What is psychosomatic illness in children and adults and can it be cured on its own?

The connection between diseases of the physical and mental state does not cause doubt even among those who are quite skeptical about psychosomatics. After all, it has long been known that many diseases happen to children and adults "from the nerves." But how are the nerves and other organs interrelated, how such diseases occur and develop, very few people know.

Psychosomatic are called diseases that become possible as a result of improper interaction of the human psyche and the physiological functions of its organs and systems. They can be certain mental disorders that go to the physiological level (with depression, for example, somatic pains can appear in various parts of the body), and they can have quite physiological manifestations and symptoms that have appeared under the influence of psychogenic factors.

It is these subtle relationships and studies psychosomatics - The field of science, located at the junction of psychology and medicine. This science is rather complicated, and modern medicine not only recognizes it, but also gives it certain priorities.

The first to draw attention to the connection between physical and spiritual Hippocrates and Aristotle. The first one wrote that it is impossible to heal certain ailments of the body without affecting the soul, since they originate from the soul.

The term “psychosomatics” was introduced only in 1818, and the topic became a serious object of study at the beginning of the last century.. Immediately the best psychoanalysts of the world took up this task. In the USSR, attention to psychosomatics was partially paid to such scientists as Vladimir Bekhterev, but deeply studied the relationship of psyche and physiology began later. Soviet and post-Soviet physicians had a long time to get used to the idea that almost 85% of human diseases are influenced by psychogenic factors.

Gradually, there was a clear understanding that positively-minded patients recover faster, their treatment is more effective, and depressive individuals suffer longer, and therapy sometimes does not bring significant relief.

Psychosomatic disorders are those that:

• take place on clinical complaints, but not confirmed by laboratory and instrumental;
• arise on the basis of long-term mental distress, stress, anxiety and are the result;
• not amenable to traditional therapy, poorly treatable, have the properties to become chronic and often exacerbated.

To understand what kind of disease you have (psychosomatic or not), you need to pay more attention to the symptoms and the picture of the disease. The first group includes the situation in which there is pain, the symptoms of the disease exist, and the doctor of the corresponding profile cannot determine the cause of the disease.

For example, a child from time to time becomes covered with a rash. The pediatrician prescribes a bunch of tests, but none shows any abnormalities in the blood or in the urine, there are no parasites, allergens, fungi. Hands spread and allergist with infectious diseases. Doctors in this case talk about idiopathic disease, that is, a disease with an undetected etiology.

Psychosomatic diseases of the second group (developing on the basis of mental distress) well tracked in the following example: a first grader has abdominal pain. Mom leads the child to the doctors, looking for the cause, but all the experts say that the baby is healthy.

If in the first example there was at least a rash as an argument, then in this example there is nothing at all that could hurt and bother the child. It will not be difficult for the psychologist to find out that the kid is frightened by the new situation, the school, the high demands of the teacher and the parents, and the pains are extremely psychogenic. Eliminating fear and stress will help eliminate unpleasant symptoms.

Psychosomatic diseases of the third group are manifested by the absence of a visible effect of treatment.. A person has angina - prescribe antibiotics. Symptoms disappear, and after a few days (weeks) the sore throat appears again, and so several times a year.

Symptoms of psychosomatic illness can tell a lot. Very often they themselves reflect a psychological problem, and there is no need for a particularly big imagination to see a physical metaphor in a symptom (an ulcer is an evil man, ulcerated, infertility - a person does not accept his sexuality and the idea of ​​procreation, something prevents him from becoming a parent) .

At the beginning of the last century, Professor Franz Alexander, on the basis of the University of Chicago Psychoanalysis, created the theory of the development of classical psychosomatosis. It includes several diseases that, according to the doctor, were of an exclusively psychosomatic nature. The list has been named "Golden Chicago Seven".

In the list were:

• hypertension;
• bronchial asthma;
• peptic ulcer disease;
• rheumatoid arthritis;
• neurodermatitis;
• diabetes;
• coronary syndrome.

Today, the list has become much larger, and is no longer limited to seven diseases.

Also, sometimes a person needs a disease in order to manipulate others with its help - you will agree that very few people will refuse to show attention to the patient, help him, do something for him, fulfill his desire.

The cause may be child psychological trauma.. A special group of experiences is the so-called stressors (bereavement, loss, catastrophe, and disaster zones that a person got into). Stressors significantly change the psyche and mental reactions of the person. Internal stressors live in each - it is melancholy and sadness, anger and aggression, a sense of fear, guilt, resentment.

If we consider the reasons for their priority and frequency of detection, then we can safely say that the most often psychosomatic illness develops under the action of:

• chronic, prolonged stress and tension associated with it;
• difficulties in communicating with others;
• human self-esteem problems;
• unwillingness or inability of a person to express his emotions, attempts to disguise them, make them invisible to others.

