Conversion Syndrome: When Emotional Pain Turns into Physical Pain

It is still difficult for some people to understand how psychological issues can really interfere with an individual's health, and this cluelessness is more dangerous than we think, because it is because of it that we miss some issues that, if worked through, could guarantee us a Better quality life.

Conversion syndrome, for example, can lead the patient to the emergency center of a hospital. People who suffer from this syndrome end up with symptoms typical of patients with neurological, psychiatric and cardiac problems.

Epileptic seizures; breathing difficulties; inability to walk and talk; vision, hearing and speech blocks. At first the doctor may believe that these symptoms represent a stroke or that the patient has taken drugs, injured his head in some way or is epileptic.

After requesting a series of neurological exams, your doctor will realize that there has not been a stroke or epilepsy episode. In addition, the patient was not injured or ingested drugs. It is common in such cases that the condition is diagnosed as a hysterical nervous crisis.

Hysteria

The mechanisms that make us literally convert emotional pain into physical pain are not yet fully understood by science, even because the means of action of the human brain are extremely complex and not yet fully unveiled.

In the past these physical symptoms without biological explanation were described as a typical hysteria of women. Doctors a few centuries ago blamed the womb for converting emotional pain into physical pain, but the fact is that men are victims of these cases as well, and now, finally, this is accepted without much resistance.

The fact is that the term "hysteria" was not used recently in the age of modern psychotherapy, and the word "conversion" has been adopted to define these cases - in this text we talk about the relationship between hysteria and pleasure. feminine.

Conversion

The word “conversion” fulfills its role exactly by making it clear that it is really about the transformation, the conversion of psychological pain into physical pain. The thing is so serious and so common that it is estimated that at least 25% of the world's population has experienced or will experience the symptoms of this syndrome.

It must be made clear that this transfer from the emotional to the physical field does not happen at the will of the patient and cannot be induced. This process actually happens unconsciously, even though the physical symptoms are easily delineated. Converting nonverbal and sometimes even unconscious emotions into physical pain is a bizarre way for mind and body to connect.

Treatment

Any treatment that involves psychological issues requires a good deal of empathy from the doctor, therapist, psychologist, and other professionals involved, which is the ability to put oneself in the other's shoes and analyze very well what one says. A patient with conversion syndrome should not hear such phrases as "this is just your head, " which diminish the importance of the patient's suffering, as if willpower were enough to resolve the case.

Phrases like this can really interfere with the treatment, and quite negatively. The ideal is to merge medical treatment by a psychiatrist with therapeutic treatment, usually by a psychologist. This second practitioner often uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is a modern and very effective treatment technique, demonstrating success in patients who treat depression and anxiety.

In some cases, the syndrome also requires physical therapy, when physical damage is most severe and affects motor skills. In even more severe cases, when the patient has neurological changes, the family ends up getting involved with recovery even more intensely, helping with tasks such as bathing and changing diapers.

Some researchers believe that the symptoms of conversion syndrome appear in people with previously undiagnosed medical conditions. As the syndrome is still poorly known, there is insufficient published material about it, and it is difficult to predict the long-term consequences.

If in the past the syndrome was once considered exclusive to women, modern scientists have proven that the condition has nothing to do with gender, so it is possible that both men and women may have the symptoms of conversion.

However, there is an external factor that may facilitate the onset of the syndrome. In countries where culture represses emotional manifestations of sadness, sexuality and even joy, people are more susceptible to these symptoms.

In any case, conversion syndrome needs to be viewed as chronic pain, illness or trauma - never as "freshness" or "something in your head" again, just for the sake of empathy. Reducing psychological distress is a very negative and cruel way to disrupt treatment.

This issue of empathy goes for everything, but in the case of other psychiatric illnesses it is also fundamental. Just as it makes no sense to tell a diabetic that diabetes is a “thing in your head, ” it is wrong to tell a person in depression that he needs the willpower to react.

Conversion can be linked to various emotional traumas or experiences of extreme stress, such as a person's death or a case of dismissal. Turning this psychological pain into a physical pain is a mechanism of the human body itself, which may share the burden of trauma with the rest of the body so as not to overwhelm the emotional side.

* Posted on 6/30/2015