Can Pain Be Psychosomatic? How to deal with Psychosomatic Pain

The first ‘hint’ I got that I had been suffering from TMS/MindBody Syndrome was when a friend asked me whether my pain could be psychosomatic. Back then, as soon as I heard the suggestion that my intense suffering could be due to ‘psychosomatic pain’, I instantly rejected it. After all, I knew that I wasn’t ‘imagining’ my symptoms, and that they were all too real.

Unfortunately, the term ‘psychosomatic pain’ comes with the implication that symptoms are not ‘real’, and that only ‘crazy’ or highly unstable people experience it. But as I’ll explain in this article, this cannot be further from the truth.

So if you’ve got as much as a tiny suspicion that your pain may be psychosomatic, read on, as I’m about to teach you how to identify and how to stop psychosomatic pain from taking over your life.

What is psychosomatic pain? Psychosomatic pain definition

Wikipedia provides a perfect definition of psychogenic pain (another synonym for psychosomatic pain) as “physical pain that is caused, increased, or prolonged by mental, emotional, or behavioural factors”.

As the definition clearly states, psychosomatic pain symptoms are therefore physical, but the true cause or triggers in this case would be ‘emotional’. In fact, you can experience anything from psychosomatic back pain, psychosomatic stomach pain and psychosomatic neck pain to generalized psychosomatic joint pain and even psychosomatic nerve pain, all while believing that the cause is something ‘structural’.

In fact, the first thing that comes to mind when we experience any of the above-mentioned psychosomatic pain symptoms is that there is something wrong with our bodies. This is a well-founded fear, because we naturally need to ensure that there is no life-threatening cause (such as infection, cancer or other serious conditions) that is generating pain in our bodies.

However, people who suffer from long-term psychosomatic pain tend not to find any effective treatment for their symptoms; doctors either can’t find anything wrong with them, or else their pain is blamed on a structural abnormality in their bodies, such as a ‘weak core’, a pinched nerve or muscular imbalance. Very often, these are incidental findings that are not really to blame for the pain, but conventional medicine is slot to pick up on this.

Most people arrive at the diagnosis of psychosomatic pain when the pain doesn’t resolve after treatment, or when the pain becomes chronic and a part of one’s life. Some are lucky enough to come across the concept of TMS - Tension Myositis Syndrome, instead, which is the approach I advocate in my Pain Coaching Practice, and which provides sufferers with all the tools and information needed on how to deal with psychosomatic pain.

However, it is still very difficult for one to accept that pain may be completely due to emotional factors. There are a lot of people who take the midway - believing that their symptoms are ‘structural’ in nature while being aggravated by stress and other emotional factors.

Although this may be true in cases when a person is still recovering from an injury or illness, in the case of chronic pain that has been persistent for several months or years, psychosomatic pain may be entirely due to emotional factors and patterns of behaviour.

How to know if your pain is psychosomatic

There are several factors that may help you come to the conclusion that you’re suffering from psychosomatic pain symptoms. Below, I’ll highlight just some of the most important ones.

• you have been through significant stress, anxiety, grief or general dissatisfaction with your life in the year or months preceding the onset of pain;

• you suffer or have suffered from depression or severe anxiety;

• your pain varies in intensity throughout the day or from day to day;

• your symptoms tend to have a pattern (for example they are worse in the morning and better in the evening);

• the pain tends to change location;

• symptoms flare up during stressful times;

• symptoms flare up at a particular time of the year or in one particular situation (for example you get a flare-up during Christmas time, or whenever you visit your in-laws…)

• the symptoms fade away when you’re very distracted or if you’re having fun (for example the pain may go away during a holiday or party, and return right after);

• doctors couldn’t find anything structurally wrong with you (OR, your pain is blamed on a structural abnormality like a disc herniation, scoliosis, or a pinched nerve - which are not necessarily to blame for persistent chronic pain);

• your pain flares-up after physical activity, or when you feel that you’ve exerted yourself too much;

• you are more anxious about your health than the average person (pain makes you constantly wonder if there’s anything serious going on, you are afraid of falling ill and regularly indulge in hypochondriac thoughts).