They suffer from psychosomatosis due to family conflicts, difficulties at work and in communication with others, because of a negative world view, fears (to be worse, lose, lose something, be alone, etc.). Even a constant lack of time in a working person can be a cause for prolonged painful stress.Information congestion (television, radio, Internet) also causes illness, usually it is a disease of the gastrointestinal tract. If with all this, a person does not have enough time to sleep, eat rationally, has bad habits, then he cannot avoid illness.

Stress is not dangerous for a person. This is only a situation in which the brain commands the nervous system for muscles and tissues to mobilize. In an emergency, the body strains from the inside to be ready at any moment to repel the danger. This is a normal reaction.

The cardiovascular system, digestive organs, nervous system and joints most often suffer from stressors. (bone). However, other organs and systems can get sick - everything is very simple: where it is thin, it breaks there (the insolent person, who is used to pushing everyone with elbows on the way, has his “strained” elbows, a person who cannot stand up for himself, fight back or grab your piece of happiness, teeth start to ache, etc.).

Parents decide a lot for us. They give us the first psychological attitudes and models that we sometimes bring through our entire lives. They protect us and prohibit wet feet in a puddle, they say that the world is hostile and we must always be prepared for danger and attack. As a result, develops an allergy to the world, food, flowering and a ton of everything else in this world.

Parents say that the genitals are forbidden, they should be ashamed of, and as a result, an adult woman will have gynecological inflammatory diseases, and a man will have prostate adenoma.

Parents can control our every step, try to choose for us a school, university, profession. But already at a young age, a person will begin to be disturbed by his legs, joints, since he goes to the wrong place, not his dear, does not his business.

Anyone who does not know how to express their emotions, habitually suppresses them, hides and disguises, is at risk of developing a psychosomatic illness. All children, due to age impossibility to talk about their feelings, openly express their current emotions, more often adults have psychosomatic illnesses.

Often people use diseases to achieve certain goals - to fill the deficit of love (the patient is becoming more and more attentive), to give up the work to which the soul does not lie (it is sick - and there is no good reason to go to work or study).

Psychosomatic medicine claims that the following categories of people suffer from psychosomatosis more often than others:

• unable to cope with stress, overly impressionable or secretive, stress-resistant;
• closed, timid, constraining;
• pessimistic, fatal, expecting trouble and looking for a dirty trick;
• weak-willed, suppressed, under pressure control or pressure from outside;
• lost joy and the ability to heartily rejoice in trifles;
• dependent on public opinion, afraid to be convicted, outcasts;
• suffering from bad habits;
• survivors of severe stressful situations in childhood, having destructive parental attitudes, according to which they build their lives now;
• prone to depression;
• unwilling to forgive, let go of the past, clutching at it.

These characteristics are found in almost all psychosomatic rationales and psychological portraits of patients with psychosomatosis.

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis imply the division of such diseases into several groups - by pathogenesis, by the meaning of the symptoms, and by the functional structure of the psychogenic link.

There are symptoms of the disease, but the disease itself is not. Doctors do not confirm its presence.

These usually include psychosomatic disorders of motility, sensory organs (paralysis during hysterics, “goosebumps”, psychogenic deafness and loss of vision, vomiting “on nerves”, phenomenal pains with incomprehensible location at any point in the body (the patient finds it difficult to show where exactly does it hurt him).

The doctor finds a violation of a separate body or the whole system. However, there are no changes in the organ, the patient has good tests, there are no obvious reasons for the same heartburn or diarrhea. Complaints are usually varied - it hurts here and there.

Often, coughing and coughing for no apparent reason, heartburn with normal acidity and a somatically healthy stomach, pain in the heart with a healthy heart and normal vessels, a feeling of "coma in the throat", loss of voice without changes in the vocal cords, etc. .

The primary bodily reaction of an organ to an experience that led to an internal conflict. Pathological changes are found in the diseased organ, analyzes show abnormalities.

These include the Chicago Seven psychosomatic diseases described above, as well as the recently added thyrotoxicosis, obesity, coronary heart disease, radiculitis, migraine, intestinal colic, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pancreatitis, vitiligo, psoriasis, infertility in men and women without reproductive system pathologies identified in the examination, many autoimmune diseases.

The approach to the study of all types of psychosomatic diseases is also different.: there are supporters of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, there is a clinical and physiological view of the processes in the body of a sick person, there are theories of personal psycho-types.

To establish the cause of a psychogenic illness, you can seek help from a psychologist, psychotherapist, hypnologist, psychiatrist. All these specialists have enough experience and are familiar with the experience in the field of psychosomatic medicine. They can reveal subconscious and unconscious reasons, in which a person does not give an account to himself, does not take them for reality.

