Anxiety, emotions and somatization: how are they related?

How is discomfort gestated in this loop that affects mind and body?

Anxiety and emotional disorders have curious and diverse ways of showing themselves to us, many of which are not usually interpreted as such sometimes even if a specialist is indicating it to us.

Headaches, in the abdomen, in the back, in the arms and legs, in the joints, in the chest...... Nausea, dizziness, vomiting, ulcers, diarrhea... Difficulty in swallowing, difficulty in breathing, skin alterations, hoarseness, loss of memory... blindness, deafness...

How does our body react to anxiety?

Logically, when our body shows any of the above-mentioned problems, the first thing to do is always to rule out a physical origin; but what happens when medical examinations show that anxiety is a physical problem? but what happens when medical examinations do not find a cause for these symptoms?

It is quite common in our social environment to identify the origin of headaches, Muscle contractions, or exhaustion as the consequences of a person's exposure to a significant level of stress or because of a low mood.

However, there are many more physical symptoms that can reveal that an individual is experiencing a high degree of anxiety or may even be going through a depressive episode.

Somatizations and their symptoms

According to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), one of the most prestigious international diagnostic manuals, published by the American Psychiatric Association, all of the symptoms described in this paragraph can be found in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), all the symptoms described in the previous paragraph, and even some more, can appear in a somatoform disorder.This is a disorder characterized by the appearance of physical symptoms whose origin does not lie in any organic alteration, but are due to a series of psychosocial problems, which are externalized in somatic form.

It is estimated that approximately 25% to 75% of visits to the primary care physician are actually due to various somatoform disorders. However, it is also frequent that a good part of this type of patients do not accept that the origin of their discomfort is not found in any organic disease, so their adherence to treatment is usually low.

The Spanish Society of Psychiatry stated in 2015 that somatoform disorders had a prevalence of 28.8%, second only to affective disorders., second only to affective disorders (35.8%), and closely followed by anxiety disorders (25.6%).

Anxiety prevention and emotional management

It seems evident that an inadequate management of anxiety or a deficit in the regulation of emotions may be at the basis of somatization. And this seems to be one of the great evils of our time.

As a general rule, people learn to cope with frustrations and stressful events as they grow up and become adults; from the youngest age, children have to cope with their emotional development, their socialization process, and the formation of theirand the formation of their identity and self-esteem.

In this way, we learn that we do not always get what we want, that we cannot always do what we want, that we have to share affections, spaces and objects, that we have to make an effort to achieve what we want, that we have to trust ourselves to believe that we can achieve our objectives, and progressively assume that we have to comply with a series of rules that are mostly imposed, but that we finally understand as necessary to obtain certain harmony when living together with other individuals.

Tools for overcoming the demands of daily life

However, obstacles do not stop appearing when we learn to avoid them, nor do frustrations disappear when we learn to tolerate them; in fact, adult life is usually a difficult path in which stressful life events and many situations in which our goals are endangered or not achieved tend to occur.

If evolutionary development at the socio-emotional level has facilitated the acquisition of tools to cope with stressful situations and to tolerate frustrations (job loss, breakup of a partner, serious illness, traffic accident, loss of a loved one, difficulty in reconciling personal, work and family life, failure to meet life expectations, difficulty in adapting to new situations...), people usually get by and keep moving forward, although sometimes they may need occasional professional help.

But if, on the other hand, these tools were not acquired at the time, then there will be no ability to tolerate frustration successfully, nor skills to manage emotions, so that the first major obstacle that arises is very likely to appear anxiety, and if this is not properly controlled, a pattern of avoidance or paralysis that will irremediably lead to the development of a psychological disorder..

Treatment

Treating somatization problems is difficult because, as we pointed out earlier, many of the sufferers insist that their symptoms, being physical, must have a physical cause, many sufferers are adamant that their symptoms, being physical, must have a physical cause..

Other individuals are reluctant to allow themselves to be intervened by a psychology professional, and end up being chronic consumers of anxiolytics and antidepressants, or attending pain units relatively frequently; but the truth is that their problems do not improve, although pharmacology relieves them in the short term.

It is clear that psychotherapy is the most useful alternative, perhaps complemented by pharmacological treatment acting on the physical symptoms, since it allows the person to understand what and why their somatic discomfort occurs in the absence of an organic origin.

Working on the cause of anxiety, on the cognitive schemes that are involved in the perception of stressful situations, facilitating stress coping strategies, relaxation techniques, skills to manage emotions more effectively, promoting a positive self-esteem... certainly involves more effort and time for those who suffer from somatization, but there is no doubt that it is more effective to have an impact on what generates the physical symptoms than simply acting indefinitely on them as a short-term relief, and that never ends up solving the real problem.