Psychosomatics: how emotions and hiddenness harm the body

Peptic ulcer disease, rheumatoid arthritis, bronchial asthma, and colitis are just a few of the diseases that can occur due to chronic stress, depression, and anxiety. Psychosomatic diseases can appear regardless of gender and age. The main cause of such disorders is the suppression of emotions, when a person has not shared his own impressions and experiences.

The impact of stress on the body

Our body reacts to negative emotions instantly. They increase the impulse activity of the nervous system in order to release adrenaline. This neurotransmitter, along with elevated cortisol, can cause rapid heart rate, dizziness and nausea, tremors, and increased sweating. Abdominal pain, chest pain, and headaches may also appear. If such phenomena become permanent, the body's protective functions will decrease, fatigue, drowsiness, reduced work capacity, and apathy may occur. Chronic stress and depression, emotions that you can't let out, narcissism and constant dissatisfaction with yourself, anxiety and fears - all this can be the impetus for a psychosomatic disorder. When we cry or shake with anger, when we are so sad that we can't get out of bed, when we feel nauseous after hearing a story about food poisoning, when we feel anxious before an important meeting, until we have stomachaches and diarrhea - all these cases are psychosomatic phenomena

Classification of the causes of psychosomatic disorders, proposed by psychologist Leslie LeCron.

1. Internal conflict

When some desires of a person contradict others

2. Body language

Programming with phrases such as: "will take me back from you", "soon my stomach will twist", "hands are tied"

3. Availability of conditional benefit

Health problems that bring some conditional benefit to their owner (for example, more attention, care)

4. Past experience

The cause of the disease can be a traumatic past experience, more often - a difficult childhood experience.

5. Identification

When the symptoms of an illness are similar to those of a person to whom you are very emotionally attached, perhaps because of the fear of losing them

6. Suggestion

When a person is constantly looking for symptoms of a non-existent disease

7. Self-punishment

A constant feeling of guilt, which may not exist, self-loathing.

The most common diseases "from nerves"

Back in the 1930s, Franz Alexander, one of the founders of psychosomatics, singled out a group of seven classic psychosomatic diseases. It included: essential (primary) hypertension, peptic ulcer disease, rheumatoid arthritis, hyperthyroidism, bronchial asthma, colitis and neurodermatitis. Now the list of psychosomatic disorders has expanded significantly. Panic disorders and sleep disorders, oncology, heart attack, irritable bowel syndrome, sexual disorders, obesity, anorexia nervosa, bulimia - these and many other disorders also have reasons to be considered psychosomatic. Of course, these diseases arise not only due to psychological factors. But if you have encountered psychosomatics, standard treatment may not help you, but psychotherapy and psychopharmacotherapy should lead to positive changes.

What is needed for treatment

The causes of psychosomatic diseases lie in the human psyche, therefore, a psychotherapist should participate in the treatment together with other doctors, depending on the disease. The most effective treatment methods include: psychoanalysis, analytical therapy, body-oriented psychotherapy, art therapy, sand therapy, individual, group or family psychotherapy and educational methods. You have to learn to relax, to relax after a stressful day, to give vent to emotions. It may be necessary to turn to pharmacological drugs, which, for example, will help to calm down, overcome depression or anxiety. But it is not necessary to attribute any disease to psychosomatics. So, with heart pain, you should first be examined by a cardiologist, with stomach problems, consult a gastroenterologist, and with skin rashes, consult a dermatologist.