What is Stress-Related Psychosomatic Illness?

Thinking, we ordinarily suppose, is something that goes on solely in the brain.  But that is quite wrong.  Thinking involves the entire body in a series of correlated nerve impulses that center in the brain.  Particularly is this true when an emotion colors our thinking.

When we say psychosomatic, it involves both the mind and the body.  Emotional stress or damaging thought patters lead to psychosomatic illness.  It then progresses with physical symptoms and a person’s immune system is compromised due to stress.

What does psychosomatic illness do to our body?  Very simply.  Most of our disagreeable emotions produce muscle tightness.  Suppose all day long your thinking is acutely disagreeable.  You are tightening up muscles.

One of the first places to show tension is the group of muscles at the back of the neck.  Another group that comes into play very early are the muscles at the upper end of the esophagus.  When they squeeze down you feel a lump.  It is difficult to swallow.  If the muscles in the lower esophagus contract, then it’s more serious.  Much more commonly the stomach is involved.  And when the muscles of the stomach begin to squeeze down you are conscious of a heavy, disagreeable pressure inside.  When the muscles squeeze down hard, then it hurts.  And it hurts just as bad as any ulcer.

Other muscles besides those in the intestinal tract respond to emotional stimuli, particularly the muscles of the blood vessels.  A good many of the people who have a headache sever enough to cause them to go to a doctor have that headache because some blood vessel inside or outside the skull is squeezing down so hard from nervous excitation that it produces pain.  Muscle tension is just one way symptoms are produced in a psychosomatic illness. 

There are other organic effects of psychosomatic illness.  If it happens to be the blood vessels on your heart that squeeze down every time you get excited or angry, it is serious.  You should learn how to prevent stress-related psychosomatic illness and be healthy.

Many victims of psychosomatic illness are up and around.  Many are in hospital.  Thousands have been in bed at home for years.  To avoid psychosomatic illness, you must learn to think right.  We should learn how to make our attitude and thinking as pleasant and cheerful as possible to avoid this stress-related psychosomatic illness.

Here are suggestions which will help you to think right about yourself:

1. Quit looking for a knock in your health.  You are looking for trouble if you keep on analyzing your feelings all the time.
2. Learn to like to work.   One of the things you will escape, if you learn to like to work, is the tension that comes to those who look upon work as something to be got over with.
3. Get a hobby.  A hobby is an important element in getting your mind off work tension.  During the day when you are hurrying and worrying, just relax for 30 seconds by thinking briefly about that book you are reading, or that trip you are going to take next weekend, or much better take a deep breath and whisper a prayer.
4. Learn to like people.  Certainly, there are people we don’t like but remember that carrying a grudge or dislike can have disastrous bodily effects.   You may be one of those who never liked anybody – his mother or his father or any member of his family or even his co-employees.  But you have to meet people.  You’ve got to live or work with them, so learn to like them.
5. Learn to be satisfied when the situation is such you can’t easily change it.  If we get dissatisfied with the situation that we’re in, we can learn to be satisfied as well and it is much more pleasurable to stay satisfied.
6. Learn to accept adversity.  We often meet a lot of adversity in our lives but we must not let it bowl us over.
7. Learn to say the cheerful, humorous words.  Don’t be mean, even if you feel like doing so.  In the morning, look at your wife or your husband or your child and say “My dear, you look good this morning” even if it isn’t so.  It will surely make him (or her) feel better, and it will definitely make you feel better.
8. Learn to meet your problems with decision.  Mulling a problem over and over in your mind is something that contributes to health issues.  If you have a problem, decide what you are going to do about it and then quit thinking about it.

These are some of the things we have to learn and apply everyday if we want to escape the most common disease of all – the psychosomatic illness.  We can all think positively and say:  “I can keep my attitude and thinking as positive, pleasant and cheerful as possible.”