How To Communicate To Those Who Cannot with Mandy Brown on The Healers Café with Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND

As I was growing up, I tried to communicate with him. So not only was I trying to deal with a second language, German, but I was trying to deal with a grandfather being completely deaf. And family would say to me, “Oh, just nod. You just smile and nod.” I think it would enrage me, I’ll be thinking ‘No, I wish to communicate with him.’ There is this wonderful man, I can’t talk to him. So we sort of developed, I suppose a need surety of communication. So I said to my husband when we got married in our very early 20s,  I said, “No, we may have deaf children because it’s in my family.” And it was also in his family…we did. I said, “I want to be able to communicate if that happens”. So I said, “You know, I’ve got to become a teacher of the deaf.” And funnily enough, when I got to the point of qualifying I was equally astounded because this was in 1985, at that time, but in the area, I was living, sign language was not allowed. In the 1980s. I was absolutely…I was going to say horrified.

Mandy Brown  05:39

It’s a form of communication, what’s going on. So because of my own naivety and the enthusiasm, I became literally the first teacher in the county, or that may be in parts of Britain actually, to actually introduce sign language. And I remember when I went to my interview, with the headteacher, it’s an oral-only school so all the teachers would work with producing speech. So in my interview, very naive, the first job I ever had, I sort of said to the headteacher, “Look, can I sign with the children?” as she went, “No, no Mrs. Brown children don’t sign.” And I went, “Yes, but can I sign with the children as a form of communication, I will still use my voice, but I will sign at the same time. So I will talk and sign at the same time.” And she said, “Yes if you want to”. Fantastic. So I walked into this class, the first day I’ve ever been in teaching. And I had a class of 30 children, and 10 of them were deaf. So I walk in very naive, very young, and I said, “Good morning, my name is Mrs. Brown.” It went deadly quiet and all these children, these deaf children went, “We are not allowed! Not allowed! You’ll be in trouble! Not allowed!!!!!!!

Mandy Brown  07:00

And I was thinking, but they can sign. And I was going “Woah, slow down, slow down, how do you know how to sign?” and then were going shhh, pointing to some of the children, “Their family is deaf, their parents have taught them.” And I was absolutely astounded. But that was the start. So it was going on but hidden. And I was allowed, as in that role to actually speak and sign which is why I have to keep the hands down because I keep doing it now. Just speak and sign at the same time to all of the children in the class. So then I get to the point where I did the first assembly, I don’t know if you have those in the US but the whole school is in the hall. And I get up and I’ve got hearing children and deaf children we all get up we all speak we all sign we sang I Can Sing a Rainbow in sign language. And at the very end, the children were tight and the head teacher goes, “Mrs. Brown my office.” So I go to the office and she said, “You signed in assembly.” She gave me permission to sign in my classroom, but not for the whole school. So I was like, Whoa, Okay. Um, she said, “You know, that was the first assembly that all the other deaf children in all the other classes actually sat still, they were riveted. We didn’t have to send them out. We didn’t have to tell them off proper behavior. We didn’t have to tell them to keep watching”. She went “Carry on, I’m going to observe you.”

Manon Bolliger  08:30

Oh my goodness, what a story!

Mandy Brown  08:34

Long story short, we eventually got what was called Total Communication into the school. It was not very popular with other teachers, because they will have to go and learn. But we got it into the school. So that’s how I started.

Manon Bolliger  08:47

This is so fascinating. Why was it first of all, not allowed in the school, but also like you were saying even before that in Germany, like what’s the rationale?

