The life of a modern person is filled with stress. A person who is constantly under their influence gradually comes to develop strong internal tension. If you do not get rid of this condition in time, it can lead to the development of a psychosomatic illness.
Then a person is simply forced to see a doctor. However, making a diagnosis takes a lot of time and does not always lead to success. The difficulty lies in the fact that the patient is under the strongest pressure of personal reasons. It can be affected by both external and internal negative factors. Therefore, it is very important for a specialist to be able to identify them in time. Only then will there be a complete cure.
What is psychosomatics?
Psychosomatics (“psycho” - soul, “soma” - body) is a term that in a broad sense refers to various interactions between the physical state and the psyche. In other words, our physical condition affects our psyche: a person who has suffered from high blood pressure for many years may feel depressed and have significant physical limitations that affect the quality of life.
At the same time, our mental state affects our physiology: everyone at least once wanted to stay at home and not go to school or work that their throat or head began to hurt a little, or they began to feel sick, or their temperature rose. These are normal manifestations of the interaction between the body and the psyche.
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
A fairly common story: a young man, anxious, with an analytical mind, not inclined to track his emotional experiences, first consults a therapist about hypertension. It does not go away despite any antihypertensive drugs. Then he is prescribed antidepressants - and hypertension disappears.
Treatment of psychosomatics through the body
Most people are alienated from their own bodies, and this alienation costs them dearly. A person who is more susceptible to psychosomatics does not understand what he can feel with his body. He is distracted from it. Any experience of the body is suppressed for him, he is afraid of it. He lives with his head and does not trust himself. He doesn't take care of his body. At the same time, he can be in perfect shape and not leave the gym. He can use his body as a tool to show off himself. He needs to rape it more so that it is beautiful and fit, but he has no contact with it. And then the body takes the full blow and begins to give unpleasant gifts.
How to treat psychosomatics yourself and find your body? Be in contact with him. Don’t alienate yourself, don’t fence yourself off, don’t give up on yourself. Do not lock yourself into rigid boundaries, allow yourself to be bad, not what you want to see, allow yourself to be. To love your body, you need to live in it, be fully present in it with gratitude.
When we reject our body, try to squeeze ourselves into some kind of framework, we feel enormous pressure from the outside, the body begins to defend itself, repel the attack. And vice versa, when we are friends with ourselves, with our body, we do not forbid ourselves to be something, and the body knows, feels that its owner loves it, that its owner is not its enemy, not an enemy to itself, then illnesses go away, caused by psychosomatics, the body begins to live and work with gratitude, becomes healthy, happy and whole.
Body work exercise
Direct your attention to your body right now. Don’t change anything in your body, leave your position as it was before switching your attention. Feel if your feet are firmly on the floor? What's your breathing like? Deep or intermittent, shallow or frozen? Are your elbows clenched or your shoulders raised from fatigue? Is your back tense, are your eyebrows furrowed? Bring yourself back to your body, relax, release tension and be in your body.
In order to learn to be in contact with your body, from now on set an alarm clock for every half hour and direct your attention to it. This way you will understand what state your body and your breathing are in most of the time and you will be able to restore contact with yourself.
I also have an article, How to Love Yourself and Your Body, and a book, How to Love Yourself, which consists entirely of practical activities and exercises to help you become more confident, increase your self-esteem, and love yourself.
When we are in the present, we are in contact with our body. When we feel how we breathe, how our feet rest on the floor, how our body is closed or open. And when we are in the past or in the future, the body is tense, it does not give us support and begins to get tired, because we spend energy on holding the tension that arises.
If you are currently reading and at the same time are in the body - that is, you feel the chair in which you are sitting, focus your attention on breathing, then the load is distributed, and the body gets tired less and provides support.
Psychosomatics has a purely biological reason - a huge amount of energy that cannot be released in the form of speech, actions, conflict, is transformed into an internal conflict and hits the body.
Symptoms of psychosomatic disorders
As part of different types of somatoform disorders, like bricks, there are separate groups of symptoms - they are called syndromes. The most characteristic for making a diagnosis are the following:
Conversion syndrome
Most often, conversion manifests itself in disruption or complete loss of function of one or another part of the body (for example, vision, limbs, deafness, tics) without physical impairment.
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
There was a disaster in which the boy died. The whole family is grieving. But the grandmother is the worst: her legs are giving out. Naturally, she was sent for all possible examinations, the doctors said in unison that there was no physical disorder. Only a psychotherapist could make a diagnosis. The problem is mental: this is how she experienced grief, transforming psychological pain into physical symptoms.
