Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 105 posts

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#71

Post by _ywdj »

scotty79 wrote: post #68
cpncrunch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor choice of words. There is extensive research showing that psychological stress causes inflammation (for example), and we have known this for quite a few decades. I wouldnt expect antidepressants to be a primary treatment.

Stress in research is pretty broad term. "Stress is a state of threatened homeostasis provoked by a psychological, environmental, or physiological stressor." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5476783/ I think that just rising the pressure, heart rate and increasing few hormones without moving muscles enough causes inflamation. The reason is not important. It doesn't matter if it was caused by your mom tell…

> I think that just rising the pressure, heart rate and increasing few hormones without moving muscles enough causes inflamation.

Correct.

> The reason is not important.

I didn't say it did from an objective point of view, but in order to remove the inflammation you need to identify and discontinue the emotion that's causing it.

Maybe the use of the word "trauma" is a red herring for you. It's any emotional state that causes a chronic negative physiological state.

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#72

Post by _ywdj »

naasking wrote: post #69
scotty79 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 years is a long time. I find it hard to believe that your life stayed exactly the same and the only thing you can attribute your partial recovery to is reminiscing on your personal, unique psychological scars. > chronic muscle and joint pain, Maybe new couch or different chair at work? Maybe bit more walking becsuse you now frequent different grocery store or now park usually bit further? Maybe you don't go anymore…

> that I think it's better to consider the possibility that nearly all ailments have physicsl causes. The brain is physical. Our experience is physical. Our experience can directly impact our other organs. Why else would your heart rate increase in fearful situations? Point being, "all ailments have physical causes" includes the brain. > You don't think that you have now skin problems because 10 years ago you ate too…

> Seems like he was suggesting that old traumas led to maladaptive behaviours which led to ailments.

Spot on, and it's a very interesting point. Chronic negative emotions can have a direct harmful effect or an indirect effect by leading to maladaptive behaviour.

A chronic anxious state might cause impaired immunity that leads to chronic infections or greater vulnerability to acute infections.

Or it could lead to heavy smoking or drinking or recreational drug use that could cause or compound said immune impairment.

Consider, was someone who died of alcohol-induced cirrhosis afflicted by a primarily emotional or physiological illness?

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#73

Post by naasking »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #34
defined wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really such a leap. It’s pretty well-known[1] that unmanaged long-term stress leads to physical ailments (some of which can be deadly serious), including - Anxiety - Depression - Digestive problems - Headaches - Heart disease - Sleep problems - Weight gain - Memory and concentration impairment [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-manageme...

I'm not impuning the conclusion but the awful logic used to reach it. This is tentamount to saying, "a good meal of delicious food can lift one's spirits, therefore eating a rich diet everyday will make one happy!"

> This is tentamount to saying, "a good meal of delicious food can lift one's spirits, therefore eating a rich diet everyday will make one happy!"

That doesn't strike me as a faithful analogy. The original proposition is: emotions caused ailment at time t1, so why can't emotions cause ailments at time t2?

That's a perfectly valid hypothesis reached from simple deduction. You assert a false equivalence of the two key propositions (lift one's spirits/make one happy) which invalidates it as an analogy.

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#74

Post by _ywdj »

scotty79 wrote: post #60
_ywdj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the onset and decline of my symptoms all map directly to my experience of trauma and the process of trauma identification and resolution. Here’s something for you to think about, as I think there’s a flaw in your question: do you think the onset of my symptoms was “natural”, just as the recovery was “natural”? I believe in causality, and I can comfortably accept that chronic illness is a natural consequence o…

> Illness doesn’t happen without a cause Put 20 balls in 10 buckets each. Choose pair of buckets randomly and move one ball from one bucket to the other. After some iterations you end up with buckets withe many balls and buckets with few. You might think about buckets with few balls as 'ill'. Did their illness have a cause? Of course. The cause was the were subjected to random process. Just like your body is when it…

False analogy: the body isn't a closed system with outcomes determined primarily by randomness. Every state is a consequence of prior conditions, even if they're too complex to discern (same as weather).

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#75

Post by sonnyblarney »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #6
sonnyblarney wrote: post #5

Yeah this is Dianetics i.e. Scientology! I'm not supporting them at all, they are a cult, but the the original basis for Scientology was Dianetics and it's related to this.

I think it's more that Dianetics and this class of methods both derive from classical psychoanalysis. The broad concepts are similar, but the specific methods seem to be very different.

That's a good point.

But not only is the rough observation of 'previous episodes of trauma causing seemingly irrelevant malaise and illness' interesting ... the methods is similar in some case as well.

For example, for soldiers with PTSD, one of the more beneficial therapies seems to be having a health professional help the soldier 'revisit' the experience. They do this over and over until there's less PTSD associated with the event.

This is remarkably similar to the process of 'auditing' in Scientology - at least in terms of discovering and revisiting points of trauma. They call it 'processing'.

As far as I am concerned they are the same thing, point blank.

But I also agree that Dianetics probably did not entirely originate this, rather making the point that this has been popularized already for some time.

