As a Somatic Wisdom Therapist, I have helped dozens of clients over the years to discern whether or not taking a particular medication is in alignment with their healing journey. I have witnessed how this decision making process can paralyze even well intentioned people. Because they don’t have a connection with their internal guidance system, they rely on doctors, family and friends, social media, and public opinion to know what is right for them. It is especially agonizing when they want to go one direction but the pressure from family and friends makes them question their choice or they receive pressure that is borderline threatening from their doctor. I’ve heard clients report that their well meaning doctor told them they’ll be dead in 5 years if they don’t take the medication or that they are putting their unborn child at risk, or that there really is no other option. Their fate is even gloomier sometimes when they turn to google MD or research articles.
What I can tell you from my experience is that the answer is not black-and-white. It’s incredibly nuanced, depending on the person, the situation, their beliefs and their intention regarding healing. I wish I could give you a protocol of yes and no, right and wrong that worked for everyone, but this is the precise reason why modern medicine is failing us, because protocols like these don’t work.
The other thing I can tell you with complete assurance is that the answer to this question has nothing to do with the physiological dis-ease process that is happening within the body. The answer for each person can be found independent of diagnosis, laboratory tests, research data, or even medical opinion.
The choice has everything to do with the energetics (intention, belief, feelings, thoughts, actions) influencing the situation and the journey your soul is on at that particular snapshot in time. My intention is not to offer you a blanket statement of right versus wrong that influences your decision making process. To the contrary I have no investment or agenda in what you choose other than to say I hope that what you choose leads you to greater peace, joy, fulfillment, and ultimately healing. My hope is to offer you stories and ideas that open your heart to the wisdom within and expands your consciousness to see what may not have been visible prior.
What I share is based on my experience and the wisdom I have gleaned from dialoguing with the Inner Wisdom of my patients. It is not evidence that is backed by science, it is backed by Wisdom. You won’t know with certainty whether what I offer here is correct for you, instead you will FEEL it’s correctness resonate deeply within your body. This is the first difference between practicing Wisdom and practicing medicine. One is based largely on a one size fits all approach and the other is based on an intelligence that cannot be measured or defined by logic.
I must also tell you that the intention of this article is not to encourage you to stop, start, or change any of the current medications you may be taking. That may come about as a result of reading this, however I am not and cannot be held responsible for any choices you make regarding your medications. By continuing to read this article, you agree to assume full and complete responsibility for any choices you make and to also use Wisdom to discern the best and safest way to navigate changes to your medications. I am not a medical doctor and therefore advise you to seek trusted medical counsel regarding the safest way to get on or off a medication should you determine that is the best route for you.
What I am proposing regarding medications and their role in our healthcare is that the choice to take or not to take is entirely an inside job. The answer can and should be found within us, not outside of us. This is why I can say with complete assurance that the decision to take or not take a medication can be made independent of diagnosis and medical opinion. Ideally, medical research, your doctor’s opinion, and your symptomatology INFORM the inner process but they do not hijack it. One way this “hijacking” occurs is through the injection of fear into our consciousness. We know this fear has taken over our system, because we find ourselves worrying about what will happen if we DON’T take the medication. We imagine our worsening symptoms or that the dis - ease will progress, and in the worst case scenario, that we will die.
When fear has taken hold of our consciousness and we are largely unconscious of its influence, we often will choose to take the medication not because our body needs it, but because fear makes us believe that it is the “right” thing to do. I see this energy at work especially in dis-ease processes that are largely thought to be caused by poor self discipline - poor eating habits, not exercising enough, substance abuse, etc
I’ve seen family members shame their loved ones into taking medications instead of believing and supporting them in making the changes that would heal them. I’ve seen medical professionals doubt their patient’s belief in their ability to heal or make sideways comments about “how research shows” to discredit the patient’s belief in themselves.
The other more subtle way fear imposes on us is through judgment. We fear aligning with our heart and taking the path least traveled only to discover it was the “wrong” choice. What if we go against medical opinion and we are “wrong.” This opens another entire conversation about the ethics of even believing that there is such a thing as right or wrong or that one choice can directly influence a particular outcome. If we let our ego determine the cause and effect of our choices, it will always lead us astray. For example, if I choose not to take medication and my symptoms or dis-ease worsen, Ego will make sure I feel both guilt and shame for making the wrong choice and not doing the right thing. If I choose to take it though and I still get worse, Ego will still probably have something to say about it. If I take it and get better, Ego will make me question whether I actually needed the medication to heal or worse now maybe I will have to deal with the side effects as a “consequence” of my choice. Can you see where this battle of right or wrong is a dead end street? There is no winning when Ego is in the driving seat. Ego will see to it that no matter what choice you make, you fail.