These are just some of the clues that you may be suffering from psychosomatic pain / TMS. For a more in-depth analysis, I suggest you take my TMS Questionnaire here.

How to deal with Psychosomatic Pain

Since the cause of psychosomatic pain is deeply embedded in our emotions and thought processes, the best psychosomatic pain treatment is psychological in nature. Simply knowing that you’ve got psychosomatic pain is often not enough to recover (although certainty about this fact is the first and most crucial step forward).

Most importantly, one has to start treating the ‘cause’ of pain, and not the symptoms. In this case, the cause of psychosomatic pain is one’s emotions and thought patterns, so these are exactly what you’ve got to examine.

The first step is always to be self-aware of what may be troubling your in your life, and to attempt to release yourself from negative experiences that are still having a profound effect on your emotional wellbeing. This is why the TMS approach to pain involves a lot of inner-work such as journalling, writing unsent letters to people who have hurt you, and reflecting on the feelings and patterns of thought that you are having on a daily basis.

Besides dealing with any repressed emotions or unacknowledged stressors, a key aspect to chronic pain healing is to change one’s emotions and reactions towards the pain itself. When one reacts with fear, anxiety, frustration and helplessness, these very emotions serve to keep the pain cycle alive. When you respond to pain in this way, you are strengthening those neural connections that are responsible for it, and contributing to a process we call Conditioning.

Conditioning is when our body becomes ‘programmed’ to behave in a certain way following a particular stimulus. In the case of psychosomatic pain, the stimulus may be a stressful situation, or even a physical activity - if your brain has learnt to connect that physical activity with pain.

So how should you respond to pain instead?

If your pain is psychosomatic in nature, you should work on regulating those negative emotions around it. This can be done by practising how to feel the pain without generating these emotions or worries. It is also important to stop blaming the pain on structural causes, and to stop giving your symptoms too much attention (things like massaging the pain area or speaking about your pain at length with other people are highly discouraged as part of the Neuroplastic/TMS approach).

Once you stop reacting to pain in these familiar ways, the brain will get the message that there is nothing more to be feared, and will stop firing the danger signal - which, in this case, is the pain itself!

But changing your thoughts and responses around pain can take time. After all, we get a lot of thoughts and emotions unconsciously, and often we fail to catch ourselves having these thoughts before it’s too late. For instance, someone may get pain and start fearing that he or she will have to lead a debilitating life, and this thought may be cropping up a hundred times a day!

Building awareness of the thoughts you’re having and redirecting these thoughts to something more neutral is like developing a new habit. That’s why it is important to take your time and persevere at the process, and to learn as many techniques as possible that deactivate the fear response.

Education, Brain Re-wiring and Perseverance

If you’re new to Psychosomatic Pain and Tension Myositis Syndrome, I encourage you to learn as much about the subject as possible. Dr Sarno, the psychosomatic back pain doctor who discovered TMS, used to educate his patients on how the brain works, and how chronic pain is often the result of emotional repression and turmoil. He even came up with 12 Daily Reminders for people with chronic pain, that have helped thousands of sufferers get better.

The more you learn about the science of pain, TMS, and neuroscience in general, the easier you will find it to start believing that recovery is possible, and the more determination you will have to teach your brain and body to behave differently.

My own Pain Free Breakthrough Program can help you by providing a structured approach that combines pain education, inner-work and all the exercises you need to practice in order to recover from psychosomatic pain.

On the other hand, in my One on One Coaching Sessions I offer a personalized service, helping you identify the root cause of your psychosomatic symptoms, gain precious self-awareness, and weed out those thoughts, stressors and habits that are feeding the pain cycle.

Contact me if in doubt, and I’ll help you find out if the approach can work for you.

Psychosomatic Pain FAQs