Factors provoking psychosomatic disorders.

In the modern world, psychosomatics has long ceased to be a pseudoscience - doctors are convinced that all diseases have both psychological and physiological causes. A decisive role in the development of a somatic disease is played by how a person behaves: what is his lifestyle, is he prone to anxiety and is he afraid of getting sick? Why is it harmful to worry about your health and how to learn to hear your body?

Sigmund Freud was one of the first psychiatrists to become interested in the causes of somatic and neurological symptoms in people who had no somatic diseases. First of all, Freud studied precisely the psychological causes of diseases, believing that it is the human psyche that is the main source of somatic problems.

Somatic diseases (from ancient Greek σῶμα - “body”) are diseases caused by physiological disorders as opposed to psychological ones.

Freud was the first to propose a mechanism for the onset of somatic symptoms for psychological reasons. He called it conversion. Conversion occurs when a person is faced with an internal conflict or difficult experience that they cannot handle. This experience is repressed into the unconscious, and when a person is faced with a trigger reminiscent of this situation, he has a somatic complaint. At the same time, a person is often unable to remember the original source of the trauma, because accepting it requires the complete destruction of the personality.

From the point of view of Freud, somatic complaints in this case may look like a kind of message to the outside world. Hysterical blindness, for example, is the message “I don’t want to see you”, and hysterical deafness is “I don’t want to hear you”. That is, in order to cure a somatic symptom, you need to find the meaning that it has for a person.

Later, Franz Alexander made a breakthrough by re-posing the question of the study of psychosomatic diseases. He strove to structure these diseases, and most importantly, to identify risk factors in the behavior of people prone to psychosomatosis. Alexander proposed another mechanism - somatization, in which chronic suppression of emotions leads to illness. That is, according to Alexander, in the case of somatization, in contrast to conversion, a person will have no sense of the symptom. His experiences lead to excitement and tension, which provokes the onset of diseases in those organs that are at risk in a person due to his characteristics and lifestyle.

Today, the scientific approach to psychosomatic diseases has changed dramatically. As the study of psychosomatic diseases, it became clear that it is impossible to say for sure whether they are completely related to somatic or psychological characteristics of the body. Moreover, doctors have found that it is especially important to pay attention to a person's individual behavior in order to understand how they worsen or improve their condition.

A significant part of modern psychosomatics is devoted to the search for mechanisms that aggravate existing somatic symptoms. However, it is absolutely possible to identify negative patterns of behavior that only worsen the already existing physical symptom and the quality of life of a person as a whole.

Factor # 1: low sensitivity to sensations and emotions

People with low levels of awareness tend to find it difficult to understand and express their emotions, and it is unpleasant for them to talk about how they feel. This is a serious risk factor for the occurrence of psychosomatic diseases: if a person ignores his emotions, then the sensations in the body will be inaccessible to him. It will be difficult for the patient to say where he is in pain and whether it hurts at all, which means that it is unlikely that he will be able to apply for targeted help in time.

According to psychologists and psychotherapists, a good, non-disturbing understanding of your body and awareness of your emotions significantly reduce the risk of psychosomatosis. Even for people with serious illnesses who experience constant pain, understanding their emotions and processes in the body greatly facilitates the course of the disease. People with a well-developed sensitivity to their feelings and emotions find it easier to accept what is happening to them, which means it is easier for them to cope with the disease.

Special exercises and practices help patients to re-establish contact with the body to feel better. Meditation, shifting attention to objects in the outside world and to one's own sensations - all this can help patients survive pain and anxiety. It is important that these exercises help healthy people increase awareness of their body and their sensations, thereby increasing the person's attention to his body.

Factor # 2: Sociocultural characteristics of perception of sensations and expression of complaints

Naturally, each person has his own possibilities of comprehending sensations. But there is evidence that shows that the depth with which we are able to understand and convey in words what is happening to us is predetermined by the culture in which we grew up. People tend to call the same experiences, both physical and mental, differently in different cultures. For example, in some cultures, people are more likely to describe their symptoms as mental fatigue or mental pain. In other cultures, people talk more about their body and the physical manifestations of the disease.

In addition, there is a huge difference in how people generally describe their feelings and how serious they think they are. This is largely determined by the culture and the environment in which a person develops. And then those sensations that for one person are a symptom with which you need to go to the hospital, for another one become just a nuisance that you need to endure.

Culture also sets standards for appearance and lifestyle. For example, mental illnesses such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa are very often the result of the patient's desire to conform to the social standard of beauty. Society dictates what a person eats and how he cares for himself. All this has a huge impact on the development of the body and its predisposition to diseases.

Factor # 3: Illusion of Disease Control

Unfortunately, even modern medicine does not have absolute control over diseases. No one is immune from complications: very often even the simplest diseases can lead to fatal consequences. Anyone who gets sick experiences stress, and people with chronic diseases are constantly facing it. In a state of anxiety about their health, people stop thinking logically. For example, people who have had cases of oncological diseases in their family very often think that they will repeat the fate of their relatives. They find symptoms of the disease in themselves and do not believe the pure analyzes and persuasions of doctors.

Imaginary disease control is another mechanism that helps the patient's psyche cope with experiences. So, some people begin to think that they can control certain physiological and biochemical processes in their body. For example, some people with diabetes think they can figure out when their insulin levels will change, which means they can do something when they feel bad. Therefore, they stop checking their sugar levels regularly because they sincerely believe that they can cope with the worsening of their condition on their own. In reality, this is not the case: the patient simply does not have time to stop the attack, which leads to hospitalization in the case of a diabetic coma.

A second example of a disease over which people often gain the illusion of control is arterial hypertension. It seems to patients that this is such a common disease that they simply do not need to be treated for it. Moreover, people with hypertension think that they will feel if their blood pressure rises or falls, and therefore they do not need to measure it regularly. Unfortunately, a person is not able to assess his condition accurately. Therefore, the patient understands that something is wrong with him, only when he is already in a state of hypertensive crisis.

Factor # 4: Fear of illness and catastrophizing your symptoms

People tend to worry about their health: getting an imperfect analysis, the occurrence of unexplained body pain or a diagnosis - all this makes us fear for our health and focus on symptoms. People listen to their feelings, and the more they observe them, the more they manifest themselves. It seems to a person that his symptom is progressing, that he is only getting worse. If this is combined with the idea that the symptom can affect one’s health greatly, the person catastrophizes everything that happens to him.

This process of focusing on negative feelings and then worsening them is called somatosensory amplification. Anxious people who are hypersensitive to their symptoms tend to worry about their health. These experiences only worsen the manifestations of symptoms and, moreover, cause the emergence of new somatic reactions of the body in response to the stress experienced.

Moreover, people who survived some disease also tend to catastrophize what happened to them. They focus on the idea that their bodies are now weak and prone to disease. Even if in fact it turns out that the experiences of patients are not justified, they are still prone to self-limiting behavior. This means that their whole life is devoted exclusively to overcoming the symptom, and the range of their interests is narrowed only to the disease with which they are afflicted.

What to do if you are at risk?

Health Schools is a short-term education program that helps patients adapt to life without aggravating their illness. In general, health schools are organized for patients with chronic diseases such as bronchial asthma or diabetes mellitus, but they can be created for a wide variety of patients. The main function of the school of health is educational, that is, doctors explain to patients what are the features of their disease, how to live with this disease, how to stop seizures. A team of psychologists and psychotherapists helps patients choose effective coping strategies to reduce the anxiety and pain associated with illness.

For those who just want to be more aware of their body, health schools are also suitable. They help people to lead healthy lives, diet and exercise.