Physical Symptoms
Inner emotional conflicts can result in physical discomfort or pain, often in the form of tension headaches, which can be episodic or chronic, and may last from a few minutes or hours, to days - associated pain being mild, moderate, or severe.
'The physiology of nervous headaches still presents many unsolved problems', as in general do all such 'physical alterations...rooted in unconscious instinctual conflicts'. However physical discomfort or pain without apparent cause may be the way our body is telling us of an underlying emotional turmoil and anxiety, triggered by some recent event. Thus for example a woman 'may be busy in her office, apparently in good health and spirits. A moment later she develops a blinding headache and shows other signs of distress. Without consciously noticing it, she has heard the foghorn of a distant ship, and this has unconsciously reminded her of an unhappy parting'.
While it is not easy, by relaxing, calming down, and trying to become aware of what recent experience or event could have been the cause of the inner conflict, and then rationally looking at and dealing with the conflicting desires and needs, a gradual dissipation and relief of the pain may be possible.
Read more about this topic: Emotional Conflict
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or symptoms:
“Women are to be lifted up to a physical equality with man by placing upon their shoulders equal burdens of labor, equal responsibilities of state-craft; they are to be brought down from their altruistic heights by being released from all obligations of purity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and made free of the world of passion and self-indulgence, after the model set them by men of low and materialistic ideals.”
—Caroline Fairfield Corbin (b. c. 1835–?)
“Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)