One way to understand how the brain can create symptoms in the body is through fight, flight, freeze, fawn nervous system reactions. These stress or trauma reactions are real but they are protective in nature. They are meant to protect you from what the brain perceives as dangerous or threatening. Protection symptoms can be subtle […]
Wanted to touch on somatization again here as it’s something that is a focus point of the work I do with people with chronic somatic symptoms. According to this research paper, “more than one-third of the symptoms reported by outpatients remain medically unexplained after adequate evaluation and somatizing patients account for 10–20% of total medical […]
What is Somatization? Creating a sense of safety and security within ourselves is important for our brain and nervous system to settle and relax, which helps to reduce somatic symptoms in the body. Research has found the opposite is true where insecure attachment is linked with increased somatization in adults. Somatization is basically medically unexplained […]
A study at University of Michigan found that ‘physical pain and intense feelings of social rejection “hurt” in the same way’. Social psychologist Ethan Kross states: “We found that powerfully inducing feelings of social rejection activate regions of the brain that are involved in physical pain sensation, which are rarely activated in neuro-imaging studies of […]
A recent study this month February 2024 found ‘Pain catastrophizing appears to be an independent risk factor for progression to chronic widespread pain among patients with chronic low back pain. These findings provide a rationale for interventions aimed at reducing pain catastrophizing, including rumination, magnification, and helplessness, among patients with chronic low back pain.’ Catastrophizing […]
Forgiveness can be an important piece in the process for chronic symptom recovery. Forgiveness is first about releasing and expressing and offloading our anger and resentment. Holding onto anger creates internal stress in our systems as it keeps the ‘fight’ sympathetic branch of our nervous system activated. Holding onto resentment is like taking a poison […]
A recent 2023 study authored by Dr. Howard Schubiner in the Journal of Pain assessed 222 chronic low back and neck pain patients in a primary care clinic. A physician was trained to diagnose for structural nociceptive or neuropathic casues (clear peripheral etiology) vs non-structural (nociplastic or neuroplastic) causes to the symptoms. What they found […]
The role of mental and emotional stress in medicine has been by and large neglected and un-diagnosed as a primary cause of somatic symptoms and health illness in the body. Most primary health practitioners are not trained to assess and then treat stress as a factor in health conditions. It’s really incredible when here we […]
There’s been more and more research emerging on the role of what’s called alexithymia and it’s role in health complaints in the body. Alexithymia literally means “lack of words for emotions” or is defined as the inability to recognize or describe one’s own emotions. We know emotions can play a role in the production or […]
There is a bi-directional relationship between anxiety, worry, and functional somatic symptoms (FSS). This 2021 study concluded that: Previous studies have shown that anxiety and FSS are associated with each other at a group level. Individuals reporting high levels of anxiety are more likely to report high levels of FSS compared to individuals with low […]
