Psychosomatic Disorders: Understanding & Healing Your Pain

Have you ever thought about where you pain or illness comes from? Are you aware of it's intimate connections to your emotions? In this article you'll learn the basics about psychosomatic pain and ways to solve it!

Here I am, writing as I lye on my bed, agonising with back pain! A few days ago, I was sunbathing on the beach and bum! Attacked by an acute sacroiliac join pain coming from... nowhere?... It came like an explosion, unexpected and surely unwanted. The next day I couldn't even walk. The pain was so intense that big tears rolled down my face every time I had to move. I was crying and laughing at the same time, for the situation was as painful as it was comical! And terrifying too. For a few hours I lost my ability to walk and take care of myself on my own. I felt like I had lost my freedom and independence. It was really frightful.

But as I was lying on my bed, I knew inside what was really going on: The past week I had been on an emotional turmoil. I had a decision to make. I was avoiding, not only making it, but acknowledging the real causes of my problem...

Without realising it immediately, I was acting like a dog trying to catch it's own tale, draining myself completely and making resolution impossible to happen. I was running away from a final decision based on my own responsibility on the issue, desires and pragmatic facts. I was not being true to myself and I was letting some people affect me in a very negative way. Because I am an highly sensitive person sometimes it gets really difficult to separate my emotions from the emotions of others. I then get confused, decision making becomes seemingly an almost impossible task and inner-peace is difficult to keep. I was feeling forced to do something I really did not want to do. So my body gave in, like it always do, whenever I try to ignore my inner-knowing for longer than I should.

When the pain started I knew immediately that my inner “built-in Red Alert gadget” (you have it in you too) was madly ringing out loud. This was a wake-up call. Deal with it or suffer, it said. So, confronted by the idea of prolonged pain, I choose to deal with it.

Along my life I realised that whenever I'm in this kind of pain, there's always something going on inside of me that I have to process and address:

1. If I have an easy decision to make, maybe I get a sudden pain that also goes away suddenly the moment I reach the decision.

2. Whenever I have a more difficult issue to deal with and the process takes longer to resolve, I then suffer from a more intense and long-lasting physical pain.

3. If the issue takes months or even years to resolve, I have also been lead to more serious illness in the past.

I know that if I reach a quick decision, pain and illness disappear as magic. So I know that making a decision as quick as possible will avoid me a lot of unnecessary negative emotions that would, otherwise, affect my body in a painful way.

So what are psychosomatic disorders? Very plainly, they are physical manifestations, pain and/or illness, sudden or chronic, rooted on emotional imbalances and distresses. This means that your mind is connected to your body and your body to your mind. They relate and affect each other in many ways. You have already felt the emotional consequences of a physical illness/pain on your feelings and mood, everyone has. So, you know that physical distress causes emotional distress. So why not the other way around?... Strong emotions can deplete your physical condition and health and this can lead to chronic and even life threatening illnesses. You don't need to ask your Physician about this, you just inner-know it! Just think about your life and all the times you got “unexplained” pain or illness. How was your life back then? What was going inside your mind? What was happening with your family, work, love, friendships? What were your thoughts and how did they made you feel?

But does emotional distress always lead to pain and illness? No, of course not. This generally happens whenever we allow conflicts to affect our emotions and persist for longer than they should. A short period of emotional pain means that resolve and closure were achieved. On the other hand, a long-lasting period of emotional pain ends up depleting a lot of your body's energy. The immune system gets compromised, no longer working properly, letting illness/pain get into the body and remain there for as long as we let inner-conflict flow freely. Prevention is important and it comes from an almost permanent state of self-mindfulness. If something causes an inner-conflict in you, deal with it as soon as possible, this way you'll avoid emotional distress and even pain.

But sometimes prevention is just not possible. Whenever you cannot make a quick decision, whenever you don't have the necessary strength to face some situation, just be loving and compassionate with yourself. We are not machines, we are complex beings meaning that sometimes we just can't process emotion as easily as we'd like to. And this sometimes can take a lot of time. So be gentle and understanding with yourself.

Many sudden or chronic illnesses/pain have no real physical cause. They come from emotional imbalances, caused by your thoughts and emotions that are rooted in your limiting beliefs and conditionings. Your emotions have an huge impact on your nervous system, either in a positive or negative way depending on the kind of emotions you are feeling. Observe your thoughts, analyse your beliefs and conditionings and inquire into how they all relate to the kind of emotion you are feeling. You will then understand a lot about yourself and what causes you emotional and physical pain. Understand that your body and mind must work together at all times, because whenever one of them is unbalanced, it unbalances the other too.

Obviously not all pain/illness comes from emotional distress but a great deal of it comes from inner-turmoil. You should use of any means in your reach to understand your pain's root causes so you can resolve it efficiently. Your pain/illness may have either psychosomatic or real physical causes, so trying to understand your pain is fundamental. Remember that your inner-knowing provides you with the answers to all your questions, and you should never ignore that knowing. Even if sometimes we only want to get away from the truth, from what we know, the truth is always there, waiting for us to access it's power and help us achieve awareness and wisdom.

So if you already had the thought, the feeling or the knowing that your pain or illness has a determined emotional root cause, then you are maybe right. Digg into it! Find ways to deal with it so to get better. If you never thought about this before and you are suffering with illness or pain, then I invite you to meditate about this and reach your own conclusions. Look inside instead of outside. Go deep into your unique self-truth. Observe, inquire, analyse. All your answers are already inside of you, you just have to close your eyes and listen to your inner-wisdom.

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Have a nice day and be happy! :)