2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
“Nerve illness” is what we usually call a psychosomatic disorder. The name of these diseases combines the Greek words for "soul" (psyche) and "body" (soma), and they usually arise from the fact that the soul hides its suffering. At the moment when the storehouses of the soul are overflowing, the content does not find a more direct outlet than through the body
What leads to psychosomatic illness?
In this article, I will present the most common classification of the causes of psychosomatic disorders, proposed by the psychologist Leslie LeCron. Now about each item in more detail.
1. Internal conflict. A situation in which one part of a person's desires is realized and lies on the surface, and the other - usually the opposite - for some reason hides in the subconscious. Then the second part begins a "guerrilla war", a symptom of which psychosomatic symptoms can become.
2. Language of the body. The body physically reflects the state, which could be expressed by figurative phrases: "this is such a headache!", "I can't digest it!", "Because of this, my heart is out of place!" … Guess how a relatively healthy organism will react to such constantly programming messages?
3. The presence of a conditional benefit. This category includes health problems that bring certain conditional benefits to their owner. And no, this is not a simulation, but a quite realistically diagnosed disease. Perhaps the person really wants to have the benefits that he will receive only when sick. Wish more carefully, because desires tend to come true!
4. Experience of the past - the cause of the disease can be a traumatic experience of the past, more often - a difficult child. This can be both an episodic event and a long-term impact that continues to emotionally affect a person in the present.
5. Identification. In this case, the physical symptom may be due to a strong emotional attachment to a person with a similar disease. There is often a fear of losing that person or the loss actually happened.
6. Suggestion. Being confident in the presence of a disease - even if it does not exist in reality - a person is constantly trying to find evidence for it, thus, in the subconscious mind, he has already agreed with the presence of a disease. Of course, in this way the likelihood of getting it increases significantly.
7. Self-punishment. This punishment is associated with real, and more often imagined, guilt that torments the person. Self-punishment facilitates the experience of guilt, as if atoning for it.
Psychosomatic problems are quite real and appear as a result of stressful situations and complex relationships, external influences on the psyche and other completely non-physiological reasons.
It is also worth noting that many researchers believe that psychosomatic diseases arise in organs and systems that are initially most weakened due to the characteristics of the lifestyle and hereditary predisposition.
Meet the Chicago Seven
No, this is not a gang of gangsters, but it has more lives on its account than any criminal group. These are the seven classic psychosomatic diseases that the American psychoanalyst Franz Alexander identified in 1950:
1. Hypertension
2. Peptic ulcer
3. Bronchial asthma
4. Neurodermatitis
5. Hyperthyroidism
6. Ulcerative colitis
7. Rheumatoid arthritis
Much has changed since those times, and the list of psychosomatic diseases has also changed and been supplemented. To date, it has been supplemented and significantly expanded: panic and sleep disorders, oncology, heart attack, irritable bowel syndrome, sexual disorders, obesity, anorexia nervosa, bulimia - these and many other disorders also have reason to be considered psychosomatic.
Many well-known psychotherapists, such as Wilhelm Reich, Franz Alexander, Ida Rolf, Alexander Lowen and many others, have associated the occurrence of diseases in parts and organs of the body with corresponding emotions - this is a topic for a separate article.
What is needed for recovery?
It is necessary not only to cure the physiological cause, but also to overcome the psychological one. Some doctors are sure that in the treatment of psychosomatic diseases, the help of a psychotherapist, although necessary, is only an auxiliary means. However, in a number of cases, the main help lies precisely in it.
And at the physical level, as a preventive measure and self-help, it is necessary, first of all, to remove the effects of stress in time, to prevent chronic overstrain; please your body with massages, physical activity and good rest, learn to control tension and be able to relax. And most importantly: if it is impossible to change the situation, change your attitude towards it!
Be healthy!
* Illustration for the article. Salvador Dali: painting "Anthropomorphic cabinet".
Recommended:
Nervous Tic - What Is Symptom Screaming About
At the reception, a mother and son are 8 years old. Nikita, an active little boy who easily makes contact, keeps some distance from his mother. The reason for the appeal was the constant twitching of the arm and shoulder with a tilt of the head.
Nervous Disorders In Children: What Parents Should Know
The health of the child is a natural matter of concern for parents, often already from the period of pregnancy. Cough, snot, fever, sore stomach, rash - and we run to the doctor, look for information on the Internet, buy medicines. But there are also non-obvious symptoms of ill health, to which we are used to turning a blind eye, believing that the child will "
The Nervous System: 10 Misconceptions And Myths
Various disorders of the nervous system occur in 15-20% of the population. These disorders can be manifested by vegetative-vascular dystonia, chronic fatigue, depression, sleepiness during the day and insomnia at night, fears, anxiety, lack of will, headaches, irritability, increased sensitivity to weather changes and other symptoms of an individual nature.
In Nervous Mothers Children Grow Up To Be Neurasthenics?
Is it true that children of nervous mothers grow up to be neurasthenics? How can I curb my nerves to provide my child with a healthy family environment? It is no secret that in the process of growing up, children can inherit the behavior model of their parents.
Nervous Food. Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are mental disorders. They are, relatively speaking, with a minus sign and with a plus sign. With a minus sign - lack of appetite, suppression of desire to eat, anxiety about weight and body shape - anorexia nervosa. With a plus sign - a very strong appetite, excessive concern about weight and body shape, when a person eats a lot, and then, due to feelings of guilt and shame, can compensate for gluttony with strong physical exertion, causing vomiting - t