Mandy Brown  09:02

It goes back to history in a particular conference called the Milan conference, and many, many, many years back before and it was also to do with a law, I believe that we had in England, in that you couldn’t inherit property, or be a member of the royal family taking a position, anything if you were deaf, or if you couldn’t speak and there were members of the royal family who were deaf. So it was really this very strong thing about you have to be able to speak. And there was a whole conference with lots of things going into it and they decided that it was better for rather than waving your hands around, it was better to learn to speak, which was great if you had become deafened, in other words, you’ve been born hearing and lost your hearing. Or if you’d only got in a sort of hot partial deaf or something but For those who were profoundly deaf, it took away such a lot And that there’s always been or there had been for many, many years up to around the 1980s. In England, this was a real problem, that it just wasn’t allowed. And I remember when I went in teacher training, I saw I went to school for the deaf for some teacher, you know, the practice time when you go, as a probationary teacher, I saw them tell the deaf children to sit on their hands. So my view is, and now luckily, it’s spread everywhere, you know, I thought the same as me is that if you can communicate, so if you can communicate with sign language, well, then you’ve got like a language to base your speech on. So my perfect example of this, which is actually a story of another book. My first example of this, we have a, one of our sons is deaf. He then became blind, but anyway, he’s deaf, he was deaf. And we were told he will never speak. He wouldn’t speak, but we were determined he would communicate. So one of the things  I remember quite clearly is if you come to our house, when our little one was, you know, so between the ages of zero to two, the house was full of signs, everything was labeled, if you stood still long enough, I would put a label on you saying Dr. M. I would have put a label on you, the chair would have a label, the house, like the glass, anything because that was all part of the total communication approach. So it wasn’t just about speaking and signing, it was about writing and reading and symbols and things like that. So we had an eye on my son’s perfect example, being profoundly deaf, they said he would never talk. So I remember when he was around two, three, maybe two years old, he came running in from the garden, he was outside with daddy. And he just went into this amazing array of sign language. And he put out this whole story sign-on, which is 3d. So you create the scene in front of you. So we created this beautiful scene of, I’ve just been in the garden, and I saw Daddy, and we went to the hedge at the back, we looked inside, and there was a cat, all these little tiny kittens, and the kittens were scrambling. And daddy put them in the box. And I had all this story from a child that was like, two and a half, three years old, which he wouldn’t have been able to do with speech alone. So what we did is we treated English as a second language. So he would come up to me and he would go, “Mommy, I forgotten. How do I say flour in English?” And I go, Ah, flour. And then I would say put your teeth on your lips, fff, fff, flour. So flour and sugar. Oh, and then we just fingerspell it, flour. Okay, and off we go. And that’s sort of how he did it. And how we did it. So it was the whole thing.

Manon Bolliger  12:44

Oh, that’s incredible, I don’t know which way to go with you. There’s so many parts here. So actually, how is that now your son, he’s older, he’s moved out and how is his life with everything you’ve been able to do?

Mandy Brown  13:18

We would need another couple of hours to talk about that. If I just take the time when he did leave home when he left home, so he is deaf-blind. He also has epilepsy, he has many difficulties. And there were various other little, little tiny things. But as a deafblind person, he was able as a 20-year-old to move into semi-independent living, so he will do nothing. He even has a little job in a cafe. And yeah, he was great. There are things that have happened since then, which is why there happens to be a book about him. But a real roller coaster if I just throw in a few words like abuse and mental health issues, etc. But yes you were asking me where we originally started, it has to do with my desire to help people communicate. And that continued on the thread even to now where I work with contented dementia, and also what I call connection therapy to work with people with dementia and also healing. Communication literally has and interpreting and helping people communicate has worked right in my mind as far as the meaning now.

Manon Bolliger  14:39

Okay, so let’s go, it might be skipping, but dementia. And because there’s definitely a communication issue there, so could you explain a little bit what you’re seeing and what happens and what might be helpful to understand better because I think it seems like it’s very misunderstood. What, dementia, not just what it is, but how you can communicate. And I think it’s our human nature to want to communicate.

