Sublime

psychosomatic disorders

I’d often told medical students that every illness is psychosomatic—involving both the mind and body—

He also realized in hindsight that his first episode of back pain was almost certainly precipitated by an avalanche of unresolved feelings

Because Linda didn’t know that the right brain controls the left side of the body her subconsciousness had imagined her symptoms wrong. Symptoms that arise through stress or anxiety are produced in the mind and are dependent on what the sufferer understands about the body and disease.

The purpose of these symptoms is not to hurt but to distract us and thus to protect us from experiencing what is unconsciously perceived to be more painful or unpleasant or what we have come to believe are unacceptable emotions. When anxiety, fear, anger, rage, shame, guilt, hurt, sadness, sorrow, perceived undeserved joy, and the like are

Kaya Chikitsa, also known as internal medicine: This psychosomatic practice states that the mind can create disease in the body and vice versa.

Psychosomatic medicine specifically refers to physical disorders of the mindbody, disorders that may appear to be purely physical, but which have their origin in unconscious emotions, a very different and extremely important medical matter. Note that we will use the terms psychosomatic and mindbody interchangeably throughout the book, so don’t let