Sometimes it happens that we get nervous, and suddenly our stomach or head starts to hurt, or we start to stutter. And sometimes, on the contrary, great joy or intense stress - and we forget about the pain or even get rid of the disease. This suggests that emotions and feelings trigger certain processes in the body that affect the physical condition. This is psychosomatics - the body's reaction to our thoughts, feelings and experiences. The term "psychosomatic" was proposed in 1818 by Heinroth, who explained many somatic diseases as psychogenic, primarily in the ethical aspect. But the very questions of the relationship between the somatic and the mental are among the oldest in philosophy, psychology, and medicine. The origin of psychosomatic medicine is associated with the work of Freud. He has been known to provethat the recollections suppressed as a result of psychic trauma and the psychic energy associated with them can be manifested by conversion in somatic symptoms.
Franz Alexander played an important role in the development of psychosomatic medicine. He investigated the influence of psychological factors on diseases such as stomach ulcers, bronchial asthma, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, neurodermatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, thyrotoxicosis, and proposed a theory of emotional conflicts that fundamentally affect internal organs. Interestingly, one person suffers from a heart, another has a skin, and a third stomach, while the influencing stress factors and the spectrum of feelings experienced may be similar. It depends on the individual vulnerability of this or that organ, which always takes the blow.
Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, emphasized the importance of the bodily aspects of personality, pointing to the primordial integrity of human nature. He said that in order to maintain harmony, a person only needs to trust the “wisdom of the body”, listen to the needs of the body and not interfere with their implementation. In gestalt therapy, it is customary to distinguish 3 zones of contact with the world: internal, formed by sensations from one's own body, external - feeling and awareness of the properties of the surrounding reality - and the middle - the zone of imagination and fantasy, as well as numerous mental games. Perls said that contact with the environment and withdrawal from it, acceptance and rejection are the most important aspects of a healthy and whole person. But when the ability to discriminate, to maintain the correct rhythm fails, neurotic and possibly psychosomatic disorders arise.
From the point of view of gestalt therapy, psychosomatics is a projection of a feeling onto a certain organ, consciously not addressed to it, with the subsequent retroflection of this feeling, expressed in restraining the impulse necessary to perform an action and the subsequent accumulation of energy in the body. Those impulses that we are afraid to place outside are often retained or retroflected: anger, resentment, guilt and other signals that threaten to spoil or complicate our life and important relationships. The result is a tendency to restrain one's impulses when it is easier to pay with bodily suffering than to risk relationships or self-esteem.
Let's try to figure out how bodily reactions can be associated with psychological problems, what the body is trying to tell us, and how to help it. The following factors can be identified that influence the onset of psychosomatic symptoms or even serious illnesses:
Psychological trauma
Sometimes the cause of the illness is a traumatic experience of the past, more often a childhood trauma or a recent traumatic event. This can be a short episode, or a long-term impact, which, although it ended, continues to influence the person in the present. This experience is, as it were, imprinted on the body and waiting for emotional release, transforming into a bodily symptom. In this case, a person can even forget about his trauma, supplant memories of it, but the body cannot forget about it. In the course of psychotherapy, it is necessary to solve several problems: to determine the traumatic experience of the past, to be able to relive it and emotionally process it using the resources of the present.
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Unconscious conflict
An internal conflict often leads to the formation of a psychosomatic symptom. These can be desires, needs, feelings that a person is not aware of or is aware of, but does not accept. The struggle between two opposing desires or tendencies takes up a lot of energy and leads to a bodily symptom. The task of psychotherapy is to enable this conflict to be resolved by making it conscious.
Unconscious need
The inability to satisfy the need is directly transformed into a bodily symptom, helping to achieve the desired. For example, Petya always felt uncomfortable when a person came too close. But now his body always exudes a fetid odor of sweat, and people themselves prefer to keep at a certain distance. The psychologist in this case helps to realize the need and work with the possibility of its satisfaction without the help of a symptom.
Secondary benefit
There are situations in which a bodily illness or illness brings quite tangible benefits. At the same time, one should not think that the person is cheating or faking. The disease is quite real, but it has a specific goal, often unconscious. For example, Masha is very worried about how tomorrow she will be tested at work, as a result, her temperature suddenly rises, and she remains at home to be ill. Symptoms formed in this way, persisting for a long time, begin to significantly limit a person's life, and this happens in all areas of life, and not only in the one for the avoidance of which the symptom arose. Since it arises completely unconsciously and causes completely real suffering, a person finds himself in a kind of trap of his unconscious. The work of a psychologist in this situation is to determine the motivation for the occurrence of a symptom and to legalize the benefits.
Self-punishment
There are cases in which a psychosomatic symptom becomes an unconscious self-punishment. As a rule, this is due to the guilt that the person is experiencing. Self-punishment makes it easier to experience guilt, but it can make life much more difficult. For example, Roma cheated on his wife and soon began to suffer from erectile dysfunction, which made it difficult for his sex life, both with his wife and with his mistress. In cases of unconscious self-punishment, the psychologist helps to find out what a person is punishing himself for and works with a conscious experience of guilt. There is one thing in common with most people who tend to react bodily to psychological problems. They often have difficulty verbalizing their feelings, emotions, sensations and experiences. It's easier for them to keep everything to themselves than to share with someone. Without experience in expressing feelings, it can be difficult for such people to determinewhat kind of feelings they are experiencing, to separate some feelings from others.
The term "alexithymia" was proposed in 1973 by Peter Sifneos, in his work he described the characteristics of patients in a psychosomatic clinic, which were expressed in a utilitarian way of thinking, a tendency to use actions in conflict and stressful situations, a life impoverished with fantasies, a narrowing of affective experience and, especially, in finding the right word to describe your feelings. Alexithymia literally means "no words for feelings," or "no words for feelings." A person with such a personality trait is poorly oriented in his own emotions and is not able to verbally describe his emotional state, moreover, it is difficult for him to characterize experiences and it is just as difficult, and sometimes simply impossible, to connect them with bodily sensations. He lives without noticing what is happening in his own inner world,all attention is focused on external events. The inability to be aware of their feelings does not allow us to understand the experiences of other people, as a result, the world becomes poor in feelings and rich in events that come to the fore at the expense of inner experiences, and a person eventually ceases to be emotionally involved in a life situation. Often such clients at the reception of a psychotherapist complain about the feeling of living "not their own life", feel like detached observers of their own life. Often such clients at the reception of a psychotherapist complain about the feeling of living “not their own life,” feel like detached observers of their own life. Often such clients at the reception of a psychotherapist complain about the feeling of living “not their own life,” feel like detached observers of their own life.
It is obvious that the inability of a person suffering from alexithymia to be aware of his feelings leads to the fact that they are repressed. The accumulation of bodily manifestations of unreacted, not released emotions and ultimately leads to the development of psychosomatic diseases. In fact, a psychosomatic symptom is a stopped experience, and when there is no way to express what is happening inside, then the body begins to "speak". It is in the case when there is no organic substrate of the disease, or when doctors have already done everything they could and do not see how they can still help the psychosomatic patient, a psychologist can help here. In psychological work, such people learn to be more aware of their feelings, distinguish them from each other and express feelings in words. So they learn to take care of their body and psyche,and the body ceases to react with ailments to mental stress.
Marchuk Polina