How “cockroaches in the head” make us hurt

The ban on the expression of feelings causes tangible harm not only to mental, but also to physical health. Why is it dangerous to suppress emotions and how to cope with the tension, says psychotherapist Arthur Chubarkin, who has been engaged in psychosomatics for more than 30 years.

Many somatic problems are based on erroneous representations and models of behavior. In everyday life, we jokingly call them “cockroaches in the head”. Such ideas, with existing energy costs for living, lead to negative emotions. And the emotional center in the brain in its anatomical structure by two -thirds coincides with the center of the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for adjusting organs to changing external and internal conditions.

The vegetative center loaded with negative emotions ceases to accurately adjust the body, and then vegetative dysfunction develops. In addition to vegetovascular dystonia, vegetative dystonia of the stomach, intestines, bladder, gall bladder may occur. This stage, when the organ is not damaged, but noticeably bothers the patient, and the examinations do not reveal anything, is called the stage of functional disorder of the organ.

Emotions are added to the fire on a scale of fear (from excitement to horror) about existing symptoms, which is accompanied by the release of stress hormones – adrenaline and cortisol. The organ begins to be damaged for a long time in dysfunction, which is detected during the examination.

There is another mechanism for the formation of a somatic disease. Behavior and emotional reaction of a wild animal in nature are always very accurate. A person has two filters: “correctly, non-right” and “moral-blessed”. So there is a ban on the expression of emotions and the commission of

actions that go beyond the conditional framework of the individual. In order not to show a biologically, automatically born emotion with a filter, it is necessary to squeeze any muscle. This is how neuromuscular spasm is formed, the clamp.