Many cultures have medical systems that attribute emotions to parts of the body. In both Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, the emotions provide clues as to the experience and diagnosis of the ill person. In Western vernacular, we have every day expressions that use terms of the body in a similar fashion: "it hit me in the pit of the stomach", "heartache", "bilious", "hard-hearted", "pain in the neck", "inflexible", "breath caught in the throat", etc. In my experience, I have often found that these expressions can be an indicator for the nature of the difficulty that has resulted in physical symptoms for a patient.

 

This idea is counterintuitive for most people who have a science-based education because the reductionism which is thought to represent matter does not appear to support that the mind can have an effect on the physical matter of the body. (I think that in the future, those concepts will change, but we won't go into that here!) However, I think we have much to learn from systems of medicine that do not separate the person's physical reality from his or her emotional reality. On some level, I think that the belief that the emotions can cause physical problems is recognized and dealt with (or not) in medical institutions everywhere. Persons with such symptoms are often said to have "psychosomatic" symptoms, but it is often left at that, and the association is not brought up as part of the treatment plan. Those I have treated with coronary atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries of the heart), often seem to truly be "hard-hearted", meaning not that they are evil people, but rather that when put under duress, they react in a manner that protects their heart. I have come to believe that this emotional reaction is related in some way to the disease that they have developed. Whether it is as the result of the pathology that they have this reaction, or that the held emotion has predisposed them to it, I do not know, but the correlation has been uncanny in my own experience.

 

Anecdotes of persons addressing emotional issues experiencing resolution of chronic illness abound. Recent books by Caroline Myss and others discuss at length the role of life issues in illness. In naturopathic thinking, the issues in a person's life often play a dominant role in treatment planning. One treatment which I think applies to this concept in a most distinct way is homeopathy (check out the section on homeopathy!) because it's basic premise is that the characteristic symptoms, both emotional and physical indicate one imbalance. There is not yet an adequate explanation for how homeopathy works, but again, I think that our understanding of matter is not yet sophisticated enough to account for it.

 

So, given that our knowledge in this area is often anecdotal and without explanation, how can we use it? Firstly, I think that the implications of recognizing the relationship between emotional life and physical symptoms is a two edged sword. One criticism of this relationship is that it implies that people are somehow to blame for their illness and that illness results from a flawed character. I don't believe that at all. I think that instead of viewing it as being to blame for an illness that an illness should instead be perceived as your own wisdom trying to get your attention. I should qualify this statement somewhat, though. I think there are circumstances under which an external influence most definitely can produce an illness: radiation causing cancer, poisonings, etc., where that external influence clearly is overwhelming. But in cases where symptoms are not obviously caused by such events, the emotions will always play a role.

 

This brings the other edge of the sword forward: if the relationship between the mental and the physical is in operation in illness, it implies that there is some amount of control over it. I think that it is important to really listen for the words that patients use to describe their illness or symptoms. If there is a metaphor for an illness that a person really feels describes their feelings about their illness, it should be explored. If there is an obvious expression that is linked to the illness, that expression could be a message from the subconscious to the conscious to recognize and address what the true issue is. In this way, the relationship is utilized to own advantage. And again, I must qualify this concept with the admonition that sometimes true healing does not mean the elimination of disease, but rather making peace with the circumstances of your life.