“Your worst enemy can’t damage you as much as your own thoughts.”-Buddha
Have you ever thought that your mind can be one of your worst enemies? Not only because of the nightmares it creates after you read a horror book or a suspense movie. Its power goes beyond—your mind can make you do something that seemed impossible, and can even ruin any of your future plans.
The relationship between psique (mind) and soma (body) is what develops “psychosomatic disorders,” which can become a real nightmare.
It might not seem important, but 25% of the discomforts we feel are due to our psychology. So, you see: a good relationship between mind and body is key for improving our wellbeing.
Generally, the symptoms our body shows when there’s an actual illness can be measured and explained by a doctor, who usually tells us what to do to improve our health. However, when the illness has a psychosomatic origin, the symptoms can’t be explained by any expert, making it more difficult for the patient to feel better.
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That’s why it’s important to control our emotions and feelings, since in many occasions (far more than we can imagine), our physical nuisances are actually signs that something’s bothering our mind, rather than our body. For example, alopecia and ulcers can originate due to stress and depression.
Because of our contemporary lifestyles, social pressure, work-related stress, and many other daily responsibilities, we often neglect our inner selves, thus our inner health. So, our minds are often hurt without us even realizing it.
There are seven psychosomatic disorders that are more common every day for the aforementioned reasons. If you’ve felt one of these symptoms, but don’t know where it comes from—and if your doctor keeps saying, “it’s nothing to worry about”—we advise you to keep reading. You may find your displeasure actually comes from within your own mind.
Headache
Headaches might be caused by stress, depression, or anxiety. This type of pain can become a real health issue, and it’s incredibly common throughout the world. Tension in the shoulders and neck, as well as head pain, are often consequences of our daily activities, sometimes without psychological triggers. However, all these issues can be reduced, or even completely eliminated, if we simply take a moment to calm down and breathe.
Heart attack
Lack of control over our emotions is also a very common problem, particularly when it comes to anger—an emotion we are all prone to and which could actually lead to a heart attack. When we get really angry, our body generates fat which should be burned through physical activity. Otherwise, the heart can suffer terrible consequences.
Chronic abdominal pain
Like many other physical issues, we can also provoke this type of pain if we fail to manage our emotions. Though in some cases an unhealthy diet could be the culprit, you’d be surprised at how often anger and sadness makes us feel a veritable—and rather painful—
hole in our stomach.
Fibromyalgia
Hypersensitivity, or chronic muscular pain throughout the body, is often accompanied by sleep difficulties, headaches, slight tickling in legs and feet, and lack of concentration. This disorder can be caused—or exacerbated—by stress, or even a traumatic event.
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Chronic fatigue
Lack of energy can be overwhelming in daily life. If you’ve ever felt tired even after sleeping 12 hours straight, you might be suffering from this disorder. As with other psychosomatic conditions, chronic fatigue can be the consequence of bad emotion management. And that’s hardly surprising. Mismanaging our emotions can be exhausting. Being defensive all the time, for example, and building psychological walls around us requires a lot of energy—as can be carrying work, personal stress, or other problems on our shoulders all the time.
Ulcers
The horrors of bodily stress can sometimes be expressed as ulcers. It might start as a common gastritis that eventually evolves into peritonitis, which can lead to death if left untreated. Anxiety, bad eating habits, and an unhealthy lifestyle are some of the reasons behind these lesions in the digestive system.
Immune disorders
When we suffer from anxiety, stress, or depression, our defenses go down, so we can easily get sick. Relaxation, exercise, meditation, and breathing are very important activities to keep ourselves healthy.
We often don’t think about the importance our mind has, so it’s unsurprising that we end up believing our brain is just a machine that works around thinking and solving problems at school or work. We thus neglect its place and its deeper role. Our mind is our home, where our dreams and memories live; each word and each thought that goes through our mind has a very important effect in physical and emotional features. We really should take good care of it.
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