Psychosomatics in children: finding the underlying causes of illness

Parents and other caregivers frequently find it difficult to understand the causes of their children’s illnesses. Even though physical symptoms are typically the first to manifest, a child’s illness may occasionally have a more complicated underlying cause that involves psychological and emotional elements. Here’s where psychosomatics can help, providing an understanding of how a child’s mental and emotional conditions can affect their physical well-being.

The study of psychosomatics examines the relationship between the mind and body and contends that psychological issues such as unresolved fears, emotional stress, and other psychological elements can cause physical symptoms. This could imply that chronic headaches or recurrent stomachaches in children could be caused by underlying emotional problems or stressors in their lives.

Parenting can enhance their child’s overall well-being by identifying and addressing these psychosomatic connections. This method promotes a holistic understanding of health, in which mental and emotional well-being are taken into account in addition to physical well-being. Comprehending these connections can result in more efficient and considerate healthcare, promoting children’s physical and mental well-being.

What is it?

A subspecialty of medicine known as psychosomatics studies the relationship between the soul and the body as well as the impact of psychological and mental variables on the onset of specific illnesses. Several eminent medical professionals have explained this relationship, contending that psychological issues underlie all physical illnesses. Many active medical professionals still maintain that the patient’s attitude, his optimism for a better outcome, and his mental state all have a direct impact on how quickly they recover, for instance, following surgery.

This connection began to be studied most actively by doctors at the beginning of the 19th century, a great contribution to this study was made in the middle of the 20th century by doctors from the USA, Russia, Israel. Today, doctors talk about a psychosomatic disease if a detailed examination of the child did not reveal any physical causes that could contribute to the development of his disease. There are no reasons, but the disease is there. From the point of view of psychosomatics, ineffective treatment is also considered. If all the doctor’s prescriptions are followed, medications are taken, but the disease does not recede, then this can also be evidence of its psychosomatic origin.

Psychosomatists view all illnesses, including severe ones, from the perspective that there is a direct link between the soul and the body. They think that an individual has all the resources needed to heal; the key is to recognize the underlying causes of the illness and take action to eradicate them. This concept can be summed up in the well-known phrase, "All diseases are from nerves."

Principles

If parents choose to investigate deeper into their child’s illness, they need to be aware of the following key psychosomatics tenets:

• Negative thoughts, anxiety, depression, fears, if they are quite long-term or deeply "hidden" always lead to the emergence of certain physical diseases. If you change your way of thinking and attitudes, then the disease that did not "respond" to medications will go away.
• If the cause is found correctly, then the cure will not be difficult.
• The human body as a whole, like each of its cells, has the ability to self-heal, regenerate. If you allow the body to do this, then the recovery process will be faster.
• Any illness in a child indicates that the baby cannot be himself, that he is experiencing an internal conflict. If the situation is resolved, the disease will recede.

Who is most susceptible to psychosomatic diseases?

The answer to this question is unambiguous – any child of any age and gender. However, most often, diseases have psychosomatic causes in children who are in periods of age crises (at 1 year, at 3 years, at 7 years, at 13-17 years). All children have a very vivid and realistic imagination, sometimes the line between the imaginary and the real is erased in babies. Which parent hasn"t noticed at least once that a child who really doesn"t want to go to kindergarten in the morning gets sick more often? And all because he creates the illness himself, he needs it so as not to do what he really doesn"t want – not to go to kindergarten.

Illness is needed as a way to draw attention to himself if little attention is paid to him in the family, because they communicate with a sick child more than with a healthy one, they surround him with care and even gifts. Illness in children is often a defense mechanism in frightening and uncertain situations, as well as a way to express their protest if the family has been in an environment for a long time in which the child is uncomfortable. Many parents who have gone through a divorce know very well that at the peak of experiences and family drama, the child "at such an inopportune time" starts to get sick. All this is just the most basic examples of the action of psychosomatics. There are also more complex, deep and hidden deep in the subconscious of the baby reasons.

Prior to searching for them, you should consider the child’s unique attributes, character, and handling of pressured circumstances.

