Sometimes people can’t find the words to express the pain they feel, so the body comes into play and reacts. We don’t know exactly how to name what’s happening to us so that the people around us understand us. This inability to match our words with the emotions we feel is known in the field of psychology as alexitimia.
This disability usually originates from an inefficient or poor family communication system. Many of today’s psychosomatic diseases give us good clues about the unmet needs of the population: listening needs, empathy and benevolence.
- In short it means turning emotional pain into physical pain.
- Perhaps because of the inability to adequately express emotional pain.
- Inability to be understood and treated as the source of a problem that fulfills a function: that of communicating with the body what our mind wants to express.
- But our voice and words are not able to reproduce.
The fact that psychiatric disorders have a psychological origin does not mean that they do not manifest thee in real physical symptoms, symptoms that permanently insothe, annoy and interfere with a person’s life and satisfactory development.
Unsurprisingly, mood disorders, such as depression, observe vegetative states, a change in the usual pace of sleep, and many somatic complaints: this is the call for sadness.
There are many types of depression, some characterized by a patient who adopts an aggressive attitude, and others by a patient who adopts a passive attitude, in both cases there is no communication of what it feels like, at least not adequate communication. that feeling becomes a psychological and physical malaise.
When we do not communicate, we implicitly assume that we will not be heard, that we do not have the social strategies to make us understand, or that we will be attacked directly, in a world where we are told that being strong is the most important thing. precious quality that we can have, no one wants to go in the opposite direction.
Many people who do not express their discomfort do so because they do not find the words for it, or simply because someone has taught them throughout their education that they will be exposed if they express themselves too much, we not only blame this on parents or teachers, but on society as a whole. They teach us all kinds of subjects, but the subject of emotional knowledge is often left out.
Suddenly, one day, we feel paralyzed. We wonder where the pain comes from and why the body gives no clear reasons to explain it. The reasons are in the mind, but they’re anesthetized.
The result of this idea is quite obvious: you avoid expressing what you feel, and when you want to realize you do not know why you feel bad, we have retrograde amnesia that prevents us from going to the real root of the problem, to understand why it hurts so much and where does all this pain come from?
The overall management of the person visiting a somatization disorder is quite poor in some cases, these people need medical and psychological care.
In some cases they are accused of histrionics, that is, manipulative and exaggerated, when in reality it has nothing to do with it, unlike hypochondriaacs, here the person is not convinced that he has a disease, he simply does not know what is going on.
Perhaps yes, it may be true that they have a symptom amplification system and a very self-centered approach, for example, a person with a high degree of neurosis may have this pattern of research and overevidence of symptoms.
As a result, this person may be more focused on their symptoms, and therefore their anxious path unfolds, but the symptoms are still there, they are real: headache, gastrointestinal discomfort, persistent chronic fatigue, etc.
The patient should be treated comprehensively, taking into account the psychological characteristics that can influence their physical symptoms, and also evaluate how their physical symptoms worsen the psychological state.
In many cases, when a somatic disease is not treated properly, it becomes chronic and there can be a logical and terrible consequence for the person who suffers it: the disease, already in its chronic form, causes the person to avoid any social activity or change their routine, thinking that they avoid discomfort and that their symptoms will be better controlled in their daily routine. Gradually, the person will put his life aside because of his symptoms.
Psychosomatic diseases are real and require a specific treatment and adapted to the characteristics of each patient, once organic pathologies are eliminated, professionals should be able to understand what the body is trying to say, because the mouth is silent without giving an explicit reason for a specific cause. .