To simplify my point I will use the theory of right and wrong which I do not actually believe exists but nonetheless it perfectly illustrates my point.
Any decision made in fear is wrong. Any choice made in Love is right.
That’s where we are ultimately all headed here. To be able to discern whether the choice to take a medication can be done in Love or not. One of the ways we know that Ego is in the driver’s seat is when our mind is painting two equally unappealing options. For example, I take the medication but suffer from the side effects or I don’t take it and die. Ego feeds itself off of depressing and soul sucking narratives like this. The only thing we usually end up choosing is the lesser of two evils.
When Love is in the driver’s seat, there is no bad outcome and no wrong choice. We may have to slightly veer off course here for a moment, because I imagine some of you reading this may believe that death would be a particularly bad and undesired outcome for you. I’m not going to argue with you on this one (at least not here), but I will tell you what my meditation teacher told me - “if you want to be free of suffering, you should meditate on death every day.”
If you believe that a choice you make can lead to a “bad” outcome it implies a belief that you have control over your health, your life, and your journey here in this lifetime. Even if you make 100,000 choices from Love and 1,000 from fear, you are still going to die. We must liberate our choices from Ego’s perception of right and wrong, good and bad. There is no correlation other than in the delusional space of our limited mind.
How many choices have you avoided making in your life because you fear it could lead to a bad outcome? I’m inclined to offer you (because I like making you squirm with discomfort) that the bigger your fear of a “bad” outcome, the more likely that choice will be made from a place of Love. So perhaps the question is which outcome do I fear more - that answer is most often the compass pointing you in the (right) direction of Love.
When I work with clients on the question of medication, my goal is to connect them with their best case scenario. Some people probably would say that their best case scenario is they take medication, their body heals, and life goes back to “normal.” Those people aren’t usually the ones seeking my advice and honestly if this is where their consciousness is, they should probably take the medication.
The people I generally work with are those who don’t want to take medication, because they believe in their bodies' inherent capacity to heal. They don’t like the idea of putting synthetic chemicals in their body and they would prefer to devote their time, energy, and effort to doing the spiritual, mental, and emotional work of healing so as to have a positive impact on the health of their physical body. I can tell you that if you fall into this latter camp, the choice rooted in Love for you, will almost always be to not take the medication. But here me clearly when I say it has NOTHING to do with the medication and your body and EVERYTHING to do with what you believe and value about the human body. What I have witnessed over and over is that people who strongly believe in their body’s capacity to heal feel more shame and fear about taking medication BECAUSE it goes against their values, not because the medication is bad. It is necessary as a medical community that we begin taking the patients’ beliefs and values into consideration when we are determining a course of treatment. What the patient believes is actually MORE important than the doctor’s opinion, training, and all the research and evidence that may back their opinion.
When you identify your values and beliefs about the healing process, this now HAS to inform your choice about your medical provider. We must align ourselves with medical providers who inquire about our belief system and preferably share similar beliefs and values, and at the very least support who we are and what we believe. I’m going to link here an article I wrote 4 years ago about my daughter’s experience with an orthopedic surgeon who shamed her into believing her foot wouldn’t heal properly if she didn’t have surgery. I’m happy to report her foot is completely healed and she is a beautiful figure skater now. (https://www.cassieseal.love/post/how-to-parent-a-hurting-child)
This article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t share a few stories from my clients that further illustrate the point I am making here.
Endocrine (hormonal) medications
First and foremost, if there is an imbalance or dysfunction in hormonal production, distribution, or function within the body there is likely an imbalance of the masculine and feminine energies both within an individual and that is also probably being expressed outwardly into his or her relationships. For example, this may look like a predominantly feminine being embodying masculine traits in unsustainable ways that deplete their energy reserves causing a state of perpetual dysregulation. Or a predominantly masculine individual being emasculated in their partnership. It can also be a creative right brain individual forced to engage in more analytical left brain tasks or vice versa.
These are common energetic disturbances that cause hormonal imbalances in the body.
