What Is Psychosomatics - The Quality Of Life

Increasingly, people with a runny nose or some kind of food poisoning tell themselves and others that this is all "from the nerves." But sometimes a runny nose is just a runny nose, and psychosomatics as a science considers much more complex processes associated with deep personality disorders. In order not to complicate the nature of ordinary "sores", but at the same time not to ignore important aspects of the body's work, let's figure out how the mechanism of psychosomatic disorder works.

Let's imagine that a person has a hard life, he is experiencing serious stress. If the overstrain occurs constantly and for a long time, the emotional or intellectual sphere of the psyche is exhausted. If it was powerful and instantaneous, psychological trauma occurs - just like with muscles. In both cases, a personality disorder called neurosis can develop. Sometimes it goes away without bodily symptoms, but when they do appear, it is called a functional disorder: all organs and systems are in order, but they do not work well. It's like a failure of a computer's operating system, i.e. software. If a difficult life situation lasts for years or the trauma was too severe, a functional disorder turns into an organic one, when the heart really wears out, ulcers burn holes in the intestinal mucosa, and the lungs stop breathing. This is already a breakdown of computer parts, that is, hardware: say, the motherboard burned out.

Normal

Why can a neurosis be accompanied by bodily symptoms? If you believe the holistic, that is, a holistic, scientific approach, everything in the body is connected and if a failure has occurred somewhere, then it will make itself felt in some other place. The simplest example is normal psychosomatic reactions, which each of us must have observed in ourselves. It can be a rapid heartbeat of a lover, a rise in temperature before the exam, trembling in the knees with fear. These symptoms appear during stressful moments in life, but usually disappear if the situation changes. The exam is over - and everything returns to normal, the body restores the natural balance of all systems.

When it's time to worry

Many of us are quite capable of recognizing our psychosomatic relationships. For example, if my throat hurts, then I didn’t say something important at the right time; I have a headache - it’s me too hard to talk about an important dilemma in my head; my knee was pinched - it was I who shouldered an enormous burden of responsibility. It would be difficult to make a specific list of symptoms, because everyone has their own sick and healthy places, however, there are psychotherapeutic approaches in which a cartographic approach is adopted, that is, specific parts of the body and diseases are correlated with certain personal problems. For example, stomach ulcers are associated with envy, hypertension with suppressed aggression, skin diseases with interpersonal difficulties, and so on. There are more and more speculations on the topic of such comparisons, and often the question arises about the reliability of such statements,however, scientists are unanimous in recognizing the psychological basis of some diseases. These diseases are called psychosomatosis, they include bronchial asthma, ulcerative colitis, essential hypertension, neurodermatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, duodenal ulcer, and some sexual disorders. According to the World Health Organization, about 60 percent of patients visiting doctors in a polyclinic suffer from psychosomatic diseases and need the help of a psychologist, because treatment with drugs alone may not help here. According to the World Health Organization, about 60 percent of patients visiting doctors in a polyclinic suffer from psychosomatic diseases and need the help of a psychologist, because treatment with drugs alone may not help here. According to the World Health Organization, about 60 percent of patients visiting doctors in a polyclinic suffer from psychosomatic diseases and need the help of a psychologist, because treatment with drugs alone may not help here.

The best treatment is prevention

How to avoid health problems? The main thing here is to be more attentive to yourself and "communicate" with your body, because it always finds a way to express its needs. “Hey,” the body screams, “look at me, these terrible migraines have not gone away for the second year now, isn't it time to change something in life?” You need to develop sensitivity to your inner processes, try different practices of self-knowledge, and raise awareness.

Piano playing

There are many exercises that can help you regain awareness of your body. To perform them, you will need a quiet place where nothing will distract attention from the sensations. If there is a person you trust and with whom you are ready to share the process of self-discovery, you can entertain each other with the "Piano" exercise. One of you lies down on the floor in any comfortable position, and the other alternately touches your finger to various points on the body. The task of the lying person is to move in response the very place that they touched. Of course, effective exercise should be safe and comfortable, so agree in advance about which places on the body are prohibited and about the force of pressure on the skin. Always reserve the right to interrupt the process if it becomes unpleasant or awkward. When you are in the role of "touching"connect a sense of humor and try to complicate the task for your partner, but remember that the goal here is only to help him feel himself more subtly, in more detail. Make sure your touch is pleasant and beneficial.

Puppet show

If you are ready to complicate the task for yourself, try to do the exercise "Puppet" alone with yourself: stand up straight and imagine yourself as a doll, which the puppeteer carefully, one string at a time, removes from his fingers after the performance. The thread was thrown off the left thumb - and your left hand hung powerlessly. The knot on the forefinger untied and the head fell over on your chest. Gradually, all parts of your body relax and lose mobility, until, finally, the last thread of the puppeteer is weakened and the body falls to the floor like a shapeless doll. If this exercise is enjoyable and understandable to you, try doing it in reverse order, gradually regaining control of each part of the body until you are fully active and mobile.

Examining the body

The practices described above help restore the integrity of the body image, and this is the best prevention of psychosomatic diseases. If there is chronic tension in the body or the effects of trauma have taken hold, the pain cannot be permanent. The body protects the psyche from overload and at some point turns off sensitivity in the problem area so as not to feel constant pain. The only way to find such blind spots in yourself is to start a targeted search. This is why you need to regularly conduct internal "monitoring" of all parts of the body. The more deeply ingrained the habit of being considerate of oneself, the less likely a functional disorder is to become organic.

Related books:

• Lowen A. Body Psychology
• Luban-Plozza B, Peldinger V. Psychosomatic disorders in general medical practice
• Timoshenko G., Leonenko E. Work with the body in psychotherapy
• Alexander F. Psychosomatic Medicine
• Malkina-Pykh I. Psychosomatics