I have psychosomatic symptoms

What’s happening

You’re carrying a real physical symptom that doesn’t show up on tests. Your doctors have ruled out the obvious things. They’ve left you with the symptom and no explanation. You’ve started to wonder if it’s in your head. It isn’t in your head. It’s in your body, and your body is responding to something the rest of you hasn’t been addressing.

Your doctors aren’t wrong about the tests. You aren’t wrong about the symptom. The two of you are describing different things.

Which version of this is yours?

• I have chronic pain doctors can’t explain. Years of tests. No clear cause. → I have chronic pain doctors can’t explain

• I have IBS. Bloated, urgent, unpredictable. → I have IBS

• I have tension headaches. Daily. The painkillers don’t reach them. → I have tension headaches

• I have migraines. With known triggers and triggers nobody can identify. → I have migraines

• I grind my teeth. The night guard is wearing through. → I grind my teeth

• I have TMJ. The jaw clicks, locks, hurts. → I have TMJ

• I have unexplained dizziness. ENT says everything is fine. The dizziness keeps happening. → I have unexplained dizziness

• I have chronic fatigue. Sleep doesn’t restore you. → I have chronic fatigue

• I have fibromyalgia. Pain everywhere, no clear source. → I have fibromyalgia

• I have chest pain but my heart is fine. Cardiology cleared you. → I have chest pain but my heart is fine

• I have stomach pain when I’m stressed. The gastro found nothing. → I have stomach pain when I’m stressed

• I have back pain doctors can’t explain. MRIs are clean. → I have back pain doctors can’t explain

• I blush uncontrollably. The more I try not to, the more I do. → I blush uncontrollably

• I sweat excessively. Especially when others can see. → I sweat excessively

• My skin flares when I’m stressed. Eczema, hives, psoriasis. → My skin flares when I’m stressed

• I have a tic. A movement, a sound, something my body does without permission. → I have a tic

What’s your stress signature?

Why the medical workup didn’t end it

You very likely came out of childhood with a particular relationship to your own feelings. You may have grown up in a household where emotions weren’t named or made room for, so you learned to carry them in your body without recognizing what you were carrying. You may have been the responsible one who held it together for everyone else and never had time to process what you absorbed. You may have come from a culture or a family where the body was the only acceptable place to express distress, and over years your body became the spokesperson.

The medical model looks for structural problems. Your symptom is functional. Your doctors return “nothing wrong” because nothing structural is wrong. The trigger is somewhere the workup isn’t built to find: in what you’ve been carrying without acknowledging.

Your tests describe one thing. Your body is describing another. Both are accurate at the same time.

How we work with it

Strategic therapy treats what your body has been responding to, alongside the medical care you’re already getting rather than instead of it. Sometimes that’s a specific stressor sitting in your life right now. Sometimes it’s a pattern that generates chronic load. Sometimes it’s a feeling you’ve been carrying physically because nowhere else felt safe to put it. We work directly on whichever it is.

Your symptom quiets because you start addressing what your body has been speaking on behalf of.