Mandy Brown  15:19

I mean, I can talk professionally, but I could also talk quite personally because in January, my mother died and she had advanced dementia. So I’ve had the personal journey as well.  But from the point of view of my mother, when we knew, and this is when I became even more involved in a way, when we first realized about seven or eight years ago, that she had dementia, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. So at that point, I started thinking, ‘Well, how am I going to start communicating?’ My mom loved to talk a little bit like me, yap, yap yap continuously. And already, I could see her ability to communicate breaking down. So the one thing we did, and one thing I would advise people to do is to work with a system called Contented Dementia. This is not something I’ve invented, it’s something that is over in England. But it’s one of the things that I take into the homes when I go into the homes as well. And with Contented Dementia, the idea is to help the person remain in a contented state. So you don’t want the person with dementia being in that moment of what we call the red zone where they’ll be scared, and they’re frightened, screaming, or they become angry or fighting. So I wanted to know how to avoid that and how to make sure we’ve had for the best, we could have a very contented dementia person. And so we help my mom through that. And one of the things you do is you work with before they get sort of further on, you work with the person concerned. And I sat down with my mother. And we went through a long document effectively, talking about what happened to her in her past. So it’s about collecting all their history. But also collecting things about where you were in hospital, these will come in relevant later. And, you know, thinking about if, if I am not there, if I wasn’t there, or my father wasn’t there, what would make my mom feel secure. Because my father died, the same day, my mother was diagnosed with dementia. My father was diagnosed with cancer. And he died. And we have this kind of …….what we do. And my mom would say to me, “Oh, Where’s your dad?” Now, this is a perfect example, going to dementia, which is where there’s a little bit of a problem with some people. My mom would say, where’s your dad? Now, I could say, each time that she had not understood, or some people say, remember, to understand dementia. That’s not really a good way of explaining what’s happening. But I could have said, Oh, I’m really sorry but Dad died. But if I did that, for mom, it would be the first time she’s heard it. The following day, it happened again. If I turn around again, again, I said, Oh, he died. She was like, Oh, no, every time it was that horrible reaction for her. Okay, what would mom be okay with and what would I be okay with saying? So I would say, you know, Mom, I don’t know, it’s probably playing golf somewhere. Or, you know, he’s probably looking after Dean, which is with one of our sons. Nope. In my head, I’m thinking it’s probably wherever he is. And he’s spiritual, and he’s playing golf, or he is a guardian of our children. And so it’s what you’re comfortable with, saying, with some people say that’s lying. It’s like, this is about not being cruel. This is about being kind. It’s not about lying. It’s about helping them because as time goes on, the way that it works with dementia is that we, the person with dementia is literally taking photographs if you like almost what is happening. It’s like the camera gets shut. And so they don’t actually record that moment. It’s not that they forgotten it, they never recorded it in the first place. So you can’t get angry with the machine and if they haven’t recorded that memory. But one of the other things that we find with dementia is that although they may not remember the details of things that have happened more recently, you know who their names, places, etc. They do, people with dementia do hold on to the emotions.

Manon Bolliger  19:47

Hey, it’s Dr. Manon and I just wanted to take a moment commercial break to ask you to subscribe to my podcast and kindly leave a comment if you’re enjoying this. And also, just to let you know, I have tips for people in health looking for solutions to some variety of issues. It’s more like an attitude of health. And they’re entertaining short videos. And you can find those under drmanonbolliger.com/tip. The link is here and I look forward to hearing from you.

