Psychosomatics. What Is It And How To Treat It?

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

Psychosomatics is a bodily manifestation of psychological problems. Initially, doctors attributed to psychosomatics those pains and pains that do not have physiological disorders, for example, pain in the abdomen, but according to all examinations everything is normal; my back hurts, and the doctors can't find anything. But this is only a part of those problems that we can attribute to psychosomatics. If we look at psychosomatics more broadly, we can see that absolutely any disease can be attributed to psychosomatics

Why is this so? Our body is controlled by the speaking brain, and all the processes of self-regulation of the body occur at an unconscious level. We cannot control our heart rate or our blood pressure. But it is quite obvious that both the heartbeat and the pressure directly depend on our emotional experiences. We are excited and anxious, we are waiting for something, we are worried about someone, and our heart begins to beat faster, the pressure rises and our health worsens.

Why is this happening? All our feelings and emotions are in the body. They do not live outside the body and cannot live, otherwise then they are already fantasies about feelings. Any emotion is reflected in our body both at the level of muscle tension or relaxation, and at the cellular level.

Feelings are our natural reactions that reflect our perception of the world around us. They are present with us throughout our life, 24 hours a day. But we often do not notice what we feel at this or that moment or do not feel what is happening to our body. For example, if something disturbs us for a long time, we gradually get used to the feeling of anxiety and stop feeling it, just as we do not pay attention to the tension that we constantly have in the chest. But this tension is there, and there is anxiety too, and over time it does its job: it destroys our body. Depending on the constitution of our body, we begin to develop hypertension, arrhythmia, pain in the region of the heart, or any other symptom. All non-communicable diseases begin by the mechanisms of psychosomatics, including such terrible ones as cancer, multiple sclerosis, neurodermatitis, etc.

Why do doctors and psychologists not refer this directly to psychosomatics, although many modern scientific studies have revealed the psychological mechanisms of these diseases?

All this is because when such a serious disease as cancer is diagnosed, from the point of view of psychological mechanisms, the point of no return has already been passed, and only psychological methods will not give a positive result. When combined with medical treatment, psychotherapy can help by 20-30%. Therefore, in the modern world, psychosomatics includes those diseases in which significant help to a person can be provided with the help of psychological influence in the form of professional psychotherapy. Another important criterion here is that drug treatment without psychological help gives a short-term result.

Unresolved emotional problems are the basis for psychosomatic illnesses. Our psyche has several levels of protection from strong experiences:

1 - the psychological level at which we feel and experience everything on the emotional level, somehow coping with it;

2 - the level of psychosomatics;

3 - psychotic level.

If feelings are very strong and we do not have enough resources to cope with them, we suppress them, and they turn into bodily symptoms.

A striking example of this is the psychosomatic reaction of children to the divorce of their parents. It is very difficult for children to express their fear, resentment, anger and rage in words, and they start having headaches, fever, and enuresis. Therefore, in moments of stress, both children and adults need the help of a psychologist so that a person can experience all his feelings on a psychological level. Psychological assistance with psychosomics helps to understand the meaning of the symptom and resolve the problematic situation that is behind it. Today it is psychoanalytic psychotherapy that is the most effective tool in working with psychosomatics.

Many psychological centers in Moscow have put psychosomatics treatment on stream and use hypnosis and NLP (neurolinguistic programming) techniques in their work. It can help to quickly relieve a symptom for a while, but the unconscious causes and internal conflicts behind these symptoms remain unresolved, which, at best, leads to a recurrence of symptoms or to the formation of other manifestations of internal conflicts that are no less painful than the symptom itself.

In conclusion of this article, I would like to tell one small story from my life, which clearly shows that psychoanalytic psychotherapy, unlike NLP, although it takes a very long time, requires an investment of mental strength, but the result from it lasts for decades, while implementation into the psyche using NLP techniques can be dangerous.

Early in my career, I studied NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis.

A young guy who was suffering from depression with suicidal thoughts studied with us in the group. At the time of our acquaintance, he lived with his mother, had no relationship with girls and was interrupted by temporary earnings. In addition to training, he began to individually work on himself with the help of a trainer with NLP techniques.

In just two months of their work, he got a good high-paying job, rented an apartment and lived alone. Then he began to actively get to know and meet different girls, and a radiant "learned" smile did not leave his face.

At that time I looked at him with envy and surprise: does this really happen ?! But still something alarmed me, something was wrong in him, but I could not understand - what? Three months after we met, he opened his own business and soon bought himself an expensive sports bike. Seemingly excellent results of psychological work, which one can only dream of - and, moreover, in just 3-4 months!

In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, this path usually takes 3 to 5 years, and sometimes more. And here only a few months!

But the outcome of this story was sad. About a year after we met him, he passed away. He crashed on his sports bike on the Moscow Ring Road, driving at full speed into a truck standing on the side of the road. How this could have happened on a lighted section of the road in the summer with dry asphalt - no one knows. Of course, all this can be attributed to a fatal accident or just a coincidence. But as I realized later, having studied the theory of depth psychology and the practice of family constellations according to Hellinger, in fact, his depression with suicidal thoughts did not go anywhere, that the death drive still lived in him, hiding behind a feigned smile. What happened that July night on the Moscow Ring Road was essentially a parasuicide - an unconscious suicide. That was the price….

Everyone chooses his own path and his own destiny. But it always surprises me when I hear from my clients that 2-3 years of psychotherapy is a very long time. How long or quickly it is up to you, of course. The only thing I can say is that a person who does not destroy his health by strong feelings and internal conflicts may well live 90 years. And then 2, 3, or even 5 years spent on psychotherapy take up a small part of his life span.