What Does Mindset Have To Do With Eczema?
In essence, this means our mindset towards an irritation can actually play a significant role in how that irritation develops. Eczema is loosely defined as a type of skin swelling or rash, the causes of which are theorised to be a combination of things like immune system, or environmental triggers, or stress. As a result, treatments for eczema usually consist of topical medicines such as creams, ointments, soaps, and therapies or environmental alterations. From a psychological point of view, it's interesting that behavioural alterations and stress reduction would be the first lines of defence.Your Eczema Options: Treatment vs Ending It
I'd like you to consider an analogy. Generally, which would we consider to be a bestselling item at a pharmacy: a painkiller, or a vitamin? Most people would agree that vitamins are relevant for protecting one's health. However, when we have a headache, most of us will generally reach for, or purchase, a painkiller first thing. But what if that headache came from a lack of Vitamin B6, or from an overconsumption of caffeine, or simply hormones? We might have actually been able to avoid that really easily by changing our behaviour! In that sense, we can all be trained to look at our irritations differently in order to control how they develop, and this rings true in particular with eczema.Attitudes: Outside View & Inside View
So far, I covered what I call “the outer view”. This view follows the pattern, there’s a red itchy patch out here on my skin, so I’ll apply a cream to this outside portion of me. Stress leads to dry skin. We provide a choice in relation to the dry skin symptom. Where I'd like to bring your focus to instead is what I call “revealing the clue”. Indeed, this forms the basis of many types of ancient and holistic medicine. In this “inner view'', we could follow a different pattern: reducing stress to prevent the next patches of dry skin, therefore obviating the use of any creams. Should the stress be so great as to generate patches of dry skin, the inner view teaches to avoid applying irritant creams to the dry skin.So: Can Eczema “Go Away”?
Overall, it seems that the key to making it “go away'' is about changing your mindset towards it as opposed to fighting against it. People can apply creams to manage the dry skin, but these creams will likely irritate and thereby turn what was just dry skin into eczema. That is the outer view based on dermatology. In essence, the new choice on offer is to address the stress which leads to the dry skin. That’s the inner view based on psychology. It seems too simple to be true, but in fact a mindset change is just one integral, broad part of your strategy. And many have seen success with this; one of my students so much so that she wrote a book aimed at the most vulnerable cohort: children and young adults. A quote from Terrance Ryan puts the inner view most succinctly: "Eczema. The Inside View provides the new choice of ending eczema proactively within weeks without drugs. The true power of Eczema. The inside view lies in how the inside view can be used so easily beside the existing outside view. The two are complementary and in combination become greater than either one alone.”Resources Help With Changing Your Mindset
This first part of the mindset change is just the tip of the iceberg, and I look forward to writing much more here about the various ways in which this mindset change can, and should, occur. Of course, what's presented here is also too much to be covered in a range of simple blog posts, so I'd like to provide some closing recommendations to help some of you on your own paths to ending your eczema. There is, of course, always my course and the resources of this blog. For those who would like a different perspective, I can recommend Bethan Amblin’s book, Eczema. The inside view – it’s a look at the inner view from someone who's actually been through a mindset change. Hopefully this will help some of you readers, and I look forward to uncovering more of the psychology behind making eczema go away in upcoming posts. Dermatology led you to red itchy skin; psychology will guide you to wonderful skin. Get your copy of Bethan’s book today.