Maureen Minnehan Jones asked: “By the age of 65, one in eight of us is going to get Alzheimer’s; by the age of 85, 50 percent will have the disease,” says Teresa Galbier, president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association.(1) Given these undesirable statistics, isn’t it time to look at Alzheimer’s disease with a new perspective?
Alzheimer’s is a degenerative disease of the brain characterized by loss of memory and mental functioning. It often entails personality changes. By the time Alzheimer’s develops, the body may have cried out for decades with many other ailments that have been treated either by medication, surgery, or other forms of traditional medicine. Yet the individual may not have realized what the body was trying to say with each symptom, condition, disease, or broken bone.
The Message of Alzheimer’s DiseaseIn his book Messages from the Body, Dr. Michael Lincoln stated that Alzheimer’s disease is a form of succumbing to the confusion some people feel about what their lives have been or become. He believes they’ve been demoralized by having their competence and confidence undermined in childhood.(2) Louise Hay, author of Heal Your Body, The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them wrote that Alzheimer’s is a refusal to deal with the world as it is, hopelessness, helplessness, and anger.(3)
The message or “soul discovery” for individuals who develop Alzheimer’s disease to learn may be to “let themselves out and let others in”-to permanently step out of that plexi-glass phone booth that surrounds them. Indeed, most don’t even know they’re living in a plexi-glass phone booth. But people around them see that they really can’t let themselves get close to people. My client’s mother had Alzheimer’s. When I described the concept of a portable plexi-glass phone booth, it made sense to him. He said, “It made me sad that she didn’t take more interest in her grandchildren, but I can now see that she just didn’t know how to let herself out or let others in.
Alzheimer’s disease may start at birth or early childhood, not at retirement age. A commonality exists in the MO (Modus Operandi) and programming of Alzheimer’s patients. I always look at the end stage of the disease; then I can clearly see how it manifested in the body. At the end stage of Alzheimer’s disease the individual appears to be in their own “private world” and can’t let themselves out or let others in. This may have been their MO or how they operated throughout their life.
Individuals suffering from this disease could have been emotionally abandoned in childhood, perhaps undermining their competence and confidence, combined with non-acceptance by their families. This non-acceptance could haunt them throughout life, setting up what I call The Common Thread of Disease, which is lack of self-love, powerlessness, resentment, and anger that can turn onto rage. The rage can eventually erupt like a volcano and surface as a symptom, condition or disease.
On a physical level, habitually experiencing hopeless, helpless feelings during one’s life actually creates chemical and neurological changes. Blockages can form and affect the brain’s nerve impulses at the cellular level to the point of the brain losing its ability to store and recall memories. Eventually, brain cells may die, causing memory failure, personality changes, and inability to function. All of these characterize Alzheimer’s disease.
Characteristics of Alzheimer’s DiseaseIt may seem contradictory, but I’ve observed that many children who’d been undermined at a young age grow up to become highly successful in today’s society. How, then, do they end up with Alzheimer’s? Perhaps as they become older, they keep striving to be “good enough” in their parents’ eyes. However, unless they feel self-love at their core, they won’t obtain what they desperately need from the outside world. This constant seeking of acceptance from outside may compel them to keep creating situations in which they’ll finally be accepted. This is perhaps why the famous Alzheimer’s patient, Ronald Reagan, became a movie star, a state governor, and a United States president.
All their lives, people with Alzheimer’s have likely had these two characteristics:
Highly private. Though an innately private man, Reagan became a movie star, governor, and president—professions that may keep others at bay and can be unconsciously chosen by those who don’t know how to get close to others. Unable to let themselves out or truly let others in. One of Reagan’s children said his father never hugged him until after he had developed Alzheimer’s.
Reagan had several illnesses throughout his life. Let’s look at the messages or soul discoveries of his illnesses and see how they could have been prevented from developing into Alzheimer’s disease. I’ve used Dr. Lincoln’s Messages from the Body to describe the emotional component of each disease Reagan had.
Reagan’s Diseases and Their Emotional ComponentsAt age four and again at age 36, he contracted viral pneumonia. Dr. Lincoln described pneumonia as resulting from–… emotional abandonment at a very early age, to which they reacted with becoming a “self-made person” with a portable plexi-glass phone booth around them that effectively isolates the person from others.(4)
He also described the emotional root of lung problems:
[These] people have a real inability to take in life and don’t feel worthy of living life fully. They have a fear of the Universe, they lack cosmic and community conjugal contact. They are alone, sad, and non-belonging, with no sense of acceptance or approval. They are a product of a withholding and non-accepting family. They are heavily into competence-anxiety, self-distrust, and self-inhibition…(5)
This doesn’t mean if you’ve had pneumonia, you will develop Alzheimer’s, but the illness presents an opportunity to look at the soul discoveries and heal them, perhaps never going on to others.
