Emotional Causes of Pain

The connection between your mind and body is very real. Internalizing emotions like fear, stress, and anger can manifest themselves in physical symptoms. For example, you may experience a mild headache if you’re stressed at work, but when those emotions are extreme and ongoing, your entire body can begin to break down.

Emotional distress, like sadness, anxiety, and guilt can have similar neurological affects as physical pain. The prefrontal cortex and cingulate cortex can each experience changes due to emotional and physical pain, revealing that the brain and body can rarely tell the difference between emotional and physical discomfort.

When your body is filled with anger or frustration, it stores tension similarly to when you experience physical trauma. In order to release that tension, a chiropractor will apply pressure to specific areas of the spine to ease pain throughout the body. To best describe the physical toll extreme emotions have taken on your body, tell your chiropractor about any of the below symptoms or experiences:

• Ongoing depression
• Deep grief
• Panic attacks
• Isolation
• Exposure to violence
• Work-related stress

While personal psychological treatment may be needed to address the underlying issue behind these extreme, ongoing emotions, chiropractic is designed to treat the physical trauma caused by internalizing these feelings.