Psychosomatics headache in children and adults

It is difficult to find a person who would never experience a headache. It accompanies a great many diseases, from flu to hypertension, but sometimes the pain appears suddenly and disappears just as suddenly. Doctors do not find any diseases in a person, and headache complaints are, in fact, the only ones. In this case, you should pay attention to the psychosomatic causes of illness. We will tell about them in this material.

Headache in medicine is called cephalgia. This is an unpleasant condition that interferes with normal life, work, study, relax, communicate. When a person has a headache, it is difficult for him to concentrate, to memorize something, to perceive.

This symptom is one of the most frequently mentioned in medical reference books. But as an independent phenomenon cephalgia, according to statistics, is observed in 17% of the world's population. This refers to precisely those situations when complaints of a headache with a full medical examination do not find a physiological explanation, that is, a person is healthy. However, about 7% of adults and children on the planet suffer from constant headaches (occurring more often 2 times a week), and another 10% of people report regular or episodic attacks. About 80% of cases of the total number of headache complaints have psychosomatic reasons, and therefore are recognized as psychosomatic disorders.

In medicine, it is believed that a headache in the absence of concomitant diseases, a symptom of which it can act, most often occurs because of:

• depression of consciousness, depressive disorders and conditions, the prevalence of a dark, negative mood in a person;
• sharp odors that cause a person to change the rhythm of breaths and exhalations;
• meteosensitivity (almost 43% of adults and more than 80% of children are hypersensitive to changes in weather and atmospheric pressure);
• excessive loads (physical and mental) - a large number of workouts, running, walking, professional sports, intensive study, intellectual work;
• low physical activity (sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity not only contribute to the recruitment of extra pounds, but also affect the speed of blood circulation, increase the likelihood of oxygen starvation of organs, including the brain);
• stress and malnutrition, metabolic disorders;
• bad habits;
• loud noise;
• lack of sleep and excess sleep.

At the junction of medicine and psychology is a special branch of science - the psychosomatic direction, or simply psychosomatics. It considers a disease or a single symptom in close connection with the psychological, emotional and mental state of a person. The data is drawn from many years of observations by psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, carefully verified by physiologists and therapists.

In humans, there are antibodies to something that he occasionally or regularly encounters in the outside world.When such a “collision” occurs, a headache starts immediately. And it does not depend on age, gender, nationality. There is an irritating factor (let's call it an allergen) - there is a reaction. No factor - no reaction, the person feels good.

Such psychological “allergens” most often are the stresses that people experience in very specific situations.

• Dissatisfaction with the world and its place in it, the feeling that the world does not accept, repels and constantly deprives ("others have this and that, and I have nothing", "I am not worthy of it").
• The need to dissemble, deceive, hypocrite. Some lie, breathe, easily and naturally, but most people, in a situation where they have to lie, produce stress hormones that narrow the lumen of blood vessels, and therefore the brain begins to lack oxygen it needs. The more often it becomes necessary to deceive, the more headaches can be, which start as soon as possible after this event.
• Need to talk and think a lot. This kind of “professional” headache is peculiar to teachers and public speakers, as well as analysts, tax inspectors and heads of large organizations. Everywhere where intensive and intense thought process is required, the cost of an error in which is high, wherever a person needs to talk for a long time, there is a place for psychosomatic headaches.
• Headache is an alibi. There are situations when it is easier for a person to hide behind a headache than to do something or decide something. If one does not want to find a solution from a problem, a person simply creates a weighty reason for himself to go to the hospital or simply lie down on his favorite sofa with a clear conscience and not do anything. So they hide behind a headache from unwillingness to solve personal problems (they avoid sex), so they avoid an unpleasant conversation that has long been overdue.

In psychosomatics there is an answer to the question of who is subject to headaches more often than others. The psychological portrait of a typical classical patient suffering from cephalgia was revealed by long-term observations by psychotherapists. They claim that A headache is a physical manifestation of internal stress experienced by a collision with an annoying situation of people who have certain problems with assessing the world. In particular, most headaches suffer from exaggerating their own importance. Their opinion of themselves is quite high, and in most cases it is unreasonably high.

They place no less high demands on the world, in particular, on the people around them. At the same time, they do not always voice the requirements, but only expect that others will guess and will meet them. But others do not realize that causes the very "allergic reaction", which manifests itself as a painful attack of headache.

Resentment at incongruous comrades-in-arms and compatriots is not all, aggression comes first to the development of cephalalgia, which involuntarily is born when illusions crash, but which rather intelligent and well-educated sufferers begin to suppress diligently.

People with chronic cephalgia are very pedantic. They do not accept the very idea of ​​chaos, do not allow it in life, try to control everything and always. If someone mindlessly violates the orders they have established, this also causes a sharp negative reaction and headache. This does not mean that a person immediately begins to make trouble, if someone has shifted his pen or cup to another place or has not removed his shoes on the shelf. No, they are silent, crush the aggression and frustration inside, and after a couple of hours they are lying with an unhappy look with a severe headache and complain that the pills do not help them.

It is noteworthy that people with chronic cephalgia often manipulate others: they require to observe silence, not make noise, tiptoe, bring water to them, do not upset them with negative behavior and information that they do not want to hear, unpleasant conversations. Well, who will refuse a sick person?

Children suffer from headaches not only when they are forced to suppress disappointment and aggression, but also when they try to suppress other strong emotions, which so far they do not know how to internally experience. The joy that a child cannot share due to fear of being misunderstood, anxiety and fear, which he is afraid to express to an adult, can also cause attacks of cephalgia with long-term accumulation.

Often children copy from their parents not only words and behavioral reactions, but also the way they treat others. This is how high arrogance and excessive demands on others are adopted.

A child who adequately assesses himself and is accustomed to respecting others from an early age, who has been trained for his own independence, determined by his age, usually does not know what a headache is, unless, of course, we are talking about influenza, ARVI or another illness in which headache as a side symptom.

If a person has a disease that the doctor knows how to treat, it is unreasonable to refuse treatment. With a psychogenic headache, medicine, alas, cannot give a universal prescription, and taking painkillers every time the head is sore is criminal against the liver and kidneys. But there is treatment and you should not refuse it. It is to identify and eliminate emotional stress.

Researcher Louise Hay argued that relaxation training was the surest way to get rid of headaches. Relaxation should not only be physical, muscular. To relax you need to learn and your inner world.

Canadian researcher Liz Burbo, who added the table of psychosomatic diseases started by Louise Hay, claims that a child or an adult with headaches has an excessive share of responsibility and criticality, and getting rid of them will help to quickly cope with cephalgia. A severe headache is an obvious signal of the body that it is time to change something in their perception of the world and people, to leave everything as it is already impossible. Is it dangerous.

In each case, individual recommendations are needed, but the general advice of specialists in the field of psychotherapy is as follows.

• Learn to accept the world and the people who inhabit it, as they are in reality. The world and people are not obliged to meet your expectations, eliminate expectations completely. Just take it as it is.
• Give up total control - everyone is free to do what he likes, and not what you like.
• Bring the state of your own self-esteem to an adequate, overstated need to somewhat "precipitate". It is difficult to do this on your own, ask your relatives for help or contact a psychologist.
• Learn to show aggressive feelings and disappointments openly: beat dishes, pillows, stuffed toys, cry and swear out loud, box or run, do everything that is convenient for you within the law, so that aggressive feelings always find their way out, save them and to suppress is the surest way to a new attack of pain.
• Take a swim, often contact with water, it reduces the natural aggressive potential.

When treating a child, parents need psycho-correction.