My experience is that medication is not the solution for hormonal imbalance “problems”. Restoring the masculine and feminine polarity that is inherent to the individual is the ideal treatment protocol. I’ve witnessed a handful of post menopausal women who have been on some form of hormonal replacement therapy for years (often decades) wrestle with the question of do I need to continue taking this medication. In both recent cases, the women are dealing with an influx of endocrine “symptoms” and their doctors are advising them to take more of the prescribed medication assuming their body is becoming more dysfunctional instead of less. What the doctor doesn’t know is the undercover work these women are doing to step into their inherent feminine qualities which they originally learned were weak, manipulative, or “too much.” Because they are restoring their correct inner balance of masculine and feminine energy, their bodies no longer “need” the medication to create balance within their system. In other words they have healed their body and the symptoms they are experiencing are a reaction to the synthetic increase in hormones that the medication is taxing their system with.
This theory both resonates with and makes sense to my clients. They can feel the truth of what this theory is offering them. What they are met with is the doctor’s belief that when you remove certain organs and glands the body is no longer able to produce or regulate certain hormones independent of synthetic hormone replacement. The doctor believes because of logic and experience that their patient requires medication indefinitely. I’m not discounting logic, experience, or science, but it cannot and will not ever be a substitute for Inner truth and knowing.
Psychiatric medications
I have another client who is very creative, emotional, and intuitive by nature. Much of her life she has lived ashamed of these parts of herself. Never feeling seen, heard, understood and also judged by her family to be overly emotional, incapable, and irrational. She has suffered anxiety and difficulty focusing most of her childhood and throughout the course of her life. Her biggest childhood trauma was the memory of her father sitting her down to talk about all of her “flaws” and the ways in which she could “better” conduct herself.
She was placed on a particular medication at the age of 25 by her doctor. It was the first time in her life that she remembers being able to focus “like a normal human being.” For a variety of reasons, she was taken off the medication and her doctor would no longer prescribe it for her. When I first started working with her, one of her frequent complaints was about how she needed this medication in order to focus. Entire days would be lost to worrying about how she couldn’t function the way she desired without the medication.
The first thing I recognized is her strong belief that she NEEDED this medication in order to be okay. Although I immediately intuited the co-dependency she had with the medication, I knew we wouldn’t get anywhere until we dismantled the belief that she wasn’t able to function without this medicine. Two things have been the most helpful in disengaging this well rooted belief system. The first is getting her to make the connection that she learned as a child to believe there was something inherently wrong with her that needed to be fixed by a means that existed outside of herself. This was the impact her father’s “support” had on her psyche. Through this she started making the connection that shame was driving her motivation and need to have the medication and not her belief that she was inherently beautiful, capable, and loving just the way she is. She had spent her whole life “trying” to be less creative, emotional, and intuitive to win her father’s approval. And here was a medicine that essentially did the work for her, like an answered prayer.
The other thing that has been helpful is to piece together the timeline of events around the time she started taking this medication. She was 25 and in addition to starting the medication, it was the same year she went back to school and got married! There were several significant life changing experiences happening in tandem. In addition, she had also begun working a job that allowed her to engage her creative, right brained SELF. For perhaps the first time in her life, she got to express her most authentic self in her life and work. My theory that I shared with her is that when we are engaging our energy in things that truly matter to our soul, when we are doing the things our soul feels called to do, without shame or fear, it creates a natural focusing effect on our attention and mind. The medication wasn’t the source of her new found focus, engaging with herSELF in a loving way was the source of her focus. (remember how quick Ego is to make the wrong correlations between cause and effect?)
So what does this say about children being led to psychologists for behavioral issues and put on medication to “improve” or “normalize” behavior? It makes my heart cringe with grief and fear for our world and the people in it. We’ve created a standard of normal and decided that anyone who can’t fit in the box, needs to be fixed. We’ve done this in our schools, in our medical community, and even most sadly within our families. Perhaps the first step in all of this if you’re feeling these words is to stop and feel the truth that there is nothing wrong with you at all. You are perfect just the way you are.
In summary, here are some guidelines to know when fear is infiltrating your freedom of choice:
You are worried about what will happen if you don’t take a medication (your symptoms dis-ease will get worse or you will die)
You worry what your doctor, family, friends, community will judge, criticize, or disrespect you for not taking the medication
You worry about the side effects and consequences of putting a synthetic chemical in your body
You are taking a medication because you believe you need it in order to heal or function “properly”
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