How do mindbody disorders develop? What happens when the mind tries to suppress deep-rooted emotions?
According to John E. Sarno, repressed stress and unconscious emotional factors like anger, anxiety, or trauma can lead to physical symptoms. These physical symptoms then manifest into mindbody disorders.
Continue reading to learn how mindbody disorders progress over time.
How Mindbody Disorders Develop
First, the mind tries to repress or suppress deep-seated emotional issues and stressors that are difficult to face consciously, which creates a state of unconscious emotional tension. In fact, that’s why Sarno titled this book The Divided Mind: He says that mindbody disorders originate from the conscious and unconscious parts of your mind working against each other.
To distract from this underlying tension, the brain produces physiological symptoms—for example, reduced blood flow, oxygen deprivation, or muscle spasms. These physiological changes manifest as pain, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, and other symptoms.
(Shortform note: Psychosomatic symptoms are recognized and fairly common, believed to affect anywhere from 5% to 7% of the population. They also appear more frequently in people with stressful or unstable lifestyles, as well as people with psychological conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the wider medical community doesn’t share Sarno’s certainty about how and why psychosomatic disorders happen—there’s currently no scientific consensus about precisely how mental stress turns into physical symptoms.)
According to Sarno, when you suffer from these symptoms and seek medical help, you’re usually diagnosed with some kind of physical illness and treated accordingly. However, since the root cause is psychological, such treatment doesn’t solve the underlying problem, and the symptoms inevitably come back.
Therefore, Sarno criticizes contemporary medicine for overemphasizing physical abnormalities as the root causes of pain. He argues that neglecting people’s underlying psychology often leads to unnecessary medical treatments and surgeries, which could be avoided with a better understanding of mindbody disorders.
(Shortform note: Aside from failing to help patients in need, unnecessary medical procedures are an enormous economic drain, especially in the United States where Sarno practiced. A 2019 study concluded that about a quarter of US health care spending could be considered wasteful, accounting for an estimated $760 billion to $935 billion annually. Of that, anywhere from $76 billion to $101 billion per year is due to “low-value care,” meaning unneeded treatments that either don’t help or—in some cases—cause further harm to the patient.)
