Somatic Symptoms Quotes

The idea of a physical stigma is quite appealing. When I wrote the book of 'Bodies,' there was a lot of that in the book about how there are physical manifestations of psychological problems - I think it's described as 'Narrativizing The Body.'

Many of depression's symptoms - exhaustion, insomnia, nausea, headaches, weight loss, weight gain - are physical ailments.

Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body.

After I read all the medical journals and watched all the documentaries, I still didn't understand the physical sensation of ticking and where it comes from and what it feels like.

Illnesses are often times a reflection of an emotional place that needs healing or attention.

Some days I would get so exhausted, nauseous, in pain - just from going back through things. It's almost as if I had the experience and then the meta-experience.

Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it's merely destructive.

Treating the body is really about treating the mind. It is all psychosomatic - every bit of it. No exceptions.

During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse's office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same.

Most of the time we think we're sick, it's all in the mind.

I went to one doctor who told me I wasn't exercising enough. I was so exhausted, I couldn't raise my arm. When this doctor called it psychosomatic, I was enraged. To think the constant sore throat and swollen glands were all in my head was infuriating.

It was the old psychosomatic side-step. Everyone in my family dances it at every opportunity. You've given me a splitting headache! You've given me indigestion! You've given me crotch rot! You've given me auditory hallucinations! You've given me a heart attack! You've given me cancer!

I believe the reason we sleep is not just to allow our body to rest but that it is to allow this inner wisdom to speak to us through symbols. This includes the body or somatic problems as well as psychological ones. Dreams and drawings are useful in diagnosing physical conditions.

I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.

Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.