Heartache. Cardioneurosis, Depression And Other "psychosomatics"

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

The title of this article may seem somewhat strange, since in the classics, cardioneurosis and other unidentified pain are essentially psychosomatic pathology. But since my experience still has a narrow focus in psychosomatics, I distinguish some of the phenomena, since here we can see different states, causes and predictions in correction.

The theme of pain in the heart and vegetative crises is very close to me because it is my "generic" theme on both lines). Very often, when discussing the work of psychotherapists, we argue about whether the personal experience of the psychologist-psychotherapist is useful in working out a problem similar to the client, or, on the contrary, it can interfere in the process of therapy. This question is always individual and controversial, because on the one hand, a specialist who has experienced a trauma similar to a client can better understand him, accept and conduct a more targeted intervention. On the other hand, it is the presence of such an experience that can lead to the therapist unconsciously projecting his personal history onto the client and attributing to him experiences that actually do not exist. Partly to avoid this, we undergo personal therapy and supervision. Therefore, starting to write an article, I want to indicate that my experience in working out cardiac psychosomatics has a history of more than 10 years ago. At the same time, it is work with clients (and cardiac "psychosomatics" is the most widespread) that makes it possible to distinguish some states from others and to confirm that each story is unique both in its causes and in the prognosis and result of therapy.

Speaking about pain in the heart, I strongly recommend that you first of all consult a doctor for a full diagnosis and adequate correction, since, nevertheless, the statistics of cardiac pathologies are inexorably growing and getting younger. When your symptoms have already been identified and the cardiologist and neurologist have decided "Psychosomatics!", We begin to think what to do next with all this. So, from the side of a psychologist, this psychosomatics is more often like this:

Cardioneurosis

By and large, this condition is most of all directly related to physiology and, in addition to psychotherapy, is corrected with the help of light drugs that affect cardiac activity. The meaning of what is happening can be described as follows:

as a result of hormonal disruption (diabetes, puberty, menopause, etc.) or a chemical attack (drug poisoning, caffeine, ethanol, etc.) or physical overload (lack of sleep, workaholism, etc.) or acute stress / conflict - the so-called vegetative crisis. In order to provide organs that have been hit with oxygen, the heart begins to work harder, which leads to a feeling of pain, spasms, etc.

This is scary, but understanding the situation, most people only need to take a break, come to their senses, and everything is restored by itself. Such situational psychosomatics can happen once a year or less often. However, more sensitive or anxious people can fixate on this state. Then the pain in the heart is associated with a panic attack, and in the future, the person begins without physical reasons (hormones are normal, the body is rested, ethanol is removed) to provoke a vegetative crisis in a circle:

fear of a new attack causes an increase in the heartbeat = the person is thrown into a fever or cold, his legs give way, his head is spinning, a person thinks that now “the heart will ache again and suddenly it’s a heart attack” = panic further increases the vegetative crisis, the heart starts to work more intense, the pains are repeated and the circle is closed. Such conditions can occur several times a day, and in more advanced situations, clients indicate constant sluggish "heart symptoms", which makes it difficult for them to concentrate on work, lead a normal life, etc.

Thus, if a person does not give in to panic and realizes a possible psychophysiological cause of pain in the heart, herbal preparations prescribed by a doctor can easily cope with this condition (2 weeks - a month). If a panic circle is closed, then it is extremely difficult to get rid of cardio neurosis without psychotherapy.

Somatized depression

Somatized depression is depression that is caused by internal factors, runs latently and makes itself felt through various kinds of unrelated organ pains (I wrote about the symptoms of latent depression here/ skritaya_depressiya_kak_raspoznat /). This means that a person can lead an active lifestyle: planning - working - meeting friends - laughing, etc., while more and more disturbances in the work of neurotransmitters (like hormones of the nervous system) occur in his brain. In turn, this affects the whole body, again the heart starts to work hard and we feel heaviness in the chest, etc. This state is reflected in the esoteric interpretation - "lack of joy." Since a person does not see depression, he feels that there is no joy and pleasure from life.

However, it is important to understand that endogenous depression is not just a bad mood. Somatized depression is a disorder of brain chemistry that can be helped by psychotherapy medication. At the same time, psychotherapy for depression often reminds of one simple truth that "it is pointless to repeat the same actions and expect different results." That is, the prescribed medications help restore chemistry, remove cardiac symptoms, but a person's subjective perception of life as bleak may well remain. Since this is largely due to a person's lifestyle, his attitudes, life-meaning orientations, and most importantly, those problems and losses that accumulate create a feeling of mental heaviness. This is what will be the main object of psychotherapy, without which the state risks returning or going into a "disease" of another organ.

Situational and true psychosomatics

Situational cardiac psychosomatics is the very case of a "short-term" reaction to stress or conflict, when what we call "take to heart" occurs. Unlike cardioneurosis, a person is not afraid and does not panic, but his heart hurts from "injustice", "resentment", etc. To correct such a state, often enough techniques of introspection, short-term psychotherapy, emotional relief, rest and adherence to generally accepted health measures, including number of psychological.

While true psychosomatics says that constitutionally the heart is a weak organ that takes a hit on itself. In this case, we are afraid not so much of vegetative crises and panic attacks, but of the fact that a constant psycho-emotional load leads to real heart diseases. At risk are people in whose family heart disease is inherited.