Children that suffer from the following chronic and serious diseases:

• do not know how to cope with stress;
• do not communicate much with parents and others about their personal problems and experiences;
• are in a pessimistic mood, always expect an unpleasant situation or a trick;
• are under the influence of total and constant parental control;
• do not know how to rejoice, do not know how to prepare surprises and gifts for others, give joy to others;
• are afraid of not meeting the inflated demands that parents and teachers or educators make of them;
• cannot follow a daily routine, do not get enough sleep or eat poorly;
• painfully and strongly take into account other people"s opinions;
• they do not like to part with the past, throw away old broken toys, make new friends, move to a new place of residence;
• prone to frequent depression.

It is evident that each of the factors listed above occurs occasionally for each individual. The length of the emotion or experience has an impact on how the disease develops, so long-term fear is dangerous, not a transient state, just as long-term depression is. Any unfavorable feeling or mindset, given enough time, has the potential to develop into a specific illness.

How to find the cause?

Distinguished global psychosomatics (Louise Hay, Liz Burbo, and others) assert that the foundation of all illnesses is based on five primary positive emotions:

Three projections of them need to be taken into account: the child’s self-perception (self-esteem), his perception of the outside world (attitude toward events, phenomena, and values), and his interactions with others (the existence of conflicts, including hidden ones). Building a trustworthy relationship with the child is essential. Work with him to discover his concerns, what irritates him, whether he has any dislikes for people, and what he fears. Psychotherapists and child psychologists can assist with this. You can start addressing the root causes as soon as you have a general idea of the child’s emotional spectrum.

To make the task easier, some well-known authors—including Louise Hay—have created psychosomatic tables. They list illnesses along with the most typical causes of them. These tables are average and frequently created by observing a small group of people who share similar symptoms and emotional experiences, so you shouldn’t blindly trust them.

This is a crucial point: the tables do not account for your child’s unique personality or individuality. Consequently, it is wise to become acquainted with the tables; however, it is preferable to conduct your own analysis of the situation or get in touch with a psychosomatic specialist (as these are now available).

It should be understood that if the disease has already manifested itself, it is obvious, then a very long way has been passed – from thought to emotion, from creating erroneous attitudes to turning these attitudes into an incorrect way of thinking. Therefore, the search process can be quite long. After the cause is found, you will have to work on all the changes that it caused in the body – this will be the treatment process. The fact that the cause has been found correctly and the healing process has begun will be evidenced by an improvement in the general condition, a decrease in symptoms. Parents will almost immediately notice positive changes in the baby"s well-being.

Development of the disease

You must realize that the thought itself does not result in an allergic reaction or an episode of appendicitis. However, the thought causes a muscle contraction to occur. Everyone can see the connection: the brain instructs the muscles to contract, causing them to move. A child experiencing internal conflict will be told to "act" by one thought, which will prepare his muscles. Additionally, the opposing emotion will tell you "you shouldn’t do that," causing the muscle to freeze in a prepared state that prevents it from moving but also prevents it from going back to being calm.

This mechanism can explain the formation of the disease in a very basic way. We are discussing the deep and tiny muscles of the internal organs in addition to the muscles of the back, arms, and legs. Metabolic changes start at the cellular level with a prolonged spasm that is essentially imperceptible. The strain eventually reaches nearby muscles, tendons, and ligaments, and after enough building up, the weakest organ is unable to bear it any longer and ceases to function normally.

The endocrine glands and muscles receive "signals" from the brain. It is well known that the adrenal glands produce more adrenaline when faced with fear or unexpected happiness. Similarly, other emotions impact the body’s hormonal and secretory fluid balance. The disease starts with an imbalance, which happens with repeated exposure to a particular organ.

If a child does not know how to "drop" emotions, but only accumulates them, without expressing them, without sharing their thoughts with others, hiding their true experiences from them, fearing to be misunderstood, punished, condemned, then the tension reaches a certain point and is released in the form of illness, because an outlet for energy is needed in any form. This argument looks very convincing – two children who live in the same city, in the same ecological environment, who eat the same, have the same gender and age, do not have congenital diseases, for some reason get sick differently. One for the ARVI season will get ill to ten times, and the other will never get sick.

