Pain and psychosomatic (mindbody) problems

"Psychosomatic" comes from the greek words for "mind" and "body". Psychosomatic pain is pain that doesn't just originate from physical causes (as opposed to, say, bleeding from a cut originates from purely organic causes).

The word "psychosomatic" is often misunderstood to mean: "it's all in the mind", i.e. "it's not real, it's imaginary".

Pyschosomatic pain can be just as excruciating as any other pain. For one thing, it is very real: it occurs in the body, through bodily mechanisms (see how emotions are linked to back pain).

What makes it "psychosomatic" is that it is related to emotional problems (i.e. it may originate from emotional problems, or be aggravated by emotional problems).

I’d like to share with you a quote from Swiss psychologist Alice Miller:

“Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but its rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality.”

Source: Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies, 2005

Because this statement is so powerful, I also want to be careful to point out what it doesn’t mean:

- It doesn't say that "everything is in the mind".

- It doesn’t negate the value of ideas and rational thinking. This would be absurd. It’s just that, if we were to only pay attention to logical thinking, we would be cutting ourselves off from a major portion of our resources. Our goal is to combine both.

Our true sense of self is rooted, not in ideas or thoughts, but in a “feeling of what happens” that is experienced at a bodily level.

Psychosomatic symptoms are an invitation to explore those parts of our "self" that we not have been paying enough attention to.

See also:

- Back pain: A mindbody approach

- Somatic psychotherapy