GoodTherapy.org – Somatization: Is What I’m Feeling All in My Head? By Maury Joseph, PsyD, Topic Expert Contributor – Published: August 30, 2016
Maury Joseph concisely explains the mind-body connection and its implications on physical health. “The fact that emotional factors are contributing to your symptoms does not mean your symptoms are fake, as the notion of “all in your head” seems to suggest.”
Unanimous contemporary research points to this fundamental interrelationship. Nevertheless so many of us, both patients and conventionally trained medical doctors, tread water treating symptoms while failing to resolve the core problems.
Jon Fredrickson, in his wonderful book, “Co-creating Change” writes, “Anxiety can manifest physically in the body in many ways. It can cause our skeletal muscles to tense, leading to pain and cramps. It can cause tension in the smooth muscles of the bowels, vascular system, urogenital system, and bronchi, leading to a variety of symptoms such as irritable bowel, hypertension, sudden urge to urinate or defecate, and difficulty breathing. Anxiety at very high levels can even cause changes in the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain, leading to difficulties thinking and perceiving the world, such as dizziness or blurry vision.”
Anxiety triggered by the emotionally evocative events of our daily lives can produce a huge variety of physical symptoms. Bessel Van Der Kolk expresses it in his powerful book title, “The Body Keeps the Score.” Moving forward toward health, let’s all commit to a broad understanding of the links between emotions and physical symptoms, isolating neither from the other, and make strides toward an integrated version of our most vitally alive selves.