can think of to say about this incident or circumstance. OK that’s enough!

Now, remember something that moved you to tears, or had you grateful, or was joyful. How many thoughts do you have about that circumstance? Notice how your body feels now. Do you notice a difference between those two things?
If you can catch a glimpse of what is happening, and stay with it long enough to have an insight occur, here’s what you might notice. We have LOTS of thoughts about things that stress us. And the more we think those thoughts the worse we feel. When we remember something joyous or wonderous, we often have very few thoughts about what is happening. We are just left to enjoy the feeling we are having.

You have just experienced the psychological immune system at work. Just shifting our focus from stressful thoughts to wonderful ones allows the system to rebalance. And just like the physical version, when you continually ‘pick at the scab’ of the stressful thought, it resists healing, or coming back to balance and peace of mind. Thinking about something stressful all the time is like picking at the scab on your knuckle. If we leave our upsetting thoughts alone and allow our minds to quiet, healing take place of its own accord, and new thinking can arise about the circumstance you see as stressful. Both immune systems are innate. They are built into the system of being human. All human beings, and all life, has these immune systems built in. There is nothing to do but get out of the way of them.

I often use a snow globe to mimic how we interfere with our psychological immune system. When we shake the snow globe, that snow is a metaphor for our incessant thinking about what is bothering us. This is innocent, by the way. If we knew that amount and kind of thinking would make things worse, we would not do it!

Built into our system as a part of the immune system is our very own Buddha Wisdom, always there pointing to new, wise and creative thinking. However, the swirl of our stressful thinking causes so much static or snow in the system that we can’t hear this wisdom speaking to us. The error that continues to happen is we think we can think our way out of what is happening! If we could, by the way, it would already have happened. How many of you have a situation that always drives you nuts? Habitual thinking about that situation is what is preventing you from having a new insight into what to do or think about that situation. And all we are doing is picking at the scab.

Now to the simple part. If your body feels tight, your breath is shallow, and/or your jaw is clenched, you are fighting the innate immune system’s design. If you breathe deeply a few times, that tiny pause may allow you to remember that you are wired to feel good in your body, to feel relaxed and up for anything. Remembering that often brings that feeling back suddenly and easily, like a beach ball popping to the surface. If you find it is hard to let the habits of thought go, distract yourself. Go out in nature, sit with a pet, watch a funny cat video or write a note to a friend telling them how much you appreciate them. And suddenly the stress is gone, and you can start again.

Awareness is the most important part of eliminating stress. If you are feeling peaceful, lean into that. If you are feeling stressed, pause, distract and go into nature in some way. Begin to practice your ability to tolerate temporary psychological pain or discomfort, and watch how it is transient if you let it just be there.  Once the old thinking has moved through you, you can approach the circumstance again with a fresh perspective.

To recap, stress cannot be managed. That’s like trying to manage a cut to heal, incessantly doing something to make the healing go faster and in the right direction. Stress gets eliminated when you remember the psychological immune system is operating on your behalf at all times. The more you let it do its job, the better you will feel, and the wiser you will become.