site banner
TissueReligion  1yr ago (text post)   1287 thread views

Ways to address underlying emotions that may be causing physical health issues?

Hi there! So I've had a weird variety of physical health issues for the past several years, and seeing a wide variety of doctors / therapists etc. has not done a lot for me. I grew up in a sort of physically violent / verbally abrasive household (I'm going to step back from using the term "abusive," but probably not that far off) and I've always wondered if there's some connection between that and my current physical health issues.

The tricky thing is... I'm just sort of positive / upbeat / feel good basically all the time, and it's hard for me to really identify any conscious emotions or bodily tension or anything that seems related. It's totally possible it's just all suppressed like 4 layers down, because I'm pretty sure I also do this with anger (eg since I grew up with an insanely angry person in the house, I just couldn't really express anger/upset at all, or they would freak out at me).

So I'm trying to figure out what other kinds of approaches to try, because most of the normal therapists I've seen have come up at a loss.

Any thoughts appreciated!

Thanks.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If it makes you any happier, I've seen this happen to people who came from emotionally stable and supportive backgrounds as well.

Modern medicine is frequently incapable of treating people but no-one likes to hear this, least of all doctors, so they resort to blaming diffuse unprovable mental issues, since that is acceptable. To me this seems eerily similar to how people act in regards to pseudomedicine (your chakra/vitamins/aura/whatever is unbalanced you need my treatment that has no reason at all to work!).

I suspect a ton of things simply are physical and will be discovered be so in the coming decades, like Helicobacter pylori.

Sure, some things are psychological (at least partly) but when someone who is physically and mentally healthy suddenly develops some kind of physical or mental issue without a clear cause, is that due to some kind of diffuse undetectable mental trauma 5 layers down or is it a physical issue we're not aware of yet?

when someone who is physically and mentally healthy suddenly develops some kind of physical or mental issue without a clear cause, is that due to some kind of diffuse undetectable mental trauma 5 layers down or is it a physical issue we're not aware of yet?

It's a great question certainly, and I'm sure the answer is contextual. Initially when I was experiencing all these weird new health problems my prior was that since I was emotionally positive / upbeat all the time, the causes were likely only physical. However, while that's still completely possible in my case, given the large number of (seemingly) independent weird issues (listed here https://www.themotte.org/post/731/ways-to-address-underlying-emotions-that/153116?context=8#context), it becomes more plausible to me that there is an underlying emotional component that is either modulating the symptoms, or leading to some of them.

it becomes more plausible to me that there is an underlying emotional component that is either modulating the symptoms, or leading to some of them.

I'm afraid, but this is a logical non-sequitur.

  • The "weirdness" of a physical symptom does not logically imply that it has an emotional cause. Counterexample: People with rabies panic when presented with liquids to drink. I would say that this symptom qualifies as "weird" — unfortunately, the disease is still deadly virtually all of the time.
  • Even if the symptom is an emotion, such as irrational fear, this does not imply that the cause is emotional. Counterexample: 1) Rabies as above, 2) Depression can be caused by continued ingestion of fructose during fructose malabsorption.

Even more afraidly, I have to point out that current notions of an "emotional cause" have no basis in science — even though there are codified in popular diagnoses, such as F45 ("somatform disorder") in ICD-10.

Specifically, the problem with F45 is the following:

F45 postulates that the inability to detect a physical cause implies the presence of an emotional cause.

But "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". As Ioper already points out, the physical cause may be unknown and a) there exists no current test for it. In practice, b) the doctor is "too lazy" to test for it.

In fact, the postulated criterion for presence of "emotional cause" is unscientific — by definition, a criterion which is scientific must be falsifiable. Here, this means that there must exist an experiment which is able to reject the hypothesis that XY is the "emotional cause". No such experiment has ever been put forward for F45. (If you know of any such experiment, please do write a reply to this post.)

As for your "weird" symptoms: Mast cell diseases, such as mastocytosis, MCAD or hereditary alpha tryptasemia are known to cause "weird" symptoms.

(This fact is useful, but strictly speaking unnecessary for rejecting F45.)

I hope you've already considered this but your list really suggest that you're either stressed (by far the most likely) or that you have some kind of gi/metabolic issue.

Sometimes it's hard to recognise that you're stressed especially when you feel like you're not "supposed" to be stressed or allowed to be (like with issues around kids). This is doubly true when you're starting to become exhausted. What used to be easy no longer is and that might not be because of an illness but because you're worn down.

Is it possible to cut down a bit and see how that goes or maybe going through your work/stress load with a friend/therapist?

I suspect a ton of things simply are physical and will be discovered be so in the coming decades, like Helicobacter pylori

The brain is a physical organism after all, and delineation between physical and "psychiatric" disease is an artificial demarcation of convenience. Something like obesity can well be called a psychiatric illness, and let's not even get into the weeds of psychosomatic conditions like fibromyalgia (nonexistent in India, if that makes anyone update).

The issue is, of course, teasing out the associations, and it's possible that in certain cases where we know what's faulty upstairs, we have no way of fixing it. At least before the Singularity I suppose..

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats