Therapy for Psychosomatic Illness & Unexplained Physical Symptoms
Medical disorders such as migraines, eczema, chronic pain, digestive problems like IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) or ulcerative colitis, and CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) or ME, often respond well to a psychotherapy approach that takes the body-mind link into thorough and properly informed consideration.
Are Psychosomatic Symptoms, Stress Related or ‘All in the Mind’?
To refer to these symptoms – which conventional medicine seems helpless to relieve – as ‘stress related’ is in no way to dismiss them as unreal or ‘all in the mind’ These problems are all extremely real, and conditions such as ME/Chronic Fatigue and Irritable Bowel absolutely deserve to be treated with seriousness, dignity and respect, whether or not the label ‘psychosomatic’ is applied to them.
Even conditions that have an underlying organic cause can be made much worse by stress and anxiety. Actually, practically every disease has a ‘psychosomatic’ component. For example, the painful symptoms of a condition such as arthritis tend to be experienced as much more distressing and disruptive if the person is also depressed or anxious.
Psychosomatic illness can often manifest as symptoms that are also associated with serious health problems, such as chest pain, for example.
Understanding Psychosomatic Illness and Unexplained Physical Symptoms
Unmanaged excitation and muscular tension, which we experience as stress, can lead to the development of a variety of symptoms and diseases such as chronic pain, high blood pressure, eczema, IBS, ulcerative colitis, CFS or ME, anxiety disorders and depression.
Repeated attempts to cure the conditions or symptoms, whether through ineffectual medication or by futile attempts at ‘relaxation’ or ‘mindfulness’, can merely add to a sense of failure and feed into the stress and sense of helplessness which is the original source of the problem.
Marcus utilises fully up-to-date understandings of how stress relates with how we use and organise ourselves and how these factors interact with the body’s reactions to overwhelm so as to form symptoms which can become chronic.
Your body and your mind form a single organism that has to be treated in an holistic way. The patterns that underlie your feelings of overwhelm (conscious or not), and the release of hormones that cause your symptoms (such as IBS, ME, migraines, eczema etc.) must be seen holistically as psychological patterns, physical patterns, and emotional and mental patterns, that have a meaning, a history and a function in the present.
Stress-Reduction Behavioural Therapy for Psychosomatic Illness and Unexplained Physical Symptoms
Body, mind, thoughts, memories, feelings and sensations are all interconnected, and therefore, whatever you present in therapy, Marcus will work with the whole of what you bring, in terms of personal issues, trauma history, overwhelm, worries, fears and concerns. In particular, as a procedural approach that is in line with modern, neuroscientific understanding, the careful use of ‘personal space’ and ‘somatic experiencing’ exercises brings relief and healing to your whole organism:
- through helping you connect to yourself and experience how parts of you feel healthy and comfortable, in order to help you grow a more warm, accepting relationship to yourself and others
- by getting you to feel how your patterns have a function and are not just ‘bad’
- by getting you to feel how you can recalibrate your behaviour in future to react to events in a less stressed manner
- by showing you how to regulate yourself under pressure and to self-soothe
- by letting you perceive conflicts or stressful situations with a greater distance and improved self-regulation
- through reducing symptoms and feelings of helplessness, so you can organise a more emotionally integrated way of acting and living a personal life
- by viewing life transitions and crises as a challenge to form new personalised answers and discover how to develop your own, more appropriate means of expressing your needs and getting them met
Therapy for Psychosomatic Illness & Symptoms with Marcus
Take the first step to understanding and managing your skin conditions, migraine headaches, IBS, ME or Chronic Fatigue or other psychosomatic illness and contact Marcus to learn how these behavioural therapy methods can help you with your ‘unexplained’ or psychosomatic physical symptoms.
Further information about Psychosomatic Illness & Unexplained Physical Symptoms
Below you will find some helpfull information to explain further the area of Psychosomatic Illness and Unexplained Physical Symptoms.
Stress Management
This is Marcus’s other website which focuses specifically on the issue of stress and stress related illness
The Impact of Stress
What is Psychosomatic Illness and how does the body respond
Here are two informative videos that cover different aspects of Psychosomatic Illness and how we respond to it.
