How Emotional Wounds Manifest as Chronic Physical Pain

The long term impact of emotional trauma, or trauma of any kind, goes way beyond the mental side of things.  The central nervous system is an extremely complex system that we are continuing to learn about.  Emotional trauma can lead to chronic pain in the body.  Pain that may not be explained through imaging or any kind of diagnostic testing.  How is this possible?

The fascia is your connective tissue organ that is the most sensitive sensory organ in your body.  In fact it is estimated that the fascia contains 250 million nerve cells, where as your skin contains approximately 200 million.  The diversity of nerve cells found within the fascia is magnificent.  

Let's break down what happens in the body when an emotional trauma is experienced.  

1. Trauma occurs turning on your fight or flight process.  This triggers an adrenaline response, turning on cortisol production.  Cortisol gives you that burst of energy when you truly need to fight or flight.  But if your body stays in the stressed response, cortisol continues to be produced turning inflammation inside the body.  Inflammation leads to pain in the body.
2. The is an emotional reaction to this trauma such as fear, anger, sorrow, heartache, sadness, etc that will become tied through the nervous system to this fight or flight response.  So whenever you have a fight or flight response, these feelings will emerge again, creating a cycle of reaction.
3. Feelings are transmitted through the interoceptors found throughout the body including the fascia.  These interoceptors send nerve signals directly to the insular cortex area of the brain, the area responsible for your feelings.
4. Due to these interoceptors, your fascia will react to these feelings often causing constriction due to the stress reaction.  Your fascia can squeeze and tighten around all the tissues it surrounds, including the nerve cells, causing you pain and formation of adhesions.  If the emotional trauma is not resolved, then the nervous system will stay in this heighten state of response continuing this cascade of events.  

So how do you correct this trauma response and stop your chronic pain?

Things like meditation, counseling with a trauma specialist, aromatherapy, positive mindfulness, and removing the adhesions in your fascia are all excellent avenues to healing the body. 

If your chronic pain is unresolved, then healing your mind along with your body, may be exactly what you need.  

Stay supple!

Nicole