Thus, factors other than just ecology, lifestyle, nutrition, and immunity level affect incidence. A child without psychological issues will never get sick, while a child with such issues will get sick multiple times a year.

For researchers, a psychosomatic picture of congenital diseases is not totally evident. However, the majority of psychosomatic specialists believe that these conditions result from a woman’s incorrect attitudes and thoughts both before and during her pregnancy. Prior to anything else, it’s critical to comprehend a woman’s preconceptions of children, the feelings the fetus brought her during her pregnancy, and her treatment of the child’s father during that time.

Harmonious couples who mutually love and are waiting for their baby have children who suffer from congenital diseases much less often than families where the mother experienced rejection of the father"s words and actions, if she regularly thought that she should not have gotten pregnant at all. Few mothers raising disabled children, children with severe congenital illnesses are ready to admit even to themselves that there were negative thoughts, hidden conflicts, fears, and rejection of the fetus at some moments, maybe even thoughts of abortion. It is doubly difficult to realize later that the child is sick due to the mistakes of adults. But the mother can still help alleviate his condition, improve the quality of life, if she musters up the courage to work through the underlying causes of the baby"s illness.

Possible causes of some diseases

As previously stated, the rationale should only be evaluated in light of the personality and traits of this specific child, his family’s surroundings, the bond between the parents and the infant, and other elements that may have an impact on the child’s mental health. We will only list a few diagnoses, the most researched by the psychosomatic branch of medicine, along with potential causes: (information from multiple diagnostic tables, including those by L. Hey, V. Sinelnikova, and V. Zhikarentseva, was used for the description)

Adenoids

Adenoiditis frequently arises in children who feel (subconsciously) unwelcome. Mom needs to recall if she ever considered getting an abortion, if giving birth disappointed her, and if she experienced postpartum depression. With adenoids, the child not only "asks" for affection and attention but also begs parents to stop arguing and fighting. In order to assist the baby, you must adopt a more loving attitude toward him, meet his needs for affection, and settle disputes with his partner.

"My baby is desired, beloved, we always needed him" is a therapeutic attitude.

Autism

It is thought that the most likely cause of autism is a protective reaction that the child activated at some point to "close off" from a scream, an insult, or a beating. According to research, if a child, as young as 8 to 10 months old, witnesses intense parental scandals involving potential use of violence, the child’s chance of developing autism is increased. From a psychosomatic perspective, congenital autism, which medical professionals link to a gene mutation, is a persistent sense of danger in the mother, potentially originating from her early childhood anxieties during pregnancy.

Atopic dermatitis

Like most diseases that are related to allergies in one way or another, atopic dermatitis is a rejection of something. The more a child does not want to accept someone or something, the stronger the manifestations of an allergic reaction. In an infant, atopic dermatitis can be a signal that he is unpleasant to the touch of an adult (if he is taken with too cold or wet hands, if the person emits a sharp and unpleasant smell for the baby). The baby thus asks not to touch him. Treatment setting: “The baby is safe, nothing threatens him. All the people around him wish him well and health. He feels comfortable with people”.

You can use the same configuration for other kinds of allergies. It is necessary to remove any unpleasant physical impact from the situation.

Asthma, bronchial asthma

These ailments, like some other diseases associated with the occurrence of respiratory failure, more often occur in children who are pathologically strongly attached to their mother. Their love is literally “suffocating”. Another option is the strictness of parents when raising a son or daughter. If a baby is taught from a very early age that crying is forbidden, laughing loudly is indecent, jumping and running on the street is the height of bad manners, then the child grows up afraid to express his true needs. They gradually begin to “strangle” him from the inside. New settings: "My child is safe, he is loved strongly and unconditionally. He can express his emotions very well, he cries and rejoices sincerely". Mandatory measures – eliminate pedagogical "excesses".

Tonsillitis

The disease may indicate the child"s fear of saying something, asking for something very important to him. Sometimes children are afraid to raise their voice in their own defense. Tonsillitis is more common in timid and indecisive children, quiet and shy. By the way, similar underlying causes may also be found in children suffering from laryngitis or laryngotracheitis. New attitudes: "My child has the right to vote. He was born with this right. He can openly and boldly say everything he thinks!". To the standard treatment of tonsillitis or chronic tonsillitis, it is imperative to add role-playing games or a visit to a psychologist"s office so that the child can realize his right to be heard.