Body dysmorphic syndrome
Such a symptom of a psychosomatic disorder can be expressed in a deep belief in the presence of one or another physical defect - for example, excessive weight, curvature of certain parts of the body, an unpleasant odor. A person believes that others see the shortcoming and laugh at it.
Accordingly, he makes great efforts to “improve”: he chooses certain clothes, loses weight sharply, carefully examines himself in the mirror, takes a lot of photographs in order to “train” his facial expression, which hides his “flaw.”
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
Nowadays, there is a lot of dysmorphophobia, it is reinforced by unrealistically processed photographs and social networks in general. A classic example is a young girl who has difficulties in her work, in her personal life, and who is tormented by anxiety. She decides that all the problems are due to an (imaginary) hip defect. Does liposuction. Emotional relief sets in and life gets better. But it lasts a month. Then the euphoria passes, depression sets in, and problems return to life. And a new hypothesis arises - all problems will go away if you correct the (imaginary) breast defect. And this process will never stop on its own - everyone has heard about people who have had dozens of operations to correct far-fetched defects.
Depressive syndrome
It is logical that a person in such a state is depressed, although he can hide his condition.
Asthenic syndrome
It takes a lot of strength to withstand such a psychological burden. Therefore, a person quickly becomes exhausted, experiences headaches and other vegetative symptoms.
If there is an illness (even an imaginary one), a person will seek help and treatment. He goes to doctors, receives many prescriptions, and sometimes goes as far as surgery. Therapists, endocrinologists, surgeons promise recovery - but it does not come. Nothing helps, and he again seeks help.
Competent doctors see that everything is useless and recommend contacting a psychiatrist or psychotherapist. But convincing a person that the problem is mental is not always easy. After all, it is much easier to be treated by a therapist than by a psychiatrist.
How the psychosomatic response to stress is formed
It is clear that non-sour milk in itself causes UC or AIT. Most likely, before this sour milk there were a lot of stressful situations in a person’s life. And milk is just another extra drop in the cup.
Where did it all start?
It all starts with an affect that a person cannot cope with on his own. For example, it could be severe anxiety or severe aggression.
Different people cannot cope with different affects. This depends, on the one hand, on the weak and strong traits of our psyche with which we are born, on the other hand, on the mental characteristics of the people who surround us in childhood.
For example, a little boy wakes up in a room and his mother is not nearby. He calls her, runs around the entire apartment and still doesn’t find her. He is overwhelmed with anxiety. Since he is still small and does not know how to use the phone, he quickly becomes anxious. He may begin to get angry, throw his toys around, and try to somehow cope with his condition. Or he can sit by the door and freeze helplessly: as if not to live until his mother finally returns.
And then there’s one more factor: the mother’s reaction. She can give the child an adequate empathic response: explain to him that he was very scared when he didn’t find her, that this is normal and adequate. Or maybe she herself would get angry with her son and yell at him, because she was sure that he wouldn’t wake up, but he did. Or he may anxiously begin to examine him: did he cut himself, is everything okay with him.
If an adequate empathic response has been given, the child may learn to cope with anxiety on his own, and will know how to comfort himself next time.
If the response was inadequate to the situation, or inadequate to the strength of affect (the child was very frightened, and the mother regarded the incident as ordinary), the child does not gain experience in coping with affect.
And if similar situations are repeated in the future, the flooding reaction can become chronic and somatized. Such children may bite their nails, pull out hair, and may suffer from various physical and mental illnesses.
What are psychosomatic diseases?
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) identifies several types of somatoform disorders. The most common of them:
- Somatization disorder.
- Hypochondriacal disorder.
- Persistent somatoform pain disorder.
Somatization disorder
The person presents with a variety of physical complaints that change frequently, recur, and are not amenable to standard diagnosis and treatment. This lasts at least two years and is accompanied by difficulties in work, communication and personal life. People begin to limit themselves in various areas of activity, become irritable or depressed.
Alla Vladimirovna says that these people really need psychotherapy, but they are the ones who are particularly distrustful of psychotherapists:
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
People with somatization disorder almost never see psychologists or psychiatrists. They are ready to do anything - take any dietary supplements, homeopathy, go to physiotherapy, acupuncture, whatever. But never go to psychologists. Good therapists themselves sometimes prescribe them rest and a mild antidepressant - and this helps precisely because it temporarily solves psychological problems.
Hypochondriacal disorder
Much like a psychosomatic disorder, but in addition to a variety of symptoms, patients are convinced that they have a severe, progressive illness. However, doctors cannot find anything from them.
When it is proven to a person that one disease does not exist (for example, cancer), the patient quickly “switches” to another disease (for example, tuberculosis). Then he can return to the first version again, and so on endlessly.
