Your body could give you signs (first subtle, then not so subtle) that you are ignoring your authentic self and not pursuing cherished dreams and values. Are you sick all the time without your doctors finding why? Do you have low energy while all your blood tests, radiology and physical exams are normal? Are you suffering from anxiety and depression?

A possible explanation is: You might be ignoring your true desires.

A good example is my own: When I was 30 years old, my parents wanted me to get married and continue working at my private medical practice in Fresnes, a suburb of Paris, France. My own dream was to travel and work all over the world. When my boyfriend who was an accountant, proposed while looking for a new job abroad, I was ecstatic. We started dreaming together about what our life would be in a different country and the house we would rent. We got married that December and my now husband moved in with me in my little apartment and soon after, accepted a new job in…. Paris, France!!!! My dreams were shattered. It didn’t help that soon afterwards, my husband tried to fix the radiator and in doing so, flooded my apartment.

In one week, I went from being a happy single woman with lots of dreams, spending delightful romantic weekends in my boyfriend’s little studio and spending the rest of the week in my own dry spacious studio to being a miserable married woman in a soaked over-furnished over-crowed studio with shuttered dreams.

Could I stay in my little apartment, continue working in Fresnes and enjoy my new life as a married woman? The answer was yes, of course. I just needed to be patient for a few years (my husband wanted to stay at his new “ideal” job a few years for his career), at least this is what my parents told me.

I decided to listen to my parents, be a good wife, supportive of my husband, cook and bake for him, wash his clothes, iron his shirts, and continue working in my private practice in the suburb of Paris. But within a few weeks, I became very tired during the days and had nightmares every night. Three weeks after the wedding a high fever started that lasted a whole month. No physician could find the origin of my fever. We tried several thermometers. They all indicated 102 F fever, day in and day out and I was exhausted but my blood tests and X-Rays were all within normal.

What was going on with me? Why did my body feel so sick? I could feel my body was rebelling. The reality was that I had been lying to myself, telling myself that I should and could be the loving wife my husband deserved in Paris when my dreams were to travel and have a life full of adventure abroad.

The truth is that my body couldn’t and wouldn’t function well anymore and felt so sick that I had to go back to my parents’ house. Soon afterwards, my husband and I got a divorce.

I continued working in my private practice in the suburb of Paris for a few months, but I was still extremely tired, depressed and getting sick on and off. When I got really scared for my health and well-being, I decided to sell my private practice and volunteer with Doctors Without Borders. I was sent on missions to Africa and Asia for the next 5 years and my health and mood rapidly improved. I felt no more depression, fatigue, or recurrent infections. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I became happy, excited to be alive, and healthier than I had ever been before.

As a result of my personal experience, when I finally settled down in the US and opened my private medical practice in Los Angeles, I became extremely attentive to people with recurrent respiratory tract infections, people with low energy, people with muscle tension, aches and pains, people with anxiety and depression. Was there a deep emotional struggle behind those patients ‘symptoms?

In a few people, I found that there was a deep emotional struggle at the origin of their symptoms, and I made it my mission to find a way to help those people. For other people, the emotional struggle and stress was not the cause of the physical symptoms, but it aggravated the physical symptoms especially if people were trying to repress their emotions.

Studies show the effect of stress on health:

O’Connor and colleagues describe in the 2021 Annual Review of Psychology the different mechanisms through which stress can affect health directly through autonomic and neuroendocrine responses but also indirectly through changes in behaviors (like eating disorders, drugs and/or alcohol addiction).

Another study from Johannes Alfons Karl and colleagues published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (August 2022) shows that there is a negative association between stoic ideology (especially people who try not to feel and not to express their emotions) and well-being.

So, after 40 years of practicing medicine, here is my own view of 12 subtle (or not so subtle) clues that you could be lying to yourself, often unaware of the mind-body connection.

1. Frequent infections: You are getting viral or bacterial infections very often like colds, flu, ear infections, sore throats, bronchitis despite your blood tests being within normal. Studies show that chronic stress weakens the immune system via the increased secretion of cortisol. If you are staying in a stressful environment when you have the choice to leave but don’t, thinking you can handle stress, infections could be a clue that you are lying to yourself. Your body might not be able to handle that much stress without help.

