Study after study shows that stress is a destroyer of health, causing disease and disability. The emotional toll of abuse is manifested in physical stress. Anger, guilt, and fear produce specific physiological reactions that wear down the body. Over time this stress produces physical symptoms that are impossible to ignore or medicate. These can include:
– Digestive difficulties including ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome
– Heartbeat irregularities
– Chronic fatigue
– Tightness of the chest
– Difficulty breathing or hyperventilation
– Muscle tension or shakiness
– Headaches
– Loss of appetite
– Binge eating
– Chronic illness such as colds or flu
– Yeast infections
– Panic attacks
– Jaw disorders such as night-grinding of teeth and temporo-mandibular join (TMJ) syndrome
– High blood pressure
A visit to your primary care physician or dentist is certainly warranted in these cases, but the emotional causes may not be addressed or discovered.
When Julie came to The Center, she was experiencing depression over the way her body was breaking down. Julie thought it was age and excess weight. While these were contributing factors, the most startling complication I could see was her total lack of joy. Every physical pain was examined, experienced, agonized over, cataloged, and charted. These Julie could deal with. What she has a harder time accepting was how she was substituting a focus on the physical or the emotional – which was threatening to break down after years of verbal and mental abuse, first by a mother who couldn’t be bothered by an unplanned child and then by a husband who couldn’t be bothered by the trophy wife for his business career.
With Julie, we began a whole-person approach that addressed the physical symptoms she was experiencing along with addressing her deep-seated emotional anguish and pattern of abuse. Julie rediscovered health and joy, and each supported and enhanced the other. Her depression lifted, her physical symptoms improved, and Julie learned to love herself.
The above is excerpted from Chapter 3 in Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse by Dr. Gregory Jantz.