Bronchitis

A child needs bronchitis, especially chronic bronchitis, to ease tensions in the family or to make amends with his parents or other relatives with whom he shares a home. Adults instantly stop talking when a child chokes while coughing (pay attention if this is the case – this is really true!). New perspectives: "My child enjoys communicating with people, living in harmony and peace, and listening to everything around him because he only hears positive things." Mandatory parental intervention: in order to resolve conflicts, it is imperative to remove not just their "volume" but also their very existence.

Myopia

Like the majority of vision issues, myopia is caused by a refusal to see. Furthermore, there is a deliberate and decisive quality to this unwillingness. A child who is 3–4 years old may develop myopia because, from birth, he sees things in his family that frighten him and causes him to close his eyes. The child may experience physical abuse, a tense relationship between the parents, or even a daily visit from a nanny he dislikes (in this scenario, the child frequently becomes allergic to something concurrently).

At an older age (school age and adolescence), diagnosed myopia may indicate a child"s lack of goals, plans for the future, unwillingness to see beyond today, fear of responsibility for decisions made independently. In general, many problems with the organs of vision are associated with these reasons (blepharitis, conjunctivitis, when angry – barley). New attitude: "My child clearly sees his future and himself in it. He likes this beautiful, interesting world, he sees all its colors and details". At a younger age, correction of relationships in the family is needed, a review of the child"s social circle. As a teenager, a child needs help with career guidance, communication and cooperation with adults, fulfillment of their important assignments.

Diarrhea

We are discussing a chronic issue, or diarrhea that recurs with impressive regularity, rather than a single episode of diarrhea. Children frequently exhibit loose stools as a reaction to intense fear or anxiety. For a child, diarrhea is a way to escape from something they don’t understand. These can include genuine fears (such as a fear of spiders, the dark, small spaces, or zombies) as well as mystical experiences. You have to find the source of the fear and get rid of it. In the event that this does not work at home, consulting a psychologist is highly recommended.

New perspective: "My infant has no fear of anyone." He is courageous and powerful. Nothing poses a threat to him where he resides.

Constipation

Nonetheless, constipation is a common symptom of greed in both children and adults. Constipation may also be a sign of a child’s unwillingness to give up something. Constipation can sometimes start to bother a child right before or right after they are going through significant life changes, like moving or starting kindergarten. The child finds it difficult to leave behind familiar and clear surroundings such as his old apartment and friends. Stool issues start. Infants’ subliminal yearning to return to the safe and comfortable cocoon of their mother’s womb is linked to constipation.

"My child readily parts with everything that he no longer needs," is the new treatment setting. He is prepared to see everything as novel." In actuality, private correspondence is necessary, as is regular discussion of the benefits of a new kindergarten or apartment.

Stuttering

Stuttering is frequently the result of a child not feeling safe for an extended period of time. Additionally, children who are forcibly forbidden from crying also tend to have this speech defect. Stuttering children secretly suffer a great deal from not being able to communicate. It should be acknowledged that this opportunity vanished before regular speech did, and that its disappearance was, in many ways, the catalyst for the issue.

New scene: "My child has a lot of chances to showcase his abilities to the world. He has no problem expressing his emotions. Singing is the best creative activity for a stutterer, though drawing and music are also beneficial. The road to disease and issues is paved with categorical bans on crying.

Runny nose

Extended bouts of rhinitis could be a sign of low self-esteem and a desperate need for the child to realize his own worth in the world as well as his own merits. A diagnosis of sinusitis may be made if the child feels that the world does not comprehend him and does not recognize his genuine value and this condition persists. Setting for treatment: "My child is the best." He is content and deeply loved. I just need him. You should also help the child with his self-evaluation, give him more praise, and give him encouragement.

