Coincidences and the Unconscious Helped Me Find Meaning

As humans, we are built to look for patterns in life as a way of developing a better understanding of our history and predicting what might be expected to happen. The identification of such patterns can also help us achieve a better perspective on life.

When we examine our own lives for patterns, we can sometimes ascribe a spiritual meaning to our existence. For instance, in a previous blog, I described how my involvement in various college experiences, including studies of biology, journalism, psychology, and religion gave me the background necessary to develop my career as a pediatrician who teaches children about using the power of their minds through hypnosis.

As a college student, I did not have any idea that my varied interests could be combined into a single spiritually fulfilling career. Thus, looking back at my life, it seems as if I have been guided by an external force to my current profession from which I can help so many children better understand their potential positive role in this world.

This spiritual feeling empowers me daily to care for my patients with patience, love, and gratitude for the opportunity to serve in my role.

Three more examples from my life illustrate how deriving a spiritual meaning from patterns in our lives can shape our perspective about life and our subsequent actions.

A New Home

A decade ago, my wife and I began contemplating relocating our family from the Northeast to a warmer location near an ocean. We thought about southern California as a possible destination and contacted a realtor who asked us to describe our ideal house.

Off the top of my head, I replied that we would want a house near the coast, with a single level that would be easier to navigate when we retired, with two to three bedrooms, as we were downsizing, a home office that I could use to offer hypnosis and counseling, located near a university, in case I wanted to teach, and near a synagogue.

Unfortunately, we found out that there were no houses within our budget that fit those criteria in the expensive coastal area.

When we visited southern California for vacation half a year later, we decided to look at houses for sale in order to become better educated. We were far from ready to move because my career as a pediatric pulmonologist was in full swing in Syracuse.

We ran into a realtor who was aware of a house that was not yet on the market that might be in our price range. It turned out that this house matched each of the criteria I had mentioned as “ideal.”

I recall saying, “This house must be meant for us.” I had not imagined that it was possible to find such a house, and yet, through some coincidence (chance? synchronicity? guidance?) that house found us. Furthermore, the owners of the house wanted to remain there another couple of years and were willing to pay us rent until they moved. That worked for us because it gave me two years to wind down my career in Syracuse.

Buying that house led to our move to southern California and the transition of my practice from pulmonology to counseling several years before we had planned on departing the Northeast. And that move led me to encounters with more than 3,000 new patients, including those who further cemented my belief that we are guided through life. I describe two of those patients below.

Source: NYC Russ/Shutterstock

Anxiety on 9/11

In 2016, I worked with a 14-year-old patient who was dealing with anxiety. Earlier that year, he had refused to go to school, which turned out to be related to a falling out with one of his friends.

On September 12, he contacted me to let me know that he had become very nervous on the previous day and was unable to calm himself with hypnosis nor identify the cause of his anxiety through consultation with his subconscious.

When I saw him later that day, I asked his subconscious (through finger motion) to explain why the anxiety had started. Following several of my questions, the subconscious said that the anxiety was related to its death on 9/11 in the patient’s previous life.

The subconscious gave many details about the previous life about which the patient denied knowledge. When I asked the subconscious if it made the patient nervous every 9/11, it responded that it only made him nervous that year. I asked why, and it responded, “Because you are around to interpret.”

Unconscious Essential Reads

How Our Actions Reveal More Than We Realize

Counseling People With Unusual Abilities

Thus, it seemed to me that, somehow, this patient and I were meant to work together. This perspective was reinforced when this patient later told me about a vision in which he saw Hebrew, as detailed in a previous blog. Even though he had never studied Hebrew, he was able to point to Hebrew letters on a chart that corresponded to the letters he saw in his mind. I could interpret what he saw because I am a native Hebrew speaker.

PANDAS and CF

Also in 2016, I met a 15-year-old with a history of PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Strep). In this illness, it is believed that when patients contract strep throat, the body’s antibodies against strep end up attacking the brain. Overnight, previously healthy individuals can develop OCD, tics, and severe anxiety.

My patient developed such severe anxiety and OCD at the age of 12 that he refused to leave his bedroom for nearly two years. He did not socialize with friends, nor was he able to go to school. His symptoms persisted despite two psychiatric hospitalizations and work with three therapists.

Once he learned to use hypnosis and allowed me to interact with his subconscious, he improved rapidly. I would ask his subconscious if he was ready for the next step in therapy and would only proceed with the subconscious’ okay. He left his bedroom within a month, reestablished friendships after another month, and returned to school two months later.

Over the subsequent years, he continued to improve as he brought his anxiety and OCD under control. Four years later, he started losing weight because he had developed a decreased appetite because of abdominal pain. He also developed sinus pain. I encouraged him to seek a medical evaluation. However, the physicians he saw could not explain why he had developed his symptoms.

By the time he had lost 30 pounds, I was very concerned. It was then that he told me more about his medical history, which rang a bell. His symptoms were similar in nature to patients I had treated with CF (Cystic Fibrosis), as I had been the director of a CF Center when I practiced as a pulmonologist. CF is a genetic disease that often presents with respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms and is usually life-shortening.

I urged him to be tested for CF, but the tests (a sweat test and genetic screening for the 45 common CF mutations) did not reveal that he had CF. I told him that I knew of patients with mild CF variants who have uncommon mutations that do not lead to an abnormal sweat test. I urged him to undergo a full genetic analysis (involving checking for over 2,000 mutations), but none of his doctors were willing to perform this expensive testing.

I thought it was important that my patient undergo this testing because of his worsening medical condition. Therefore, I decided that since I am a licensed physician in California, I could and should order it. Indeed, he turned out to have a rare variant of CF, for which he has since been receiving therapy at a CF Center, and feeling much better.

I told this patient that I thought I was the only person in the world who would have been able to diagnose him with CF. Another counselor might have been able to help him with his anxiety and OCD, but I am certain that there is no other counselor with a background in treating CF patients similar to my own. Again, I felt that I was meant to work with this patient.

Takeaway

I have had experiences with several other patients with “coincidental” successes. I do not believe these occur by chance because there are too many such examples in my life. Thinking about such patterns in my life helps to solidify my spiritual beliefs, to view my work with patients as a manifestation of spiritual work, and to give me a calming perspective about facing life challenges.

Each of us is capable of such self-study of patterns in our lives. Naturally, the older we become, the more we can study our life experiences to help us gain more perspective. We can gain additional perspective by learning about and looking for patterns within the lives of others.