Another thread made me think of this.
What’s the latest thinking on psychosomatic illness, especially pain? I don’t suffer, but an old friend did years ago. She finally was healed, and no longer has the problem as far as I know. I do know the pain was very real to her.
Anyway, I’m not looking for diagnosis or specific treatment or anything like that. I just wonder, in general, what advances may have been made in the past thirty years or so.
Peace,
mangeorge
Most importantly, we realize that just because we cannot yet identify the cause of a symptom, we should not assume that there isn’t an as-yet-undiscovered one. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen people dismissed for having “psychosomatic” symptoms, only to have it discovered later that they had, oh, say, a tumor, a heart problem, hepatitis, or whatever. In some cases it took years because the particular disorder was not yet identified (hepatitis C is an example of this).
Absolutely.
I feel that a lot of doctor’s workload is just to heavy. And their sometimes reluctance to order “excessive” tests.
I am a firm believer in the strength of the power of the mind. The flipside of psychosomatic illness is the placebo affect, and that is a very real thing in the world of medicine. I personally would not want to be the one trying to differentiate between real conditions and psychosomatic ones, the power of the mind being what it is.
My “all in your mind” illness turned out to be an allergy to the flavoring in my OTC cough syrup.
Hang on, you have to clarify what you mean. Psychosomatic illnesses are real illnesses with emotional causes, like having a stomach ulcer due to extreme stress. I suspect what you are actually referring to is a situation whereby emotional issues cause essentially imaginary problems. This is actually a form of hysteria.
I am interested in the replies to this thread, because sometimes I wonder if I am capable of making myself ill by freaking out about the possibility of it. Not in a major health-threatening way…but IME, the more I look for symptoms the more I find them, and the more I think about being sick, the sicker I begin to feel. Particularly in regards to my stomach…if it occurs to me that I might vomit, I feel instantly like vomiting. That type of thing.
On the flip side, if I can tell myself that it’s not really happening, that I’ll be fine in a few minutes, I begin to feel better.
Not all the time–sometimes you really are just freakin’ sick!–but often enough to intrigue me, as far as the mind vs. the body goes.
It also makes me wonder about pain tolerance; it would seem that some people either are born with or develop the kind of tolerance that would blow other peoples’ minds…and vice versa.
I hope this isn’t a hijack. I just find this topic interesting.
IANAMD but it’s my ubderstanding that stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium, not by stress. I’d think stress could make it worse, but I thought the stress–>ulcers paradigm was out.
Here’s something. I was actually going to start a thread about it.
Yesterday I burned my pinky finger on a cast iron pan that had been in a 400 degree oven. Yes, it hurt.
But not my finger,which is still only mildy tender, although the skin is shiny white. Clearly a very bad burn, and yes, Im dressing it and taking care of it properly.
The pain was horrible. But it was referreed pain and seriously it felt like someone was kicking me in the vulva/vagina and penetrating me with large heavy steel toed boots. I felt like that for most of the day. It was not sexual in any way though, despite the location of the pain.
I am familiar with the concept of referred pain, but I have never experienced anything like this. I kept icing my finger, but didnt take any painkillers because my logic (maybe misguided?) was that nothing was making my pevis hurt, and since the site of the pain was not hurting, Advil or Tylenol was not going to make it better.
Hope this isnt a thread hijack, but it is a situation of having pain where none is present…
the whole mind/body thing.