With Warmest Regards: Can our thoughts make us sick?

For weeks, I’ve been upset about having to undergo comprehensive testing to find the cause of the dizziness I’ve had for a few months.

Doctors seem to agree the serious bronchitis I brought back three months ago from Italy was the cause.

But it should have been gone by now.

I was lucky enough to be referred to the Silverstein Institute in Sarasota, one of the finest places in the county for dizziness and balance problems.

When they scheduled four hours of testing, I went online to read what the tests involved. That’s when I starting worrying.

I wasn’t afraid of what they would find. I was stressed over the tests themselves.

There’s a reason for that stress.

A decade or so ago, I had tests to determine the cause of my dizziness. It was just supposed to be two tests. But I got so severely dizzy from the first test I couldn’t continue.

When I got down from the testing table I was staggering when I tried to walk. It took a long time before I could drive myself home.

The test showed I had benign position vertigo. Nothing much to worry about. My benign positional vertigo comes and goes, disappearing for months at a time. No big deal.

This time the dizziness is different. Whatever the cause, I was confident the Silverstein Institute could find it — provided I survived the tests.

OK, I admit it. I worried so much about the four hours of tests that I felt dread in the pit of my stomach whenever I thought about it.

The tests were enough to do in anyone who gets motion sickness. One tests had me safely in a harness while I did a balance test that had moving walls, a moving floor and then a floor that dipped quickly.

The last test I was dreading involved sitting on a spinning chair in a dark room.

I was surprised to learn the tests were far easier than I had anticipated. They had a trick to keep my mind off the tests. I had to keep answering questions.

The audiologist said they found when a brain is busy finding answers, it can forget about being dizzy.

All this is a very long way of telling you I worried for nothing. I worried so much I made myself sick. For nothing.

Did that ever happen to you? Did you ever dread something so much only to learn you worried for nothing?

While I was doing all that worrying, a story that appeared on the internet with the headline “Worrying can make you sick” caught my eye.

Doctors tell us our thoughts can definitely make us sick. Worrying and stress can suppress our immune system, cause a host of physical problem and also cause mental problems.

Over the years I’ve been reading about the mind-body connection. We can think ourselves well, or, negative thoughts can torpedo our mental and physical well-being.

I saw this played out during one particular seminar when one woman broke down in one of the worst crying jags I ever saw.

She kept saying, “She didn’t want me. My own mother didn’t want me. She said she wished she would have had an abortion instead of letting me live.”

I thought the poor woman had a wicked mother who just told her those horrible things.

I was surprised when she told us her mother has been dead for 20 years. The evil thoughts she shouted at her daughter happened decades ago.

But the daughter keeps those hurtful words playing in her head. That, in turn, has affected her emotional and physical health, she admitted.

In college she was a psychology major so she is quite aware of the powers of the mind.

She also went to several professionals that told her she couldn’t heal until she throws from her mind the words that destroy well-being.

She’s a smart woman and keeps going to healing seminars to get past it all.

Because she understands the mind-body connection, I think she will beat it some day.

That is an extreme case of how our thoughts can make us sick. Most of us don’t have such a long-lasting reaction to a negative event.

What is far more common for most people is what I experienced in dreading those dizzy tests.

It was much ado about nothing.

Like many negative experiences the incident was definitely a learning experience.

I learned two things. I learned my husband is right when he tells me it doesn’t pay to worry because most of the time what we are worried about never comes to fruition.

I also had it reinforced, once again, there is power in positive thinking.

Just as our mind can make us sick, it can also combat a lot of ills that come our way, depending the message we keep playing in our mind.

Studies show how positive thinking can make us feel better. It makes sense. If we can “think ourselves sick,” we can also think ourselves better.”

A long time ago Norman Vincent Peale’s book, “The Power of Positive Thinking” laid out a strong case for thinking positively.

I’ve learned first hand how beneficial it is to concentrate on positive thinking. I feel better — both mentally and physically. From now on, forget negative thoughts.

I’m opting for positive thinking.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.