In 1949, Reagan was hospitalized for seven weeks because he broke his right thigh in six places playing ball in a charity tournament. Broken bones are known to signify profound inner conflict in the depths of one’s being. According to Dr. Lincoln, the right thigh represents “cope-ability anxiety”:
… [T]here is a paralysis of action, a fear of the future at present. They have major conflicts regarding how they go about manifesting their strength and providing themselves support. They have considerable difficulty accepting commitments in the world and in giving support to friends, co-workers, and colleagues. They also distrust and don’t know how to relate to fellow workers and fellow travelers at large.(6)
On July 18, 1985, he had surgery to remove colon cancer. Dr. Lincoln described sufferers of colon cancer and the emotional root cause this way:
They are not happy with their life or with the world around them. They are in effect terrified of the universe due to being attacked from conception on. They have a deep-seated conviction that they deserve all of the insult. They are severely closed minded with a very poor ability to learn life’s lessons. They literally can’t let go of yesterday’s wastes, so their digestion gets backed up and so does their hatred.(7)
Also, Hay wrote that colon cancer reflects “deep longstanding resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at self. Carrying hatreds. ‘What’s the use?’ and colon is holding on to the past. Fear of letting go.”(8)
Not too long after the colon surgery, Reagan underwent cryotherapy for two basal cell carcinomas, which is skin cancer on his nose. Hay wrote that the nose represents self-recognition. Dr. Lincoln described the emotional root cause of people with nose problems this way:
… [T]hey are deeply disappointed, disillusioned, despairing and/or feeling powerless. Their experiences have resulted in their not trusting themselves, and they systematically avoid power as a result. They never know when someone is going to pull a fast one. They are prone to humiliation and shame, and they tend to feel any honors they receive are for little achievement. They are lacking in self-pride and are also sexually ashamed and inhibited because of having been subjected to a confidence-undermining family.(9)
Reagan then had prostate surgery on Jan 5, 1987. Here’s what Dr. Lincoln wrote about the emotional root of prostate problems:
… Due to changes in their life such as divorce, aging, or illness, there are intense feelings of frustration, and uselessness. They are self-contained and lonely with a lot of deprivation, grief, and depression. There is a significant amount of fatigue, along with a breaking down and/or a certain giving up. They feel they just don’t cut it at being a male. Now it is coming to roost in the symbolic center of masculine sexuality. They are afraid that their purpose in being here is already over.(10)
Reagan’s prostate surgery happened seven years before his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Because Alzheimer’s disease develops from a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, it is especially significant to heal any sense of uselessness.
In 1987, Reagan was diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia, which Dr. Lincoln noted this way:
… they are a self-made person who believes that they are all they have got. They have felt cut off from the environment and from the Universe all their life, and that therefore they have to handle everything on their own hook, unassisted. This activates moments where things are getting out of control and beyond their coping capabilities. They bring on anxiety attacks and the resulting heart palpitations. It is resultant of never having received love and merging as a child(11).
Reagan then developed “Dupuytren’s contracture” of the left hand, which was diagnosed and operated on in January, 1989. This is an abnormal thickening of tough tissue underneath the skin of the palm and fingers, causing fingers to curl. His left ring finger was affected in this way. Here’s how Dr. Lincoln described people who have problems with the left palm:
… [T]hey are experiencing conflicts around vulnerability, feelings and relationships with practical management issues. They are inadequate to the cause of handling life’s demands on the day-to-day level.(12)
Ring finger problems refer to concerns around personal significance and issues connecting with the Creator. Reagan also had hearing loss and nearsightedness, which Dr. Lincoln described:
Hearing:… [T]hey are backing away from vulnerability and involvement with the social environment because they feel it is too irrelevant, painful, and/or dangerous…. a “sealed unit” who is self-determined and a self-made person. Their family blamed them when anything went wrong and, in result, they developed the “urban hermit” lifestyle.(13)
Nearsightedness:… [T]hey have a fear of the future and they don’t trust what is ahead or the process of life. They are chronically fearful and troubled by inadequacy feelings. They feel unlovable and so they don’t reach out or project to the future because it is so threatening. They are past-fixated and they fully expect things to be as they always have been.(14)
Reagan was given another body message when, in 2001, he fell and broke his hip. A broken hip reveals a fear of moving forward, reflected by thoughts that the future holds little promise. Another broken bone signified a further breakdown of his foundation. He had a need to assert his own authority and structure, which he could no longer do because his mind had deteriorated. At the time of his broken hip, he’d had Alzheimer’s for seven years, making sense that he would have lost hope for the future. Added to all the other diseases, this body had cried out for 60 years or more before Alzheimer’s set in.
In the end, Reagan succumbed to aspiration pneumonia, among the most common causes of death for people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. If somewhere along the way he had been aware of his soul discoveries, his end-of-life experience may have been much different.
My studies and clinic work over the past 12 years have shown we can prevent Alzheimer’s by understanding our MO and learning what each symptom, condition and disease is telling us. Each one has a soul discovery that relates to the emotional component of the disease. We can learn our soul discoveries and heal them with the MO (Modus Operandi) Technique. Knowing and incorporating the emotional component into healing is critical to cure not only Alzheimer’s disease but all diseases.
If this famous Alzheimer’s patient related to and had understood the messages from each of his diseases, conditions, and injuries, he could have known what soul discoveries he had signed up for and may have been spared from this dreadful disease.
[1] http://rochesterhomepage.net/content/fulltext/?cid=84871
[2] Lincoln, Michael J., Ph.D. Messages from the Body: Their Psychological Meaning. Talking Hearts,rev. 2006, p. 32.
[3] Hay, Louise L. Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them. Hay House: Calif., 1982,p.12.
[4] Op. Cit. Lincoln, p. 454.
[5] Ibid. pp. 392-393.
[6] Ibid. pp. 149-150.
[7] Ibid. pp. 149-150.
[8] Op. Cit. Hay, p. 22-25.
[9] Op. Cit. Lincoln, p. 426.
[10] Ibid. p. 463.
[11] Ibid. p. 48.
[12] Ibid. p. 286.
[13]Ibid. p. 305.
[14]Ibid. p. 624.
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