Psychosomatic back pain is one of the most widely experienced types of dorsal symptomologies, yet is only occasionally recognized as being related to the mindbody interactions, rather then implicated as being the direct result of a structural injury, disease or degenerative condition.
Psychosomatic is a word that carries a negative implication that the agony is not real. It is often commonly used to describe pain that is unfairly judged as being “all in your head”. The reality is completely the opposite: The pain is very real. The pain is anatomical. These types of symptoms are in no way able to be differentiated from pain due to injury or degeneration simply through physical exam. Outwardly, these pain syndromes will appear like any other. It is for this very reason that most forms of psychosomatic back pain go undiagnosed for what they truly are and therefore rarely improve.
This article provides some crucial background on psychogenic dorsal pain and why it has become one of the most common of all back ache problems in the modern world.
Conscious Mind vs Subconscious Mind
The human mind is composed of 2 distinct parts:
There is the conscious mind. This is the area that you are aware of. It consists of all the day to day thoughts that you experience and the way you view yourself. It is the version of yourself that you show to other people. This conscious mind is not the real you. It is merely an invention created by the real you: the subconscious mind.
The subconscious is far larger and more powerful than the conscious mind. It contains the vast database of all our experiences and feelings. The huge volume of thoughts in the subconscious is astronomical. Things that exist here never go away. Feelings and conflicts in the subconscious will linger forever. These negative thoughts and feelings are normal for everyone to have.
Life always creates conflict, fear and pain for us. Consciously, these feelings fade, but subconsciously, they remain. Lurking. Festering. These subconscious threats are always trying to find their way back into our conscious minds.
Emotional pain can be horrible and creates a much more serious threat to our true selves than physical pain. It is for this reason that our subconscious must repress the negative thoughts, before they can reach consciousness.
Think of it like a computer analogy: The conscious mind is the operating system. The subconscious mind is the hard drive. We all know that problems with the hard drive can cause the operating system to crash. Therefore, a well designed drive uses protective techniques to quarantine dangerous files so that they can not influence the daily activities of the operating system.
Repression and Psychosomatic Back Pain
The subconscious mind does not want its captive prisoner emotions to escape to the conscious mind. The subconscious views these emotions as a huge threat to our self esteem and psychological well-being. The subconscious recognizes the tendency of these emotions to try to gain consciousness. The response is to repress the negative emotions and thoughts. Repression is a way to hide these negative or conflicting emotional issues from our conscious minds, by burying them deep in the subconscious.
The reason for psychosomatic back pain to exist is to cover up these repressed emotions. Anger, guilt, regret, sadness, insecurity, fear, anxiety and others, exert powerful effects on our subconscious minds. These conflicts and negative emotions can come from many sources in life.
Some personality types are much more prone to suffer from these repressed emotions than others. People that are good-hearted, success-oriented, perfectionistic, emotional, sensitive, and self-motivated, are particularly prone to suffer from psychosomatic symptomologies. These emotions do not want to be buried. It is their nature to attempt to gain consciousness. In order to fool the conscious mind into ignoring these repressed emotional issues, the subconscious creates a distraction. This distraction is psychosomatic back pain.
Mindbody Back Pain is Just the Start
Psychologically induced pain syndromes are universal. We have all suffered from one or more of them at some point in our lives. Psychological back pain is a syndrome that has reached epidemic proportions due to one main factor; it’s success. Physical pain is one of the best distractions from repressed emotional issues. It is natural for people to worry and then tell themselves, “Don’t think about it”. It is in our nature to consciously repress uncomfortable feelings. Think about the power of our subconscious and understand the extent that it is willing to go to repress sensitive, threatening memories and issues.
Physical pain is a great distraction, since it really holds the attention of our conscious minds. Psychosomatic pain is a condition that affects everything we do. It is a constant reminder that works 24/7, to keep our conscious mind focused on the physical and not the psychoemotional. There is nothing as strong as pain to really keep us focused on the body.
The Cure for Psychosomatic Back Pain
Lucky for us, the cure for psychosomatic back pain is available. It is knowledge therapy. The cure is easy to enact, in theory, but takes some time and effort to make it work. No one can cure you of psychosomatic pain, except yourself. No doctor. No therapist. The true cure must come from inside of you. There are no side effects of this treatment and it is the very definition of holistic. Knowledge therapy truly treats the whole person… mind, body and spirit.
I am so confident in this approach because it has worked for me and for tens of thousands of back pain patients and the numbers are ever growing.
For further study on the subject of mindbody pain syndromes, I suggest you read the many books which have been written on the topic. Most are available in your local library, so you do not even have to spend any money. You might just be surprised at what you learn… about pain, about yourself, about the nature of medicine’s failure to address the single most problematic occurrence in the healthcare sector… the unchecked incidence of mindbody suffering.
Back Pain > Psychological Back Pain > Psychosomatic Back Pain
