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Psychosomatic Pain
Summary:
Psychosomatic pain refers to the mind influencing the body to create or exacerbate pain.
It is very rare for someone to mentally create pain that otherwise does not exist and usually indicates a serious psychiatric condition. Since pain cannot be objectively measured, it is impossible for a doctor to be certain of someone psychosomatically creating pain.
It is common for chronic pain suffers to mentally exacerbate pain. This is called symptom magnification and often occurs when the chronic pain sufferer experiences friends, relatives and doctors who don't believe they have a problem. As a result, the sufferer exaggerates the description of his problem. The danger with this is the sufferer usually starts to believe his exaggerations and this increases his pain. . For more information on symptom magnification, click on the Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional banner.
Somatization is when psychological distress is expressed as physical symptoms. Somatization is an normal, unconscious process. In somatization, mental experiences or states are "converted" to bodily symptoms. A headache caused by stress is a common example. A person who is expressing physical symptoms as a result of psychological distress is said to be somatizing. The word "somatization" comes from the Greek "some" meaning body. Somatization is a part of psychosomatic medicine, the mind-body relationships, the interactions between the mind (the "psyche") and body (the "soma").
In somatization or psychosomatic pain, the person believes he is experiencing pain as opposed to malingering where a person is consciously lying about his pain. Malingering is identified with a motive (a pending legal award for example) and inconsistent symptoms (a patient limping in the doctor's office and walking normally in the parking lot walking to his car.)
A common myth both in the medical industry and the general public is that pain is either organic or psychogenic so if an organic or "real" cause for the pain cannot be found then the pain must be purely of psychological origin. In reality, "real" pain can exist even if doctors cannot find a "real" cause for it. Through medical science we have learned a lot about the human body but there is still more not known than known.
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