Somatization disorder: the body is a slave to the mind

  Lao Tzu said, “I have a great problem for my body. At least for those who suffer from somatization disorder, the body is indeed the cause of suffering. The Buddha said, “To get rid of worries, we must have no self. However, the body and mind of a person suffering from somatization disorder are often separated, and the body is already a slave to the mind. Here are some ways to cope with the disconnection of body and mind and to promote the connection of body and mind.  Patients with somatization symptoms, due to the presence of narrative disorder, their symptoms are a kind of organ language, an expression and telling of psychological stress. These patients are generally not good at expressing and confiding their feelings due to psychological stress, and when they suppress themselves by not expressing them for a long time, they may express them through somatic symptoms, thus showing somatization symptoms, and due to their daily life experience, patients will cling to these symptoms and worry that they Due to their daily life experience, patients are obsessed with these symptoms and worry that they are suffering from a certain disease and repeatedly go to the hospital for examination, and they are skeptical of the doctor’s diagnosis and hospital examination. Psychological counseling requires patients to train themselves to learn to express their feelings later in life.  Although somatization symptoms do not have medical organic lesions, patients do feel uncomfortable because of the physical symptoms, so they should not adopt a denial attitude toward their symptoms, otherwise they will not be recognized by the patients.  Patients with somatization symptoms sometimes completely deny the existence of psychological factors. If the symptoms are stated to be caused by psychological factors at the beginning of the consultation, exposing the performative nature of their symptoms may lead to resistance and resentment from the patient.  Patients with somatization symptoms disregard the objective basis of medical examination and focus only on their own feelings of somatization symptoms, and the demarcation between subjective and objective is unclear and inconsistent. It is possible to break the patients’ paranoid perception of physical symptoms in this regard.  Somatization symptoms may be the need to benefit secondary to psychological stress in the patient’s life, and the maintenance of symptoms subconsciously gains the attention of family and friends, freedom from overly burdensome work tasks or helplessness about their own life failures, but these are completely unconscious and basically denied by them. The psychological counseling process gradually makes its subconscious meaning conscious.  Patients with somatization symptoms are bent on eliminating these symptoms from their bodies early, but this type of symptoms is like a child, the more you play with it (i.e., pay attention to it), the more it comes on, so it should be treated in the opposite way by not paying attention to it. For example, a patient with chest pain is instructed to go running, because patients with heart disease are most afraid of over-exercising, but after exercise there is no increase in chest pain, but rather a decrease in chest pain. For this effect the patient can be questioned with the doctor’s experience to cause the patient to think about it.  Patients with somatization symptoms adopt an attitude of rejection towards their symptoms, believing that they cannot have these symptoms. In fact, the patient is essentially a person who cannot fully accept himself or herself, and in life, the patient has many confinements for himself or herself and others according to the concept of society, such as this I cannot do, that I cannot do, this others cannot do this, that others cannot do that, instead of judging from his or her own inner feelings and Instead of judging what to do from one’s own inner feelings and needs.  Patients with somatization symptoms may have a strict father or mother, whose Oedipus or Oedipal complex is not released, and cannot identify with their own father or mother, and intimate relationships are not established. The impatient character will be formed, wanting to finish the task quickly and well, its meals are fast, and its speech is like a machine gun firing bullets, causing excitement in the sympathetic-adrenal medullary system in the face of things in a hurry, thus causing a series of symptoms of autonomic disorders. Counseling for these patients may involve rebuilding the parent-child relationship, forgiving and accepting their inner child. Sometimes we may spend our lives fighting for the inner child of the past, and we do not live in the present.