Suffer from chronic pain? Your emotions may be the key to getting better

Chronic pain is becoming increasingly common, yet traditional medicine often fails to identify its root cause. Despite countless tests and prescriptions, many are left in the dark. What if the answer to this persistent pain isn’t physical, but emotional?

Metahealth is an integrative model that is challenging the way we think about pain and illness. Unlike conventional medicine, which often treats symptoms in isolation, metahealth looks deeper, considering the emotional and psychological roots of chronic conditions. Anna Marków, a pain psychologist and psychotraumatologist based in Dubai, explains how this approach provides a comprehensive solution for those suffering from unexplained physical pain.

Metahealth is rooted in the idea that our emotional experiences and unresolved trauma can have a direct impact on our physical health. Unlike traditional medicine, which isolates bodily systems, metahealth examines the body through a mind-body lens. It identifies how psychological and emotional factors influence physical symptoms and show up as pain.

Metahealth is based on the salutogenesis model, which emphasises the importance of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness in health. This approach sees every symptom as a message from the body, an opportunity to understand deeper emotional and psychological imbalances.

The trauma-pain link

Emotional stress impacts the body by disrupting the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls our stress responses. When we experience trauma, our nervous system can become dysregulated, either leading to a constant state of fight-or-flight or freeze response.

This dysregulation can make the body hypersensitive to pain. Our brain’s neuroplasticity plays a key role here: trauma alters brain pathways, making the nervous system more sensitive to perceived threats, which make the body more receptive to pain. This can lead to conditions like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, or irritable bowel syndrome, all of which have no obvious physical causes.

Furthermore, emotional suppression can trigger muscle tension, inflammation, and chronic pain. Issues like unresolved childhood trauma or unexpressed grief can manifest physically, with pain appearing in areas of the body linked to specific emotional experiences.

Why do people struggle to see the connection?

One of the biggest challenges in understanding metahealth is overcoming the medical model’s historical separation of mind and body. In Western medicine, there’s a belief that if there’s no visible injury, the pain isn’t real.  It’s why there is still a stigma around mental health illnesses and matters related to mental well-being. Many people have been conditioned to suppress their emotions, and over time, these emotions can manifest as physical pain.

Cultural conditioning also plays a significant role in this disconnect. In many societies, expressing emotions such as anger, fear, or sadness is discouraged, leaving individuals with no outlet for their emotional distress. This emotional suppression can lead to somatisation, where unresolved feelings show up as chronic pain, fatigue, or digestive issues.

There are also neurotoxic effects of chronic stress. Long-term stress elevates cortisol levels, which damages brain regions involved in emotional regulation and self-awareness. This makes it harder for people to connect their emotional state with their physical symptoms.

Recognising the roots of pain

Recognising the emotional roots of pain can be challenging, but several signs can help determine if physical pain is connected to emotional trauma. If medical test results are normal but pain persists, it could be linked to emotional distress. This is seen in conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, which often have emotional roots.

Another indicator is if physical pain worsens during periods of stress, anxiety, or emotional upheaval, suggesting a strong connection to emotional stress. Additionally, pain linked to trauma often shifts locations in the body over time, unlike injuries, which typically have a more fixed pain source. Trauma survivors also tend to become hyper-aware of bodily sensations, interpreting normal discomfort as pain, which heightens their pain perception.

Finally, if chronic pain is accompanied by mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, or PTSD, it is likely emotionally rooted, indicating that emotional trauma is contributing to the physical pain.

Steps for pain prevention

For those who suspect their pain is linked to emotional trauma, there are several steps they can take to start their healing journey. Tracking symptoms and emotional triggers in a journal is a good first step. Identifying patterns between emotional states and pain flare-ups can help uncover the emotional causes of pain.

Somatic awareness exercises such as body scanning, progressive muscle relaxation, and gentle movement can help reconnect individuals with their bodies, particularly those who have dissociated from their physical sensations due to past trauma. Additionally, practices like deep belly breathing, vagus nerve activation (such as humming or gargling), and trauma-sensitive yoga can help regulate the nervous system and alleviate stress-related pain.

The benefits of metahealth

Metahealth offers a more holistic and trauma-informed approach to healing, particularly for chronic conditions that traditional medicine struggles to treat. By recognising the mind-body connection and understanding how unresolved emotions contribute to physical pain, metahealth provides individuals with the tools to heal on a deeper level.

The key to healing lies in shifting the perspective from seeing symptoms as a problem to be fixed, to viewing them as messages from the body.