Your Emotional Type
Michael A Jawer and Marc S. Micozzi, MD, PhD
Your Emotional Type: Key to the Therapies That Will Work For You
Healing Arts Press, Rochester VT. 2011
Today's conventional health care system is often incapable of creating effective pain relief or sustainable health. It concentrates on diseases, disorders and treatments, rather than on individuals. Unfortunately, the principal beneficiary of this one-size fits all medicine is not consumers, but the drug industry. Pharmaceutical companies also profit by aggressively promoting medications to address what mainstream medicine considers to be the origin of most diseases — "germs" and "faulty genetic predisposition." This approach, at best, produces mixed results, and frequently is unable to help those suffering chronic illness and pain.
Refreshingly, Your Emotional Type explores what scientific research now validates and what Hippocrates asserted centuries ago: "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what disease a person has." While an individual is certainly not his or her illness, health conditions do have unique personal meaning. Understanding the way you "feel your feelings" helps uncover the source and process of symptoms relating to both physical and mental ailments. By using a short (less than 10 minute) non-judgmental questionnaire to determine "boundary type" (whether you have "thick" or "thin" boundaries) Your Emotional Type explores the connection between emotional type and the 12 most common chronic illnesses — asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue, depression, fibromyalgia, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, post-traumatic stress disorder, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ulcers. Statements such as: I am easily hurt; My feelings blend into one another; I am a down-to-earth no-nonsense kind of person, are rated on a scale of 0-4 to determine boundary type. Seven healing therapies are then matched to type — acupuncture, hypnosis, biofeedback, meditation, Yoga, guided imagery and relaxation techniques. Knowing where you are on the boundary spectrum will help you select the therapy that will most likely be effective for you.
