Customer Reviews

The Instinct to Heal: Curing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy

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Record numbers of people are on Ritalin and other behavioral drugs. Yet, they are not cured of what ails them. They simply get alleviation from the symptoms. Others have been in talk therapy for months, or even years, and yet still grapple with the problems that sent them there in the first place. Is there any hope for these people? After reading "The Instinct to Heal," one can only answer with a resounding "Yes."

Behavioral drugs treat only symptoms, and they carry undesirable side-effects. Talk therapy seeks to resolve the underlying problems, but it addresses our conscious thoughts to do so. And therein lies the problem.

The human brain is composed of two structures, one imposed over the other. These two structures are very different in construction. The logical brain--the one that contains our conscious thoughts--forms a sort of covering over the emotional brain. This emotional brain is composed of limbic structures--and these are the same in all mammals.

The key to effective healing is to "reprogram" the emotional brain. This may sound like an impossible job, but it's not. The emotional brain contains natural mechanisms for self-healing. Thus, Servan-Schreiber's "instinct to heal" concept.
Servan-Schreiber explains this concept in a logical, lucid manner. But, he does this in a way that allows us reach our own conclusions. Topics covered include brain structure, heart coherence, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, the energy of light, the power of Qi, the role of Omega 3 fatty acids (or lack thereof) in depression, the role of exercise, and emotional communication.

Throughout, Servan-Schreiber provides solid evidence, anecdotal accounts, research data, and even diagrams. You can't help but learn, and enjoy doing so, as you go through this book.
Servan-Schreiber ends the text of the book by providing practical guidance for the reader to begin his or her own healing process. He makes this part easy for the reader who, though knowledgeable at this point, might still be overwhelmed by trying to put all of this together. Servan-Schreiber provides a nine-step approach, which solves that problem.

Many books that hold out promise of a better life are often thick with paper and thin with intellect. That is not the case, here. Lest you have any doubts, Servan-Schreiber has provided an extensive appendix of resources, which anyone can use to explore this topic or related ones more thoroughly. He's also provided an extensive notes section.

If you really want to tap into your own inner resources, if you're tired of expensive "cures" and false hopes, if you want an end to medical myopia in your own life or that of someone you love, this book is for you.

"The Instinct to Heal" takes a combined look at healing through various non-traditional techniques and the most recent research in the interconnectedness of our various systems. Several relationships are examined in detail starting with neurobiology and the relationship between the emotional and logical brains. From there the author moves to the heart/brain relationship and how heart coherence affects so many parts of your emotional being. He also examines more surprising relationships like those involved in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing techniques. This particular technique uses rapid eye movement to quickly heal emotional problems. Other healing techniques examined include the energy of light, the power of Qi, Omega-3 Fatty Acids and the emotional brain, love, and emotional communication. This is a fascinating journey into the relationships between our various biological and emotional systems that shows how we have an instinctual ability to heal ourselves. This is a definitive work on new research in the relationship between the mind and body and a recommended read.

After suffering from anxiety and depression for years I felt a bit helpless. This book helped to open a hopeful horizon. By simply following the guidance from this book I have become an absolute advocate of Mr. Schreibner's advice. This is a compassionate and human approach towards a growing epidemic in our culture. If you or someone you love suffers from anxiety and / or depression you can only be helped by this book. A+!

It is easy to read and easy to follow--and written by a science-based MD/psychiatrist with the highest credentials. The book brings together and explains treatments to heal a range of problems confronting millions of people. All the treatments have been verified by science and are readily available--but unknown to people who are suffering needlessly. The book was a best seller throughout Europe for months. It's great that it is finally available in the United States!

Dr. Servan-Schreiber walks you through various, alternative methods for dealing with depression. He explains everything in easy-to-understand language without talking down to the reader. He combines common sense approaches such as nutrition, exercise and meditation with more state of the art methods such as EMDR, dawn and stimulation therapies. He also makes a solid case for acupuncture, which I've always believed was great for alleviating some of depression's more stubborn symptoms. I recommend this on my Depression site at BellaOnline and just had to put my two cents worth in here. Buy this book!

I tend to be a bit skeptical of self-help books because I have seen so many sloppy "new-age" versions, but this one is definitely on a different plane. Using the workings of the limbic (emotional) brain as his organizing principle, the author covers the therapeutic effects of diverse topics, from acupuncture, exercise, diet, light therapy, enhancing communication skills, and community service, to the lesser known practices of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and cardiac coherence. All of the chapters are very well presented with generous reliance on scientific information and studies, so that even being a skeptic accustomed to picking apart scientific literature, all the approaches struck me as at least worth exploring. Because many of these therapies are inexpensive, take time to explain, and are not capable of being patented, the business and medical establishments tend to underplay them. Many a time I have gone to the doctor for some problem or other, and left with a prescription for a medication that gave me side effects worse than the underlying condition. If this book were taken to heart, many people who go to their internist with symptoms of insomnia, anxiety, and pain, would get a prescription to exercise and meditate, instructions on how to eat more beneficially for their brain chemistry, and advice on how to reduce interpersonal conflicts. Even if you're not depressed (I am not and bought the book for someone close to me), it is a fascinating and rewarding read, and suggests many ways (some extremely simple) in which we can enhance the quality of life for ourselves and those around us.

