Anxiety, Emotions And Somatization: How Are They Related?
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 when a specialist tells us so.
Headaches, pain in the abdomen, back, arms and legs, joints, chest… Nausea, dizziness, vomiting, ulcers, diarrhea… Difficulty swallowing, difficulty breathing, skin changes, hoarseness, memory loss… blindness, deafness…
Logically, when our body shows any of the aforementioned problems, the first thing must always be to rule out a physical origin; 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 contractures, or exhaustion as the consequences of a person’s exposure to a significant level of stress or due to 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 diagnostic manuals with the most international prestige, published by the American Psychiatric Association, All the symptoms described in the previous paragraph, and even some more, can appear in a somatoform disorder.that is, a disorder that is characterized by the appearance of physical symptoms but whose origin is not in any organic alteration, but rather is due to a series of psychosocial problems, which manifest themselves somatically.
It is estimated that approximately 25% to 75% of visits to primary care physicians are actually due to various somatoform disorders. However, it is also common that many of these types of patients do not accept that the origin of their discomfort is not found in any organic disease, which is why their adherence to treatments is usually low.
The Spanish Society of Psychiatry stated in 2015 that somatoform disorders had a prevalence of 28.8%only surpassed by affective disorders (35.8%), and closely followed by anxiety disorders (25.6%).
Anxiety prevention and emotional management
It seems evident that inadequate anxiety management or a deficit in emotion regulation may be at the basis of somatization. And this seems to be one of the great evils of our time.
Generally, people learn to cope with frustrations and stressful events as they grow and become adults; from the youngest age, Boys and girls have to face their emotional development, their socialization processand the formation of their identity and self-esteem.
In this way, we learn that we don’t always get what we want, that I can’t always do what I want, that I have to share affections, spaces and objects, that I have to make an effort to achieve what I want, that I have to trust others. myself to believe that I can meet my objectives, and progressively assume that I have to comply with a series of rules that are mostly imposed, but that I finally understand as necessary to obtain a certain harmony when I live with other individuals.
Tools to overcome the demands of daily life
Now, obstacles do not end up appearing when we learn to avoid them, nor do frustrations subside when we learn to tolerate them; In fact, adult life is usually a difficult path in which stressful life events often occur and many situations in which our goals are jeopardized or are not achieved.
If evolutionary development at a socio-emotional level has facilitated the acquisition of tools to cope with stressful situations and to tolerate frustrations (loss of job, breakup of a relationship, suffering from a serious illness, traffic accident, loss of a loved one, difficulty in reconciling personal, work and family life, failure to meet vital expectations, difficulty adapting to new situations…), people usually cope and continue moving forward, although sometimes they need professional help on a specific basis.
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 at the first major obstacle that arises, it is very likely that frustration will appear. anxiety, and if this is not properly controlled, a pattern of avoidance or paralysis that will inevitably lead to suffering from a psychological disorder.
Treatment
Treating somatization problems is difficult because, as we pointed out previously, Many of the people who suffer from it believe 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 users of anxiolytics and antidepressants, or by going relatively frequently to pain units; But the truth is that their problems do not improve, although pharmacology relieves them in the short term.
It is evident that psychotherapy is the most useful alternative, perhaps complemented by a pharmacological treatment that acts 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.
Work on the cause of anxiety, on the cognitive schemes that are involved in the perception of stressful situations, facilitate stress coping strategies, relaxation techniques, skills to manage emotions more effectively, promote positive self-esteem… Of course, it requires more effort and time for those who suffer from somatization, but there is no doubt that it is more effective to influence what generates the physical symptoms than to simply act on them indefinitely as short-term relief, and that it never ends up solving the problem. real.
