Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is a more common symptom for therapy client than many people may realize. Although it is important to first rule out medical conditions by talking to a doctor, chronic pain can be a sign of untreated depression, anxiety, trauma, or other suppressed emotions, such as grief or anger. Muscle pain or fatigue, shooting nerve pains, back tension and pain, and headaches are quite typical reactions to unexpressed emotions, needs, or desires. In the lingo of the profession, this is called "somaticizing" and can lead to a diagnosis of somatic disorder/pain disorder.

Clients with chronic pain are often resistant to exploring the possibility that their pain has an emotional root. Sometimes they fear they are being accused of making up the symptoms or causing them on purpose, but as the diagnosis above makes clear, this is not the case with true somaticizing. The pain is real, and may be a result of emotions that are literally stuck in the body. Emotions are, in large part, chemicals that released into our muscles and organs, and if they stay there, they can cause very real pain, as real as any pain caused by a medical condition.

Clients may also fear admitting their pain has emotions roots because it deprives them of the hope that there is a medical cure. Instead, if the pain is emotionally based, it means they must confront the very emotions that they avoided to being with, which is what caused the pain.