Otitis

Like any other diseases of the hearing organs, otitis can be caused by negative words, swearing, obscenities, which the child is forced to listen to from adults. Not wanting to listen to something, the child consciously limits his hearing abilities. The mechanism of development of sensorineural hearing loss and deafness is more complex. In the case of such problems, the child categorically refuses to listen to someone or something that hurts him, insults him, humiliates his dignity. In adolescents, hearing problems are associated with the unwillingness to listen to parental instructions. Treatment settings: "My child is obedient. He hears well, he likes to listen and hear every detail of this world".

In actuality, it’s important to lessen overbearing parental supervision, have pleasant and engaging conversations with the child, and break the habit of "reading morals."

High temperature, fever

An unreasonable fever, an elevated temperature that persists without apparent reason with normal tests, can indicate internal anger that has accumulated in the child. A child can get angry at any age and the inability to express anger comes out in the form of fever. The younger the child, the more difficult it is for him to express his feelings in words, the higher his temperature is. New attitudes: “My child is positive, he does not get angry, he knows how to let go of negativity, does not accumulate it and does not hold a grudge against people”. In fact, you should set the child up for something good. The baby"s attention should be switched to a beautiful toy with kind eyes. With an older child, you must definitely talk and find out what conflict situations he has recently had, who he holds a grudge against. After talking about the problem, the child will feel much better, and the temperature will begin to drop.

Pyelonephritis

This disease often develops in children who are forced to do something that is not “their” business. Mom wants her son to become a hockey player, so the child is forced to attend a sports section, while he himself is closer to playing the guitar or drawing landscapes with wax crayons. Such a child with suppressed emotions and desires is an optimal candidate for the role of a nephrologist patient. New attitude: "My child is doing something he loves and is interested in, he is talented and has a great future". In practice, you need to let the child choose something he likes, and if hockey is no longer fun, you need to leave the section without regret and go to a music school, where he is so eager.

Enuresis

This unpleasant nighttime phenomenon is primarily caused by fear, sometimes even horror. Furthermore, experts in the field of psychosomatics state that the father’s behavior, personality, educational strategies, and attitude toward the child and mother are all frequently linked to the child’s fearful feelings. New perspectives: "The child is fearless and in good health. His father wishes him well and loves and respects him." In actuality, considerable psychological work with parents is sometimes necessary.

Aspect	Description
Definition	Psychosomatics refers to the study of how emotional and psychological factors can impact physical health in children.
Common Symptoms	Children might experience stomachaches, headaches, or chronic illnesses with no clear medical cause.
Underlying Causes	Stress, anxiety, and unresolved emotional issues can contribute to physical symptoms.
Examples	School-related stress might lead to frequent headaches, while family conflicts could result in stomach problems.
Approaches to Diagnosis	Assessing the child’s emotional well-being, family dynamics, and life stressors can help in understanding the root causes.
Treatment	Combining medical treatment with psychological support, such as counseling or therapy, can address both physical and emotional issues.

Parenting and providing care for children effectively requires an understanding of the relationship between a child’s emotional and physical health. Numerous physical symptoms in children can have underlying emotional or psychological causes, as identified by psychosomatics. Instead of only treating the symptoms, we can help our children lead healthier, more balanced lives by addressing these underlying causes.

It’s crucial to keep in mind that each child is different, so what works for one might not work for another. When paired with expert assistance when required, open communication with your child can have a big impact. Creating a secure environment for your child to communicate their emotions and offering comfort can aid in the management and prevention of psychosomatic problems.

In conclusion, treating psychosomatic problems requires a wholistic strategy that takes the body and mind into account. You can aid your child in overcoming their health obstacles by paying close attention to their emotional health and getting them the help they need. This well-rounded strategy not only enhances their wellbeing now but lays the groundwork for future emotional growth that is free from unhealthy influences.

Investigating the emotional and psychological components that may be contributing to illness is necessary to comprehend psychosomatics in children, in addition to focusing on the physical symptoms. Parents and other caregivers can address the underlying causes of stress, anxiety, and emotional difficulties and promote their child’s overall wellbeing by recognizing how these conditions present as physical health problems. This method promotes a healthier, more balanced environment for children to flourish in while also helping to deliver care that is more compassionate and effective.

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