2. Muscle spasms, aches and pains: You have aches and pains repetitively in your joints and muscles without having exerted yourself and without any other obvious explanation. The reason could be the increased secretion of adrenaline caused by stress. A study published in the Journal of Physiology shows that adrenaline increases contractions of human muscles. Again, those contractions might be unconscious and could give joint pain as a result.

3. Low energy: You feel tired all the time while your physical exam, Xray’s and blood tests are all normal. Of course, you could have a disease that hasn’t been diagnosed yet, but fatigue could also be a clue that you are lying to yourself. Fatigue could be such a clue because it takes a huge amount of energy to suppress who you really are and to do what your family or your partner wants you to do, which is sometimes the opposite of your real wishes.

4. Depression and anxiety: You feel depressed and anxious and are not excited about your life. Unconscious sadness and anger from not being able to be who you really want to be might lead to depression and anxiety.

5. Binge eating and/or drinking: You are eating too much too frequently, eating junk food and sweets, drinking too much alcohol, or using drugs. All of those make you feel better for a short time, while numbing you, but you might need more and more of those to keep feeling better longer.

6. You don’t listen to your gut feelings. Sometimes your gut feelings will tell you that you are doing something wrong by giving you a lot of stomach uneasiness and tension. On the other hand, if you think about what you really want to do, you will get a lot of butterflies in your belly, you will feel bubbles of excitement. Those gut feelings are worth listening to.

7. Problems at work and with your relationships: You have problems at work and problems in your relationship, so you change jobs, relationships and even towns because you think those external factors are the cause of your problems, but things don’t get better at your new job, in your new relationship, in your new town. What are you running away from? The answer is that you need to find a job you really like and a partner you really love where you are. It is worth investing time and energy to find both of those.

8. You feel empty or inauthentic. If you are lying to yourself, you will feel empty because the real you isn’t accessible.

9. You worry about what others might think about you when what is important is what you really think about yourself.

10. You rely on others to make you feel loved when you need to learn how to love yourself.

11. You blame other people all the time instead of looking in the mirror.

12. You are being the person other people want you to be (your parents, your partner, your boss) but you forget to be the person you, yourself always wanted to be.

Conclusion:

You need to be aware of all those subtle clues indicating that you could be lying to yourself, which is very often unconscious. Are you staying in a stressful situation when you have the choice of getting into a much less stressful one? Who are you really and what do your brain and your body really need? Are you aware of all your choices?

Awareness is an important first step which is sometimes enough in itself. If you want to proceed further, you need to weigh the pros and cons of staying in a known stressful situation or changing to different unknown one (which could also be stressful at the beginning but more fulfilling at the end).

The decision ultimately is yours. You have the ultimate control over your life and whatever decision you make needs to be respected, especially when you are completely honest with yourself. If you decide to stay in a stressful situation, you might want to look for strategies to better cope with stress with the help of a psychologist.

As for me, I have put a lot of personal work into finding who I really am, what feeds my fire, what makes my body and my mind vibrate in unison and as a result, I have made drastic changes in my life. As I go through different phases of my life, I reevaluate what my mind and body need on a regular basis to continue having tremendous energy and feeling happy and healthy.

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Chris E. Gilbert, MD, PhD

Chris Gilbert, MD, PhD (www.DrChrisGilbert.com) is a full time author and public speaker. Her books include “The Listening Cure” (SelectBooks 2017) available in paperback, ebook and audiobook formats, “The French Stethoscope” a memoir (Iuniverse 2010) and "Dr. Chris’ A, B, C’s of Health" (Iuniverse 2010). She is also a writer for PsychologyToday.

Dr. Chris was in private medical practice in Torrance, California (Integrative Medicine using a combination of Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Gestalt Therapy, Bio-identical Hormones, Supplements, Herbs as much as conventional Medicine). She did a surgical residency at Harbor UCLA and a medical internship at UC Irvine. Previously she worked for Doctors Without Borders in Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Mauritania and China (taking care of refugees). She has a MD, PhD from the university of Cochin Port-Royal in Paris where she was born.

Website: www.DrChrisGilbert.com
Author of “The Listening Cure” (SelectBooks 2017) available in paperback, ebook and audiobook formats and author of “The French Stethoscope” a memoir (Iuniverse 2010) and "Dr. Chris’ A, B, C’s of Health" (Iuniverse 2010)

Co-author with Eric Haseltine PhD of “Riding The Monster: Five ways to innovate inside bureaucracies” (Discovery Democracy Press 2021)
Writer for PsychologyToday in Heal the mind to heal the body