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
Many people have learned from childhood that complaints about health and physical sensations are encouraged by adults. They were immediately left at home, allowed to watch TV or not do their homework. And in adulthood, often after a stressful situation, such a person comes to the therapist with complaints that not only constantly change, but also do not form a complete picture. A recent example: a young man consulted a therapist with complaints of loose stools, nonspecific pain in the head, back, and abdomen. Then the “circles of hell” began: he was prescribed endless examinations, his complaints multiplied, but he did not get better. In this case, everything ended well, he turned to me, and we began to understand the psychological background. The condition immediately became more stable.
Persistent somatoform pain disorder
There are not many disparate complaints here, the person suffers from periodic excruciating pain, usually in one area. Diagnostic tests cannot detect physical disorders or diseases.
Pain occurs after an emotionally traumatic or problematic situation, and the patient receives significant medical and social support and assistance.
Alla Vladimirovna says that there are many such cases in the practice of dentists:
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
The patient had a tooth removed and a nerve was damaged. There was pain that had a physiological basis. The defect was corrected, but the pain does not go away. Moreover, it spreads to other teeth, and then to the entire jaw. The patient I remember now drank handfuls of painkillers, and they didn’t help. He was referred to a psychotherapist, and the pain went away with psychotropic medications and psychotherapy.
Tables of psychological causes of various diseases
Does the disease depend on the type of affect? Can we say that anger provokes gastrointestinal ulcers, for example, and fear provokes chronic tonsillitis? Do the classifications of psychosomatic diseases by Louise Hay, Vladimir Zhikaretsev, etc. make sense?
No, all this information has no scientific basis.
In the case of psychosomatics, the principle “Where it is thin, it breaks” works. If there is a history of depression in the family, the child may be prone to depression. If there are gastrointestinal diseases, he is already born with a vulnerable intestines or stomach. If a person is an athlete by profession, then his way of coping with affects may be through sports injuries. And so on.
Therefore, in each specific case, psychologists study the history of a particular person and look for affects that are difficult for them to experience.
Psychosomatics and how to treat?
Treatment of somatoform disorders, as well as somatic diseases with a known psychosomatic component, should be comprehensive. They consist of at least two components, which means that a team of specialists must work.
Somatic doctors must conduct a comprehensive diagnosis and prescribe medications (in cases where a somatic illness is confirmed). It may be that what needs treatment is not the disease the patient feared, but the problems that arose as a result of the interventions he unnecessarily required.
A psychiatrist prescribes medications to combat depression, anxiety and stabilize mood.
Although patients are rarely willing to receive such help, the most important component is the help of a psychotherapist or psychological consultant. The most effective are cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback therapy, training in relaxation techniques and auto-training, assertiveness and social skills training, and behavioral interventions aimed at short-term solutions to life’s difficulties.
Milekhina Alla Vladimirovna, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, candidate of medical sciences
Often it all starts with asthenia (weakness, fatigue), which entails behavior that then worsens the somatic state, which in turn worsens the psychological state. When a person is sad and has no strength, what does he do first? He goes to bed, withdraws from business, closes himself off from people. Against this background, both your stomach and your head will hurt. And such a person will go not to deal with mental pain, but with physical pain, although it should be the other way around. Why? Because psychotherapists are treated as “shrinks.” But in fact, this is the person who will talk to you about what worries you, and not laugh at it, not blame it, not devalue it.
The essence of the theory
Psychosomatics is a complex of diseases, the causes of which lie in long-term psychological disorders that developed in a person earlier. One should not think that such diseases can be cured by simply influencing the patient’s consciousness and thoughts. They need very complex and lengthy treatment.
The author of the theory that examines the development of psychosomatics in people is Louise Hay. She compiled the most complete list of various pathologies that arise under the influence of psychological causes. She also gave the most valuable advice on their healing. The researcher relied on medical knowledge, folk wisdom and her own experience.
Louise Hay
Subsequently, she wrote several books, which became real guides to the inner world for people living in all corners of the globe.
L. Hay thoroughly studied the psychosomatics of the body. Based on her research, she developed the most effective statements, which she designated as “affirmations.” They effectively allow a person to believe in himself and thereby bring about self-healing.
Algorithm for working with psychosomatics
The algorithm consists of only two steps. Despite its apparent simplicity, it works great.
First step. Getting to know your own body
A person who is in pain usually has fragmentary knowledge about his own body. He is very familiar with the pain and discomfort associated with a psychosomatic symptom. But the problem is that pain and discomfort are just the tip of the iceberg.
There are a lot of processes going on in the body that lead to the formation of an unpleasant symptom. We can feel and sense many of these processes. But, as a rule, people do not pay attention to these processes.
To make it clearer what I'm talking about, I'll give an example.
