My Life-Changing Experience With The Mind-Body Connection

I started to practice control over my itchy skin when I was attending San Francisco State University in the early 2000s. In 2004, I was a sophomore studying public health and minoring in holistic health. In my holistic health classes, I learned about the mind-body connection.

I loved the idea of being able to use my mind to direct my body and its reactions to things, like potentially itching. When I learned about this connection, I decided to try to experiment and see if I could use it to my advantage.

How did I use the mind-body connection?

The way I would try to practice this is that if I started to feel an itch coming on, instead of reacting the way I did before (which would be to panic, freak out, get anxious, and everything building up into a big explosion of scratching, bleeding, screaming and crying), I would do the exact opposite effect and remain as calm and grounded as possible despite the itching. It was very much a situation of faking it until I actually made it come true for myself. It was also a matter of repeating it over and over until my new reaction became my default habit. I eventually learned to react calmly to itching on autopilot.

I also learned to detach my identity and self-worth to how much or little I scratched. I learned to practice more acceptance and self compassion if I did scratch instead of judging myself and making myself feel worse about an experience that was already painful enough on its own.

Did remaining calm while itching help?

What I found through practicing this detachment to the experience of scratching and taking a more philosophical approach as in what is this experience teaching me, what can I learn from it, and how can I improve it, I started to just not feel as itchy. Somehow taking this more calm, emotionally detached approach to my itching helped me to not be so obsessed with it and controlled by it. I felt like in a weird way I had become codependent on an identity level as to how good of a person I was based on how little I scratched. I realized how much meaning and judgment I put into thinking I was a bad person or a person without value or agency if I scratched a lot.

The holistic health classes and meditation as well as the idea of the mind-body connection helped me to take all of the power away from the itching and my reaction to it and it empowered me to ask myself what was happening to make me feel more itchy and it helped me to be more observant of the different variables in my life whether they were stressed, food, environment, or my relationships.

I hope that this perspective helps another eczema warrior out there think differently about themselves, their itching, and what it all means or even what it does not have to mean about them or their skin. Let me know if you try the ideas of mind-body connection and detachment to aid in your itching and scratching self-control. I'd love to hear your results in the comments down below!