Psychosomatic Families. When Disease Benefits

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

When we fall ill unexpectedly, it brings us inconveniences: the long-awaited planned trip to rest breaks down, you celebrate the anniversary with a glass of mineral water in your hands, etc. However, if each of the above examples is considered deeper, in the context of psychosomatics, it becomes clear that I did not want to go on a trip with a long-unwanted husband; The jubilee, for which I had been very diligently preparing for 3 months, is already intolerable, and that is why sinusitis "suddenly appeared", and I had to drink antibiotics, etc.

Many books and articles have been written about psychosomatics, in my article I want to touch on the topic of psychosomatic families, but at the beginning there is still a little theory.

Psychosomatics (psychosomatic diseases) is a direction in medicine and psychology that studies the influence of psychological factors on the occurrence and course of a number of somatic (bodily) diseases (bronchial asthma, hypertension, peptic ulcer, etc.). Our body reacts to external events happening to us sometimes more openly than we can admit to ourselves. In life, we force ourselves to do what we really do not want, to communicate with people who are unpleasant to us, and we continue to think that everything is fine. "It's just" bronchial asthma tortured me, the pressure goes off scale, the nose does not breathe, the back hurts, but otherwise everything is more or less normal.

Exist several theoriesexplaining the origin of psychosomatic diseases (hereinafter - PZ). According to one of them, PZ - are a consequence of stress caused by long-term and insurmountable trauma. Another theory associates the emergence of PZ with an internal conflict between the individual's motives of the same intensity, but differently directed. According to the third theory, an insoluble conflict of motives (as well as unrecoverable stress) ultimately gives rise to a surrender response, a refusal of exploratory behavior, which creates the most general prerequisite for the development of PZ. This manifests itself in the form of overt or masked depression.

In parallel, I would like to consider psychosomatic disorders - dysfunction of internal organs and systems, the emergence and development of which is most associated with neuropsychic factors, the experience of acute or chronic psychological trauma, specific features of the emotional response of the individual. Changes in psychosomatic regulation underlie the occurrence of psychosomatic diseases or psychosomatosis. In general, the mechanism of occurrence can be represented as follows: a psychological stress factor causes affective tension, which activates the neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous system with subsequent changes in the vascular system and in internal organs. Initially, these changes are functional, reversible, but with prolonged and frequent repetition, they can become organic and irreversible.

As Socrates said,

if someone is looking for health, ask him first if he is ready to part with all the causes of his illness. Only then can you help him

People swallow pounds of pills, but they don't get healthier. One disease can smoothly transform into another, a third, and then the first becomes aggravated until the true cause of these diseases is found and eliminated.

Many diseases have hidden causes that cannot be understood at first glance. The truth is that often people categorically do not want to find out the cause of their illness, since they receive benefits from the illness that are much more pleasant than the chagrin from the consciousness of the illness. This benefit is expressed by caring for a sick person, participation in his life, attention, reverent attitude towards him - he is sick, the organization of his leisure time and an uncritical, conflict-free attitude towards both the sick person and all family members. Usually, a special atmosphere reigns in the house where such a patient (adult or child) lives. AND such families are called psychosomatic (according to the classification of the family structure of Minukhin, Fishman).

Psychologists distinguish several characteristics of the psychosomatic family: over-inclusion of parents in the child's life problems; hypersensitivity of each family member to the distress of another; low ability to change the rules of interaction under changing circumstances; the tendency to avoid expressing disagreement and openly discussing conflicts (accordingly, the risk of internal conflicts increases); a sick child or adult plays the role of a stabilizer in latent marital conflict.

For example, consider a relationship in a family where a child suffers from bronchial asthma (a real case). In such a family, a long-term super-attention is paid to the child, for him, mainly by the mother, any problems are solved, supposedly life is "dedicated" to him. The relationship between the parents has been strained for many years, the parents' accumulated claims against each other are not presented, they live and try, supposedly for the child - dad earns, mom drives to hospitals, leads to circles, etc. Such family interaction forces the child to suffer from bronchial asthma. He cannot breathe freely, he cannot make decisions on his own, he cannot express his desires and his critical opinion. His illness gives everyone the opportunity to maintain a family without conflict and not to resolve the accumulated interpersonal conflicts.

Psychosomatic families are not only families with a sick child, an adult can also get sick.

I want to show this by the example of one family. Here's an example of a recent telephone conversation. I publish it with the consent of the client.

Phone call. In the receiver I hear a pleasant cheerful voice of a woman of 30-35 years old, in the background screams and exclamations of children, periodically the client interrupts to calm them down:

- Hello, I want to bring my mother to see you.

- For what reason?

- Mom is depressed.

- How long has it been going on? Does mom take any medications? Did you visit doctors?

- 2 years ago, my mother had a stroke, and after that she began to feel bad. I took her to a psychiatrist and he prescribed antidepressants for her. She takes them regularly. Mom was the head of a large enterprise, retired a few years ago, and illnesses began.

- Do you think your mother has a desire to receive psychological help and change something in her life, or is she happy with everything in the current situation?

There is a long silence.

“You know, she probably won't want to change something,” the client replies after a long pause and continues very excitedly, “but she has depression! She complains about her health all the time! Something hurts all the time! She became like a small child.

Children can be heard screaming loudly in the room, the woman is distracted to calm them down. I can hear irritation and weariness in her voice and tone.

- Tell me if you were offered now to become a small child who will not have worries and troubles, who will be cared for, entertained, play with, and pay attention to. Would you refuse?

- No (thoughtfully). I would agree. I would really like that.

- Do you think your mother will agree to change something if she is like a small child?

- No … She doesn't want to for sure.

- When a mother behaves like a small child, is depressed, constantly complains about her health, what happens to you at this moment?

- I'm tired. I have small children. But I also have to take care of her all the time. Entertain her, communicate with her, go to her. She lives at a great distance from us. It’s very hard for me.

- Who then needs psychological help?

- I…

This woman still called me about my mother, but she herself has not yet come to the consultation and, as far as I understand, will not come. It is very difficult to change something in the family system when the mechanisms of functioning have already been established and worked out for many years. Why? Because, as family psychotherapist S. Minukhin says, “ when the subject of the complaint is a psychosomatic problem in a family member, the family structure is overly nurturing. A family like this seems to function best when someone is sick. The characteristics of such families include an excessive desire to protect each other, an excessive concentration of family members on each other, an inability to resolve conflicts and a huge expenditure of efforts to maintain peace or avoid conflicts and an extreme rigid structure.».

It is not difficult to understand that the mother of the woman who called me really needs depression with a trailer of psychosomatic diseases. She needs to receive the care and attention that she, the retired head of the enterprise, now so much needs. Therefore, we SHOULD BE SICK in order to see more often a daughter with many children, having a separate family, in order to feel the need and care, so as not to meet with loneliness and thoughts of old age and death.

Psychotherapy could help to realize the true causes of the disease and change the attitude towards them, open the way - how to live on, without fear and without hiding behind the disease. Only now there is no desire to radically change something in the mother, in her daughter, in the parents of a sick child. After all, everything that was dreamed of was obtained in psychosomatic families, albeit at the cost of their own health or the health of a child.

Literature:

1. Malkina-Pykh I. G. "Family therapy", Moscow 2006
2. "Psychological Dictionary" ed. A. V. Petrovsky and M. G. Yaroshevsky, 1990