Don’t Want Surgery? Practice Forgiveness.
Stress is not “all in your head.” Emotional states like anxiety and anger are whole-body experiences that can intensify pain, hinder coping, and complicate chronic illness. Recently, I spoke with David Hanscom, MD, an orthopedic surgeon who performed complex spine surgeries for thirty-two years. But everything changed when his own health began to fail. After developing 17 debilitating physical ailments, David was visibly suffering, hitting rock bottom health-wise, which forced him to find out why this was happening to him. Doing some deep soul searching, he recognized that he was totally out of touch with his emotional life, specifically his repressed anger. When he finally recognized the importance of facing his anger, it became the pivotal turning point in his remarkable recovery.
Physical Alarm Signals and Threat Physiology
As David began researching the effects of chronic stress, he realized that repressed emotions are often more physically damaging than expressed ones. Unresolved psychological pain locks our nervous system into a state of what he calls “threat physiology.” He learned that anxiety and anger are not merely psychological issues; they are physical alarm signals going off because the body senses danger. The anatomy of unresolved anger explains how threat physiology, activated by stress or emotional injury, triggers survival responses like fight-or-flight. Unresolved anger is also a by-product of unforgiveness, which got David thinking about the possibilities that forgiveness could offer in healing the mind and the body. The pieces of what was happening were beginning to fit together. Because the central nervous system is a key driver of chronic pain fueled by repressed emotions, David realized that unless this underlying physiological threat is addressed, surgeries are seldom successful. In fact, he concluded that many spine surgeries being performed today are unnecessary.
It took a lot of integrity to step back from his medical practice, but he could not ignore what his personal experience taught him. This led to the development of a self-directed healing approach he called the DOC (Direct Your Own Care) Journey, grounded in the idea that true healing requires attention to both mind and body. Fundamental to this thinking is the science of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to constantly rewire itself in response to our experiences and thoughts. When we are continually angry, our brains literally wire together to remain in a state of heightened threat and pain.
Forgiveness: Flipping the Switch to the Body’s Alarm System
Neuroplasticity, which tells us “neurons that fire together wire together,” can also be said to be true with forgiveness, and this is where forgiveness becomes a profound medical intervention. When we understand this, forgiveness is not merely a moral virtue but a practical tool for rewiring the brain. When we ruminate on our “grievance stories,” we reinforce the neural circuits of stress. But by actively practicing forgiveness and consciously changing the channel in our thoughts, we stop feeding those threat pathways and start creating new ones by redirecting them. Forgiveness acts as the ultimate signal to the nervous system that the danger has passed, turning off the body’s alarm system so that deep physical healing can finally begin.
Neuroscience backs up what David discovered through his own healing. When we hold onto anger, that emotion is registered in the amygdala—the brain’s emotional center—keeping the body locked in threat physiology. But research also shows that when we actively practice forgiveness, the brain’s frontal cortex steps in, quieting emotional responses and physically relaxing the body. Even more remarkably, recent brain imaging studies suggest that forgiveness doesn’t suppress painful memories: it updates them, making the memory itself feel less emotionally charged over time.
Facing Anger on the Path to Recovery and Forgiveness
This was David’s lived experience. As he worked on his own process of forgiveness, he, too, experienced healing. David realized that he had repressed a lot of his emotions growing up—especially anger—and as he walked down his own path to recovery, he finally got in touch with the anger he’d been avoiding. Facing his anger became one of the most profound outcomes of his healing process. This actually helped him to forgive his own mother, who he finally acknowledged was very abusive, and in the process found compassion for her, recognizing she was suffering too. It was this work that helped him shift from what he called “an angry zealot to more of a compassionate crusader,” fueling the desire that led him to leave surgery behind and help thousands of chronic pain patients instead.
Healing has its own way of bringing us many gifts if we are open to them. David realized forgiveness has the power to help with one of the most difficult aspects of our healing process: calming our nervous system. He understood that, as part of the forgiveness process, we learn to change our mindset, which in turn helps us let go of our personal emotional burden. This becomes a critical factor in calming not only our minds but also our bodies. His method follows a process that, in many respects, parallels the process of forgiveness. In learning to forgive, we have to first get in touch with what we are feeling. We have to own it and, in the process, learn how to calm ourselves down. David speaks of separating ourselves from old programming. Changing the channel, changing our mindset, is what the forgiveness process can bring to the table, which leads us to the most important step of letting go of our grievances to help our bodies return to balance and a healthy homeostasis.
To hear David Hanscom’s story in his own words, check out my latest podcast episode, He Broke Free From Chronic Pain. Subscribe to Voices of Peace: Personal Forgiveness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.