When we say that an organ is constitutionally weak, we understand that one way or another this is something that cannot be changed, just like the human temperament cannot be changed, etc. At the same time, psychotherapy of inherited diseases is primarily focused on reducing the frequency of relapses, improving the quality of life and increasing the client's stress tolerance.

Psychological trauma

Very often we suppress and forget the trauma we have experienced. If we summarize the stories from practice, then more often such clients are outwardly very confident in themselves, successful and even themselves cannot understand how this happens, because in general they like their life. They are happy with everything, and they interpret various kinds of troubles in a philosophical way, and if it were not for heart pains unidentified by a doctor, they would not have turned to a psychologist in their lives.

However, as a result of long-term psychotherapy in people open to changes, various kinds of psychological trauma often surface. These are intense painful experiences from the past, which were so difficult and significant for the client that, having failed to cope with the internal conflict, in order to maintain mental health, the brain decides to displace them (hide, forget, deprive the colors of "well it was and it was", etc..).

We associate the manifestation of symptoms with the fact that in the client's life, against the background of some absolutely neutral events, the subconscious mind catches a connection with the trauma and, through association, comes to "buried pain". At the vegetative level (unconsciously), the body experiences stress, the vascular system turns on, but since objectively everything seems to be in order in our life, the brain gets confused and begins to distort the signals coming from the organs. However, a priori, our subconscious is our friend, therefore such events usually occur when the client already has sufficient experience and inner strength to work out psychological conflicts, when his psyche is more stable and more mature than at the time of the trauma. Therefore, all he needs is general therapy: support, acceptance, feedback and psychotherapeutic management of working through the trauma of the past.

Secondary psychosomatics

This condition arises on the basis of a real disease. With a history of cardiac pathology, a person can unconsciously provoke vegetative crises and panic attacks on the one hand, and a psychotherapist works with this. Since there is experience of both symptomatology and treatment, and even possibly hospitalization, we may encounter symptoms of obsessive thoughts and actions (OCD - fear and ritual actions to prevent illness, on the one hand, designed to reduce anxiety, on the other, reaching mania), cardiophobia, panic disorders, etc. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, in the case of real cardiac pathology, we focus on teaching a person more stress resistance, techniques of psychological relief and relaxation, improving the quality of life, changing attitudes and behavior for more effective interaction with others people and a constructive perception of life with an illness, etc. At the same time, the absence of such a study often leads to an aggravation of the underlying disease and the development of a depressive state against the background of cardiac pathology. The circles are closing.

Cardiac psychosomatics as an epinosic secondary benefit or another language manipulation;)

Undoubtedly speaking about the psychosomatics of heart pains, one cannot ignore such a phenomenon as either conscious or unconscious "manipulation". As we said earlier, it is always quite easy to cause cardiac symptoms in a person, because it is closely related to vegetation (our emotions).

This can manifest itself in the form of situational psychosomatics, when, against the background of an upcoming or current event, a person experiences psychogenic heart pain. It is easy to identify the connection and function of such a state with the help of a symptom observation diaryAnd sometimes a person does not even need to experience pain, but it is enough just to refer to the fact that he has weak heart and get what you want.

If the effect of the secondary benefit is obvious, you can try to work with introspection techniquesOf course, a psychologist will help to understand This, however, in practice, often faced with the fact of manipulation, clients end therapy prematurely.

At the same time, it is worth remembering that not every secondary benefit is manipulation and sometimes a psychosomatic symptom protects a person from painful emotional experiences. Excessive workloads and various kinds of inadequate "must"; betrayal, betrayal and other disappointments and losses, which are so strong that a person “refuses to believe” and tries to “ignore them” to the last; generic scripts, programs, attitudes and much more can affect the heart when it is a constitutionally weak organ. I wrote more about symptom functions here

Transition of psychosomatic disorder into illness

Recently, I have often come across discussions about whether organ neurosis leads to the development of real somatic diseases. More often, opponents cite as an argument a fragment of a lecture by a well-known psychiatrist that in a clinic of neuroses, patients suffering from neuroses of one organ or another do not have corresponding diseases.

However, practice shows that this is not always the case. I suppose the confusion is due to the fact that some specialists understand psychosomatics equally as disorders and diseases. While a person with psychosomatosis is more often treated not in a neurosis clinic, but by a physician of somatic practice, since the organ is already really sick and requires medical correction. And the appeal of such patients for help to psychologists before the popularization of the esoteric slogan "all diseases are from the brain" was extremely rare. At the same time, it will not be superfluous to remind that initially the experiments on the development of psychosomatic diseases were built exactly according to this scenario. When animals were placed in conditions limiting the ability to work out stress and artificially created conflict situations, this, as a result, over time, led to the development of organ pathology and made it possible to consider a number of diseases as psychosomatosis (we are talking about both cardiovascular diseases and gastrointestinal diseases). intestinal tract, etc.).

More often this happens when a psychosomatic disorder (organ neurosis) is associated with a constant hormonal imbalance, the psychological problem is not solved, but only masked and ignored. Over time, doctors really observe the development of hypertension and coronary heart disease from cardioneurosis. Sometimes this is associated with true psychosomatics, that is, with the fact that the heart is a genetically (hereditarily) weak organ. However, experience in psychosomatics shows that deep psychotherapy is able to influence the history of "heredity" and with the timely elaboration of a psychosomatic symptom (generic scenarios, programs, attitudes, etc.), hereditary diseases either do not manifest themselves at all, or take a significant delay (since no one is perfect and you can break off at any point of reference).

Health and joy to your heart;)