You can try to diagnose the cause yourself. Cognitively and popularly about complex psychosomatic diseases write Liz Burbo and Valery Sinelnikovhas devoted her books to this topic. Louise Hay. Grigory Semchuk presented an interesting look at the causes of psychosomatic diseases.

The psychotherapist Valery Sinelnikov proposed a method of establishing contact with his own subconscious mind, in which, by asking and answering, you can find out in which area, what events, people, feelings caused this or that pathology, which caused illness and trouble in life.

You ask who determines the reasons? This is done by experts in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. They observe large groups of people of different ages with one diagnosis and derive psychological features common to one or another ailment, which are formed into a psychological portrait of a classic patient with a certain ailment. Thus, it is not so difficult to find approximate prerequisites for the development of a certain disease.

Get rid of the disease will help an integrated approach. Despite claims by popular authors such as Louise Hay and Liz Burbo, that psychosomatosis can be cured on its own, it would be better if the therapy is handled by a neurologist, a psychologist (psychotherapist), and also a doctor of the profile corresponding to the disease (cardiologist, gynecologist, etc.). It will take a lot of mental work. and the patient himself, because in all cases he will need to change his attitude to events, people, to the world, to get rid of negative emotions.

It is possible to treat psychosomatic diseases at home, or in a hospital (if the disease is acute and needs constant medical supervision). The treatment is almost always quite long. (after all, the pathology has been developing for a long time), a variety of methods of psychotherapy are used to help the patient: relaxation, learning how to get rid of resentment, controlling emotions, hypnosis and hypnotherapy of children's psychological trauma.

Parents are always involved in treating children. Need a comprehensive family psychotherapy, and also parents are taught art therapy, which will help the child to overcome internal barriers more easily and begin to express themselves, to tell (draw, sculpt) their anxieties and experiences.

The most difficult are psychosomatic illnesses, which over the years of their formation and maturation have become part of character (bilious man with liver disease, vulnerable and worried person, very kind and sympathetic, but with heart disease, heavy man, slow with healthy lungs, but severe dyspnea, etc.).

Even a cursory acquaintance with the literature on psychosomatics suggests that most diseases a person can avoid if he knows how they are caused. Prevention of psychosomatic ills in a person should be taken from childhood by his parents, attentive to the child, teaching him to pronounce with words his accumulated feelings, developing his communicative functions.

It is very difficult for an adult to live with fundamental parental attitudes, and they are very difficult to correct even by certified psychotherapists.

The atmosphere in the house should be benevolent, based on mutual support. If you cannot build such a relationship, do not condemn the kid to a painful existence in a family where scandalous and noisy, insulting, where violence flourishes. Better to get a divorce is also an injury, but its consequences will be less disruptive to the health of the child than the long years of living in a family hell. Caring for a child should not be excessive, hypertrophied, but leave the child without attention, caress and love is impossible.

It is important for an adult to remember about emotional relaxation, relaxation, ability to control and properly analyze their feelings, desires, emotions. It is important not to force yourself to constantly do what you do not want.

Do not forget about physical activity, adequate to your age and strength - this is the best discharge. Eat right and on time, during times of stress avoid what increases anxiety - coffee, alcohol. Look for the positive even in the most unpleasant event. - This is a great way to always stay in a balanced emotional state.

Listen carefully to the signals of the body - it always gives signs of malfunction in advance, and many diseases can be avoided by noticing it in time (before the development of myocardial infarction, a person feels very tired for a long time, ceases to perceive the joy of life, feels an unpleasant feeling of constriction in the heart, and before the development of pneumonia, a person always feels a strong decline of strength, unwillingness to communicate with the world, a desire to retire, to stop “breathing life”).

Follow the correct "mental diet." Its principles were formulated by the best psychoanalysts of the world:

• 35-40% time a day you need to experience joy, pleasure and happiness (find it even in small things - in a cup of fragrant tea, in the smile of a child);
• 60% time psychological state should be neutral (this includes such emotions as boredom, surprise, knowledge of the new);
• 5% time can be spent on negative emotions (anger, resentment, anger, etc.).

Only the right balance of emotions will ensure a long life “in the mind and in health”. If it so happens that the morning is not set, and you only experienced more than 5% of the time allotted for grief and resentment in the morning, increase the share of positive emotions on this day, do not forget to get rid of adrenaline (load yourself physically, go to the pool or gym, go over, clean the house, etc.).

Too much happiness and joy are also bad, the state of an ever-smiling, enthusiastic person frightens others, he is considered an idiot, and the development of internal conflict is inevitable.