When The Mouth Is Silent, The Body Speaks

Sometimes we can’t find the words to express our pain and our body does.

We don’t know exactly what is happening to us so that others can understand us.

This inability to match our words with our emotions is known in psychology as alexithymia.

This disability often stems from a non-existent or deficient family communication system.

Many psychosomatic illnesses give us a clue about the unmet needs of the population: listening, empathy, affection.

To somatize means to turn emotional pain into physical pain, perhaps because of the inability to express the first correctly.

A disability that must be understood and treated as the origin of a problem that has a function: to communicate with the body what our mind wants to express and what our voice is unable to transcribe.

Psychological origin, real physical symptoms in our body

That psychosomatic disorders have a psychological origin does not mean that they do not manifest themselves in real physical symptoms.

These are symptoms that are painful, embarrassing, and interfere in a person’s life and development.

It is not surprising that in moral disturbances like depression, we observe vegetative states, a change in the habitual sleep pattern and a lot of somatic complaints: we somatize sadness.

There are many types of depression, some are characterized by the aggressive attitude of the patient while others by a passive attitude.

In both cases, we do not communicate what we feel or we do not communicate enough and this feeling turns into a psychological and physical illness.

The Price of Foolproof Strength Leads to Somatization

When we don’t communicate, we implicitly think that we won’t be listened to, we don’t rely on social strategies to make ourselves understood or we think we will be rejected, directly.

In a world where we are told that being strong is the supreme quality, no one wants to drag chains at their feet.

Many people do not express their unhappiness because they cannot find the words for or simply because they have been taught that doing so will “expose” them.

We don’t just blame the parents or guardians, but society in general.

We are taught all types of subjects, disciplines, but that of knowing ourselves emotionally is often put aside.

And suddenly one day we feel paralyzed. We wonder where so much pain is coming from and why our body doesn’t give us clear reasons for it.

The reasons are in the mind, but they are numbed.

The result of this idea is quite obvious: we avoid expressing what we feel and when we want to lean into it, we no longer know why we feel bad.

We then suffer from retrograde amnesia which prevents us from getting to the real root of the problem, and from understanding why this pain is present and where it is coming from.

Treatment of patients who somatize by health professionals

Comprehensive attention to a person who comes for a somatization disorder is generally quite poor. These people need definite medical and psychological attention.

Sometimes they are accused of histrionics, simulators or dummies when it has nothing to do with it.

Unlike people with hypochondriacs, here the person is not convinced that they have a disease, but they do not know what is happening to them.

Maybe she has a symptom amplifying system and is focusing on it a lot.

For example, a person with a high degree of neuroticism may tend to constantly seek and verify the origin of their symptoms.

So this person, maybe more focused on their symptoms.

But yet the symptoms are present, they are real: headaches, gastrointestinal discomfort, persistent chronic fatigue, etc.

The patient must be listened to FULLY, taking into account the psychological characteristics that may influence their physical symptoms.

It is also necessary to assess how his physical symptoms worsen the psychological framework.

Often times, when a somatic disease is not treated properly, it becomes chronic and the consequences can be dire for the sufferer.

The disease causes the person to avoid any social activity or activity that alters their routine, believing that they will thus avoid the discomfort and that their symptoms will be more under control in their daily life.

Little by little, the person leaves his life aside to live only for his symptoms.

Psychosomatic illnesses are real and need specific treatment tailored to the characteristics of the patient.

Once biological diseases have been ruled out, healthcare professionals need to figure out what the body means because the mouth is silent, unable to express why the body is in pain.