Question: This question came out of a survey. The questioner ask, "Dale, what is the placebo effect?"
Answer: I talk a little about this in my Placebo Talk course-page but here are a few more examples.
Children will often run to their mothers when they trip and get hurt. Their mother will kiss the injury better. The child stops crying and the pain goes away. The analgesic effect of the kiss is the placebo effect. The kiss interrupts the stress response and turns on the parasympathetic nervous system, to form the relax response. We call this the placebo effect.
When a doctor or a medical authority gives someone a sugar pill and the person gets better, that is the placebo effect.
The Impress Skill, that I teach in the Placebo Talk course, creates a placebo effect.
Question: This question came out of asurvey. The questioner stated, "I’ve become anxious over little things and worry more than I should." I think perhaps she/he is asking why.
Answer: When we are having more stress response events than we have relaxation response events, our body goes out of homeostasis.
Homeostasis is where we are able to maintain an internal environment that is healthy and survivable. Too much toxic stressor chemicals in our body moves the balance from healthy to needing correction. Our survival stress response is triggered every time you think that something may be wrong. You don’t know what is wrong because this is all subconscious and all you feel is the anxious part.
It can be a vicious circle. You feel anxious and you trigger the stress response and that makes you more anxious. Stop the un-merry-go-round and get off. Do many things that make you feel better so you can get into the habit of feeling better. That turns the stress response down and the relax/repair response up.
I once used this simple method: Write down 10 things that makes you feel good. You don’t have to do them, just think about them. Do the connect hack and breathing exercise and smile as you read them. Read this several times a day. At the very least it interrupts the stress response, and we need more of that. That might give you breathing space to take the next feel-better step.
Dale