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#76

Post by evmar »

bornon5 wrote: post #56
ceras wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left a recent comment on HN about this[0], and at the risk of sounding like a shill I'll share it again as it helped at least one person :) My experience tracks with yours, and it really does seem like modern medicine is missing something important. The book The Mind-Body Prescription[1] by Dr. Sarno covers this exact topic, and made a huge impact on my life and the life of a friend of mine. It's a worthwhile read…

I've seen this book recommended from time to time. I have a condition that falls within the book's purported domain, but when I read the synopsis, it raised all kinds of red flags. As a skeptic, what about this book let it through your filters? I really want to be open to it.

The pattern of "I am a skeptic, eventually I was desperate enough to read the book despite that, and it genuinely helped me" has happened to more than one person I know. The standard testimonials is of the form "I thought it was magic crystal BS but it's actually pretty sensible". I find it a bit amusing that each person thinks they're somehow even more of a skeptic in the face of of the previous people who themselves tried to disclaim their skepticism.

But ultimately you have very little to lose beyond a bit of time to just give it a shot. It very well may not help, too.

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#77

Post by scotty79 »

_ywdj wrote: post #66
scotty79 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 years is a long time. I find it hard to believe that your life stayed exactly the same and the only thing you can attribute your partial recovery to is reminiscing on your personal, unique psychological scars. > chronic muscle and joint pain, Maybe new couch or different chair at work? Maybe bit more walking becsuse you now frequent different grocery store or now park usually bit further? Maybe you don't go anymore…

It's notable that in order to attempt to refute my story you've had to conjure up a whole lot of hypotheticals. You might consider that over nearly 15 years experiencing pain and distress, I've done a bit of research and tried a few different approaches. In fact I've spent at least an hour or two per day for pretty much that entire period, trying various ways of getting well, and learning about ways of doing so. If a…

I conjured some hypotheticals just to illustrate how many possible causes there are.

My doubt about cause of your problems being psychological traumas of the past comes from sheer number of possible other causes and from how many times those other causes were actual causes of peoples ailments while psychological factors were suspected.

Also slow and partial recovery is suspicious to me. When you find the real cause and remove it, relief is quick and large.

My intelectual objection to your train of thought is that you claimed "I checked everything else." Which is false because there's too much of everything.

You just seen one correlation after years of seeing none and think that's a causation just because of that.

Don't get me wrong I do the same thing. My gf has brain tumors. I give her melatonin every evening just because I've seen some correlation between the times she stopped taking it and started again and how her MRI looked. But I'm telling about it hardly anone because there were too many cases when one thing seemed to work for someone and only after much research it was established that in general it was as stupid idea as it sounded.

My belief that mind is just what the brain does doesn't strongly influence my opinion of your claims. This belief comes from reading about various cases of how brain damage shapes the mind.

Another thing that makes me sceptical is that after what I lived through with my fragile mind I should be suffering for all host of suspicious ailments. But all my ailments can be traced to specific factors like dry air, allergy, working as a programmer, having fun by playing computer games, genetically shitty joints (as my mum's), caffeine poisoning, genetically prone to migraines, skipping eating and drinking, not sleeping enough, being close to 40, not excersising.

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#79

Post by scotty79 »

_ywdj wrote: post #70
scotty79 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> initially mainstream psychiatry including antidepressants, then things like diet (paleo etc), exercise, nutrition supplementation, meditation, yoga. Of all of those I think only excercise has proven positive effect on some things. Others are at best proven not to be harmful.

Partly true. Strenuous exercise actually made my condition worse. That turns out to be a symptom of CFS/ME, I found out later. These therapies generally proved to be ineffective when I didn't do any emotional work. Since doing the emotional work, moderate exercise and nutrition work and stretching exercises (yoga/pilates) add to the effectiveness of my efforts.

If you tried to improve your condition with strenuous excercise... plus all other things you listed... paleo.. antidepressants... I'm beginning to suspect your improvement might be completely due to you stopping doing bad things to yourself while trying to improve your health.

You remind me of the people that start little unhappy but make themselves miserable for life by strenuously searching their happiness around everywhere.

> moderate exercise and nutrition work and stretching exercises (yoga/pilates)

That actually sounds like reasonable thing to do to your body.

Regardles of my intelectual objections I'm glad you finally started to improve.

Re: Some unexplained physical symptoms may be caused by unresolved emotional trauma

#80

Post by scotty79 »

_ywdj wrote: post #71
scotty79 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stress in research is pretty broad term. "Stress is a state of threatened homeostasis provoked by a psychological, environmental, or physiological stressor." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5476783/ I think that just rising the pressure, heart rate and increasing few hormones without moving muscles enough causes inflamation. The reason is not important. It doesn't matter if it was caused by your mom tell…

> I think that just rising the pressure, heart rate and increasing few hormones without moving muscles enough causes inflamation. Correct. > The reason is not important. I didn't say it did from an objective point of view, but in order to remove the inflammation you need to identify and discontinue the emotion that's causing it. Maybe the use of the word "trauma" is a red herring for you. It's any emotional state tha…

I have to agree with you that chronically reminding yourself about a bad thing that happend to you can spike your pressure and other potentially dangerous stuff and if you can talk yourself out of this habit it might improve your health.

With myself I observe that I tend to revisit my past minor traumas only when my body is in bad shape. Not enough sleep, flu, not eating enough. Then I obsess about past suffering. But after I get enough rest or flu passes, puff, my obsession with trauma is gone. So I'm not quite sure if traumas are often the cause not just symptom.

Post reply on HN