Physical vs. psychological illness

The reason why the field of psychosomatics is so controversial is that the majority of illnesses, ranging from cancer to inflammatory conditions, have no clear cause at all. We can eat clean and organic food, run five times a week and practice meditation and still get sick. And someone else can smoke and eat junk food and live a carefree and sickness free life. Yet the human mind needs to understand, and when we don’t understand it is easy to fall in the trap of putting things in rigid categories that give us some impression of controlling our fate.

So, some make a clear divide between physical versus psychological illnesses, some do not, going as far as to declare all physical illnesses as having a psychological cause. For example: anxiety and depression are psychological ailments that can be improved by therapy. Yet something like high blood pressure is clearly a purely physical phenomenon that is best treated with medication. Why on earth would someone choose to waste time and money going to see a psychotherapist to deal with high blood pressure? But if we take the viewpoint that continuous and acute anxiety due to a childhood trauma for example, if left untalked about for years, can create such tension that blood pressure goes up, the line between the mental and the physical seems a lot less clear.

The most controversy however is that surrounding cancer. Some believe cancer is caused by environmental pollutants, some that it is caused by fragile immune systems, and many are open to the idea that there is a psychological component. And despite the fact that medical treatments are continuously improving and that most cancers are no longer a death sentence they were in the 1970s and 1980s, simply the word itself immediately conjure up our worst fears.

When an ill person comes into therapy, the line between physical and mental seems somehow irrelevant. It seems like pointless academic debate. In reality, both feed off each other. And, very often, as through the intimacy of the therapeutic encounter old psychological wounds slowly heal, we start to feel better. Blood tests, scans and various physical exams confirm this. The magic works, and questions and explanations of why and how fade into the background. What seems important now is simply enjoying life and our new, healthier self.