Mandy Brown  20:32

So when my mom has an emotional reaction. When somebody else walks in, my mom would have no emotional reaction, if you saw her photograph something she might have an emotional reaction. I mean, even when I’d written the book, the Nipples Kneecaps book, I sat down with my mom and I read it to her or read parts to her. And she would remember them and get sort of upset and cry, but then also laugh. And so it wasn’t for her there were like a brand new story. But what she remembered was the emotion. So she was connecting back with that. But definitely from an intensive dementia point of view, we’re looking at helping the person remain in that positive space. It’s a massive thing, a massive program, which is why it’s very hard to condense it down from the point of communication mode, which is what you also asked me. And to be honest, one of the things that I do is I actually sit down, and I will get eye contact with the person I am with. I give them the space for me to look in their eyes. And these are people that are maybe I’ve never met before. I look in their eyes. And it’s almost like I’m saying to their soul, I’m reaching out to their soul, you’re important. I’m listening, I know you can’t speak I know you can’t communicate, but I’m here. So it’s all about holding space. One of the things we did when we decided to go in and do the research project. At the time, the reason I did a research project to do with healing was because at the time there are lots of research projects about people with early-onset dementia, but very few regarding or related to people with advanced dementia, it was almost like it’s too far gone that, you know, when you get to advanced dementia, you’re not talking, you’re not controlling any bodily function, you may be immobile. Or you may be almost in a vegetative state in your bed. That’s what I mean by advanced dementia. So I wanted to know, and test out whether if we gave a form of spiritual healing or Reiki or energy healing to people in advanced dementia, whether it would work. What would happen, would we improve their well-being? Now, if you’re thinking about if you’re trying to do a research project on that one of the first problems you have is that you have to get consent. Because most people think, but we did that when we approached all the families, we explained what we were doing, and got the families to the ones who are happy. And we said you know,  would your mom or dad had been happy to be involved in this time, so that’s how we got around anyway we eventually did. But then, of course, we had to document so we did what’s called the Michael test, which is a series of like little questions with little smiley faces and frowny faces. And we basically thought we’d work with two problems, and wellbeing for each patient, or each person we worked with. So we need to identify what those two problems were. So the only way we could do that was by asking the key pairs, or the family members, or if the person itself had some expression skill on them. So it was a mixture. To be honest, it was mainly the characters that were able to give us information, but it would be things like not being able to sleep and restlessness, problems with there’s a whole list of different problems that they had, as well as on the scale of zero to six with zero being depressed, fed up, want to give up. And 6 being I really love my life. We did a scale of that. And they were all obviously, to be honest, towards zero. They were like one-twos and threes. So then we go in and they said to me, Well, they won’t sit still. They’ll get up, walk away. And I went well if they do, we’ve got a choice. We can either follow them with trying to heal, or we can just see what happens. We’ll just get up. And that was one of the first amazing things we found by the time we did all of the research. We went back in and we had a control group as well. we’d met but then we didn’t give any healing to but morally at the end I had to go back again.

Manon Bolliger  24:57

That is definitely one of the problems with therapy.

Mandy Brown  25:03

But one of the brilliant things we found is that not only was I able because it was another healer, it was Steve, my partner, he was doing the main healing. And I was just there more as communication. And obviously to take the records and things like that. But what we found is I got eye contact with them all,  they all gave me eye contact, most of them almost 99% all fell asleep or went into a deep relaxed state. These are people who fidget, get up, walk around, can’t do anything, get angry. But the best thing about it was the communication. We’ve got verbal communication, people who haven’t spoken after healing. I remember one lady, she sat there. And you know, this was sort of at half an hour before she’d been putting stuff and things. We did the healing. And although when we walked in, she went, well, you can go away. But we stayed and chatted to And we find that she sat there, but afterward, she said, “You know what? I’m really angry.” And I went, “Are you?” This is somebody didn’t really…why are you angry? She said, Well, I think I’m angry. And she’s coming in little words, but angry life. So I said, well, let’s talk about that. So we had long conversations. And after we left, the home phoned me up, no, but what have you done? I thought we couldn’t believe she not only got out of her room, but she was smiling. And she came and joined in with the songs and dances. And we’re like, fantastic.

Mandy Brown  26:44

So it was amazing. The different things that happen, but obviously I haven’t, I’ve written it up, the official write up, but I’m hoping to put that into a proper book. So we can share it. So that other people can see what we did and maybe copy it. And, you know, do more studies out there. Because it was phenomenal results. Absolutely brilliant results.

Manon Bolliger  27:03

That’s incredible.

Mandy Brown  27:04

I was very, very happy. happily surprised. Because I was prepared for it not to work, you know.

Manon Bolliger  27:11

And that’s why you got your PhD in psychology. So you could actually do the research.

Mandy Brown  27:21

I did the psychology, I did my PhD all the way up to I didn’t finally get my PhD, I did all the study. But I didn’t do it. Because I decided I didn’t want to be a psychologist I actually enjoyed studying

Manon Bolliger  27:39

Well, with healing like that. And the results. I mean, it’s the strength of communication and healing is obvious. It’s so much of it if we can just connect with people. They feel heard. I mean, that’s a huge part of it. And I was doing a little bit of research on metaphor and how people communicate their experiences. And just to just listen to how people experience their experience is it’s already extremely liberating, and then you add any therapy that does no harm. And you’ve got many possibilities and a lot of results. Okay, our time is coming to a close. And I have not asked you about your book yet. If you want to read a little bit? What is this dying with or without cancer?

