@Theholisticpsyc: If you've experienced chronic ...

If you've experienced chronic pain or exhaustion doctors have told you "nothing is wrong," you might be experiencing...

Mind body syndrome (MBS)

Here's what you need to know:

Our emotions and stress activate the same pain centers in the brain as physical injury. When we experience physical pain the body, we believe this must mean structural damage or damage to our tissue.

If structural damage or a "disease" isn't found, we're often told it's "in our head" which is a misunderstanding of the mind body connection.

Our brain uses pain a way to protect us. In mind body syndrome, the brain interprets unresolved emotions, childhood trauma, and grief or intense emotions as physical danger.

It creates a physical sensation (fatigue, spasms, intense pain) to distract us from internal emotions.

This continues and our brain gets stuck in a loop of hyper vigilance, firing out pain signals out of habit and chronic fear.

These pain signals develop develop into learned neural pathways of pain that manifest in the body.

This is called neuroplastic pain.

To understand if you might be experiencing mind body syndrome, there are psychological and behavior markers.

1. High-pressure personality traits: being a perfectionist, having a harsh inner critic, and being a people pleaser.

2. A history of childhood trauma: adversity, neglect, OR extreme current life stressors.

Other signs include:

1. Pain shifts locations frequently
2. Random timing: pain comes and goes without cause
3. One symptom goes away (ex: exhaustion) and another symptom replaces it.

How to Start Healing:
1. Shift Your Belief: accept fully that your body is physically intact and that your brain is generating the pain as a misinterpretation of danger.

2. Practice somatic tracking: notice the pain or exhaustion neutrally with curiosity.

Then, send safety messages: remind your brain during the exercise, "I am completely safe in this moment, and this sensation cannot harm me."

3. Journal daily for 30 days: MBS is cause by repressed emotions. Journal exactly what you feel without any judgement. Let it all out, raw and unfiltered. Destroy the pages afterwards. Repressed emotions need to be noticed, felt, then released.

Bookmark this and start allowing yourself to feel and heal.

Join my membership community to learn how to heal from chronic pain: selfhealerscircle.com