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However, on the inside, I found my life had become intolerable. I began to understand how the system prioritizes temporary symptomatic fixes over genuine healing.

I also began to experience the symptoms of GERD. For five long years, I battled the disease. As many people with GERD can attest, my journey was marked by initial uncertainty around diagnosis, then the relief of medication that provided symptomatic respite. However, the understanding that this medication was the only thing between me and a lifetime of pain didn’t sit easily.

Deep down I felt ashamed and associated this shame with my declining health. How could I continue in a field supposedly dedicated to alleviating people’s suffering when I couldn’t even get a handle on my own? How could others trust me with their health when I couldn’t even help myself?

I thought of the times when, as a child, I knew instinctively to push back against the limiting mindset of the biomedical model; now, my own suffering with GERD was the tipping point.

So I embarked on a course of further study, formal and self-directed, to better understand why science, medicine and psychology have not provided the answers for permanently alleviating physical and mental disease and suffering.

During this time I was also fortunate enough to be referred to Dr. Brian Broom. Little did I know that this fateful meeting would not only lead to my eventual healing from allergies and GERD but also transform my perspective on chronic illness as a whole.

With his help, I began to explore MindBody science and with it philosophy and relational psychotherapy. It was through these studies and applying the MindBody approach that I was able to heal from GERD.

I still remember vividly the moment when I realized that GERD was GONE from my life. It was a moment of gnosis or knowing; without hesitation, I discarded the prescription pills that only a short while before had been part of a daily ritual lasting over five years. A ritual, I once believed, that was necessary to keep my symptoms at bay.

This isn’t where my story of powerlessness to empowered healing ends though.

You see, I have not only used the MindBody approach to heal my GERD. When I disposed of my pill container in 2008, rather than simply basking in the improved quality of life I turned my attention to the other diseases in my life. I used the same methods to heal trichotillomania, adult-onset asthma, repeated bouts of renal colic (kidney stones), and ongoing musculoskeletal pain that had been part of life since a childhood diagnosis of osteochondritis.

When, recently, I resolved the allergies and sex addiction that had been the bane of my life since age six and fourteen, respectively, I felt then I might have something to offer to the world.