Mandy Brown  28:40

Cancer was actually inspired by my husband, who in 1986, was sent home to die and was told, we were told by the consultant. You know, I’ve seen many patients in my time, but at best he has three months to live. But we will help him to die as painlessly and as peacefully as possible. So the story The book is, it’s a true inspirational story covering just a two-year period of what for us was the most dramatic, shocking, funny, and painful events that played out in the lives of me, Steve and Alex are old at the time. And of course, Steve is alive and well today. You know, he was the healer I was just talking about going into the year dementia homes. And so what happened and what we did so differently, compared to others at the time is and how we survived is what is revealed in the book. So it is for all cancer patients and their families and anyone who’s facing a challenge that they feel is impossible to overcome. Because, you know, it’s a story of hope, and I hope people will draw strength from the story. So I’ll read you a little bit about what has happened. Probably page three.

Mandy Brown  30:08

This was the first time I had seen Steve after I’d been given his terminal diagnosis, and the prognosis of just three months to live and I had to break the news to him. “Steve interrupts tumors, what do you mean? I’d asked the same question. Cancer, you have a type of cancer. Steve lays back in his bed, his stomach, bloated, out absurdly from his skeleton draped in flesh. His face is gaunt and his eyes sullen.  I can only imagine what he’s going through his head. In a few brief seconds. Before he speaks. He holds up three fingers. counting them down. He says one I want to live to be with you. I want to grow old with you. My eyes fill up with reciprocating love. And two, I want to see my son all grown up. Now Alexander isn’t even one yet. But yet he will be a lion of strength for us both in the months ahead. And three, I want to be a fencing champion. What? Where does that come from? Steve doesn’t even fence. I tremble inside. Maybe I don’t know, Steve as well as I thought. Later, he’ll explain to me that he fenced once when an Australian supply teacher came to a secondary school that Steve hates mainstream sports like football and cricket. We both do martial arts and dance. But I had never heard you mention fencing before. Steve, I believe that you can beat this. In truth, Steve lacks confidence in his own abilities and skills. He confided in me once or twice. I feel like I failed to make the grade. I’m not good enough or clever enough compared to others. I know how wrong this is. But I’m aware of the depth of his fear and how hard it is to dislodge. In an instant, I decided to turn this negative thinking on its head and take a gamble. If I was wrong, I would have to live with the consequences forever.”

Manon Bolliger  32:49

That is beautifully written but my goodness.

Mandy Brown  32:54

We sort of went on. I remember at one point I was in bed when I realized that Steve had this terminal cancer and I cried and cried and cried. Of course, I did. And I was in bed. And suddenly I sat up and I spoke to the walls effectively and went just stop.

Mandy Brown  33:14

What am I doing? Because I’m crying. Because I Mandy do not want to learn, I don’t want to be a mom without my husband and a father of my child. And I decided that all that energy of crying and negativity and I’m gonna channel it to something else. And I thought I will cry if and when he dies. But for now, I’m going to channel that energy into creating an environment that will aid Steve’s recovery. Even though all the doctors, all the nurses, all the friends’ everybody around us, it was like a tsunami of negativity. But that’s what the books about. It’s how we got through that. And the sorts of things we did, the funny things, the things now when we look back, I’ve actually, we’ve been able to see through the years how if you like sciences caught up on what we did, instinctively, intuitively. we’re now seeing proof of here, here, here, and here. So Oh, by the way, the very back of the book there is for those that like this sort of thing there in the appendix, there is I think a 17 point a beat cancer plan. And what I’ve done is I’ve just basically tried to get everything that we did and put them down so people can also choose all I like to do that I’d like to do that. So it’s just to make it a little bit easier for the people as well.

Manon Bolliger  34:37

Well, we’ll definitely put the link under the interview. So we can get this book and I’m gonna get this book because it’s no, it’s, I see in 30 years of practice possibility. I see that the verdict is not out. You know, maybe the prognosis but what’s that based on? It’s on a diagnosis. And it’s really not about us and what, how we’re in charge of our own destiny. And I think you know when I see that you switched, in order to channel literally the energy to remove all the negative thinking and all of that. It’s huge.