I have been battling depression (aka: The Big D) for over two years - since I was riffed - and this is the first book to actually help me. A lot of the books on depression seemed to be too academic. Or they focused on somebody else's depression. This book really talked to me. There are valuable suggestions, lots of practical advice, enough experimental data to make it sound like it might actually work for me, and no preaching. I highly recomend it to anybody who is fighting depression or knows somebody who is.

Instinct to Heal is a wonderful book on mind-body healing. The case studies are excellent and drive home the points the author makes with interest and clarity. The book is easy to read, yet filled with useful and practical information. The chapter on the cognitive and emotional brain is the best explanation I've ever read about how the brain functions. The chapters on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and acupuncture invite us to try two methods that have shown to be enormously beneficial from treating trauma to emotional blocks. Dr. David Servan-Schrieber has written a provocative book on how we can take responsibility on our journey to holistic healing. I highly recommend it.

With millions of Americans suffering from stress, anxiety and depression, Dr. David Servan-Schreiber offers seven holistic alternatives to the usual chemical-baring the soul solution. Using his work as a Doctors without Borders participant where economics forces non cost solutions, Dr. Servan-Schreiber provides other possibilities that he has observed work. Though anecdotal and the author agrees greater scientific testing should occur, he combines his observation with data in an easy to follow and even easier to use format. Readers learn about Qi (acupuncture), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, dawn simulation, heart coherence and nutrition, etc. As in the third world nations, economics plays a vital role in American as Dr. Servan-Schreiber feels many of these stand-ins are not given a chance because there is not a lot of money to be made on them. Adding a chapter on the importance of and improving personal communication in any relationship (including with one's self - "to thine own self be true"), readers receive a terrific constructive and effective reference book that offers help to those who find drugs and chit chat failing.

Harriet Klausner

I admit that i started reading this book in a skeptical frame of mind, wary of a yet another psychiatrist who has jumped on the New Age wagon. I've changed my mind. The book is competent, informative and above all, brings us a glimpse of the author as a caring, inquisitive, unorthodox and perhaps even visionary, therapist. I liked him right away.

Pharmacological and talk therapies have enriched the Big Pharma and countless analytical therapists over the past 50 years. This book book covers, rather comprehensively, the alternatives to this paradigm in which people are powerless with respect to the doctor and the shrink. The patient, says DSS, carries the seeds of his health inside his own body and mind. That makes him/her responsible for their well-being. True, the access is often not easy, obscured by old patterns yet help with techniques such Porges' cardiac coherence, EMDR, good nutrition (fish oil!), exercise, resetting the circadian clock with dawn simulation and, especially, good old-fashioned love & caring provides us with tools that every one of us can, and perhaps should, use for ourselves. Tools that are non-invasive, cheap and intrinsically self-empowering.

What would I have liked to see in the book that wasn't there? I believe it would have been of interest to the reader to lay out the nefarious practices of the Pharma industry in their soulless search of profit. The Pharma budget for marketing exceeds their budget for R&D - through prescription data mining they know exactly which doctor proscribes which drugs and thereby get an effective tool for a marketing offensive aimed at those doctors. Psychiatrists are often paid unbelievable amounts of money to prescribe certain (anxiolytic, antipsychotic etc) drugs regardless of their side effects or efficacy re: generics. The money for this ultimately comes form the taxpayers' pockets. So the first thing to do would be to prohibit, by law, the companies' prescription data mining.

Sometimes, DSS may appear a bit too uncritical. Case studies champion the exceptional over the lawful and the average. Servan-Schreiber doesn't mention that an unbiased study conducted by Edzard Ernst (the world's first professor of complementary medicine), revealed that ~95% of alternative treatments (in fields ranging from acupuncture, herbal medicine, homeopathy to reflexology, etc), yield results that are statistically indistinguishable from placebo. I, for the life of me, cannot understand the effectiveness of techniques such as EMDR. Why - and how - can it work? Synchrony across the corpus callosum? But this is a minor point. DSS succeeds in creating an effective balance between his own case studies (important because they provide a glimpse in his working style) and his clinical/basic science background. This book is a good, if highly personal and thus perhaps a bit skewed, entryway into the world of complementary psychotherapy that should be useful for therapists & clients alike.