Mandy Brown  35:24

I even banned my own mother and his grandmother from seeing him. That sounds awful and terrible. But every time they saw him, there’s only for a short period, he said, every time they saw him, they would just be in floods of tears. And said to people frantic to come and visit Steve, fantastic come visiting, but talk about positive things. We want to know what you’re doing with your life. We don’t want you to come in and go, Oh, it’s a shame. I’m really sorry. We know that we know our friends well enough to know, they don’t want this to be happening. But it was positive. And one of the funny things was even though I had the Epiphany about not crying. One of the things Steve said, just shortly after the excerpt I read was, if you don’t cry, I won’t cry. And we made a pact. And I sort of said, well, you can cry if you’re in intense pain. And he did, at some point, but he meant not crying for self-pity. Because almost like a waste of energy, I know that there’s a need to get it out. And yeah, you do. But you don’t wallow in it. That’s the difference.

Manon Bolliger  36:29

Exactly. Because you’re just creating the patterns. And it’s funny just to share, I actually was diagnosed with stage four cancer myself. And I chose not to tell my family. And,  it was because I knew I needed all of my energy to help me stay positive. And, you know, succeed as I’ve seen my patients succeed, but I needed to be that for me as well. Because otherwise I would be caught up in their fear, and in their sadness, and in all my energy would be taking care of them. And so I chose to not tell them till much later, which of course, you know, be seen as hurtful on some level because did I not trust them? And it’s not about that. You have one choice of your energy especially such crucial times and yeah, and I got through it completely naturally in the other side, and that’s like 20 plus years ago now so

Mandy Brown  37:40

Fantastic, similar story that you’re probably saying you’ve worked with, we’ve worked with cancer patients and other patients in all those years since as well. And you see the difference. Almost like I don’t when you can sense it, but sometimes you feel the energy of a person. Try I mean, I see all of the different healers’ practitioners are all like a whole team that are there at your disposal to bring in and use if you are the patient, but same time you are in control, you have to decide I want that I wonder not allow other people to say like this doctor said to us, we had two or three doctors say to us absolutely no hope you know, Steve’s body was full of tumors or secondary tumors. Absolutely. On the X-rays, you couldn’t even see his organs anymore. In fact, they got all the other X-ray people in to come and look because he was a bit of a star for the wrong reasons. It was oh come look at this you have never because you can’t believe this is absolutely full. We live to tell the tale

Manon Bolliger  38:47

Has that been recognized by the oncologist and you get a chance

Mandy Brown  38:54

To be honest, the one that we, the second one we went with. He was absolutely brilliant. He had the bedside manner of a mortician, but he was brilliant. And to be fair, he actually said to us at one point, you know, I’ve been an oncologist for 30-40 years and I see very few miracles. And this is one of them, whatever you are doing, keep doing. And that was when these tumors were beginning to reduce. So we did and just like you and I yeah, brilliant, well done.

Manon Bolliger  39:37

Wow, what a fascinating interview for communicating as the basis of everything and even in the healing here. It was about having a language you both shared, which is that language of hope and positive energy and getting through this and you know, it’s your life. It is tied together.

Mandy Brown  40:06

Communicating in a way with the cancer because we did do a lot of that. I mean, there are funny things in the book when you read it about how Steve worked with that and actually talked to the cancer in a particular way. That was quite interesting. But yeah, that is it is all mushed. Together, it is about communicating, being aware, and being in control of your own body, you know, we create our own destinies.

Manon Bolliger  40:27

Well, thank you very much. And yeah, we’ll be in touch. definitely give me the link for the book as I will put that in the interview when it airs.

Mandy Brown  40:36

Thank you. Well, my website is either mandybrown.co.uk or nipplestokneecaps.com. Yes. Thank you. It’s been wonderful to meet you and I hope we get to chat again. We have lots of subjects to talk on.

Thank you for joining us. For more information, go to DrManonBolliger.com.