My monthly "ow"

[PandaHat]

"In your head" my ass. That has always infuriated me. This day in age they damn well know it's not in our heads.

He's got to have been around women at some point in his life.

NOTE: I am not claiming that this issue was a psychological one, more complaining about the horrific/dismissive phrase and the effect it has on doctor-patient relations for patients with somatising conditions.

And as a medical student interested in psychiatry that really irritates me too, because it is dismissive and patronising and makes it difficult to work with patients in the future. Sometimes pain does not have an origin in the body - no "organic" cause can be found. Your brain is hella powerful and over-rules what your body says and claims you feel pain. And so you do feel pain. The pain is just as real as if it originated in the body, but in order to cure it, you don't do something to the body you have to work with the mind. (An example probably all of us have of this "somatising" is when you're feeling really nervous before an exam or whatever: your brain tells you you feel sick, you need to pee, you have a headache, you have stomach ache... none of these have a bodily reason for feeling that way, but your brain over-rules. That doesn't mean you don't experiencing them; it's real but from a different source.)

However, if the patient has been told "it's all in your head" then they assume you think they are crazy/lying/making it up. None of these is true! It's then incredibly difficult to convince them that you do genuinely believe their pain is real and get them to engage with psychological treatment. Grrrrrrrrr.

[Seshat]

.... and sometimes it is in your head; and biological (ie, in the brain, not in the mind).

An excellent example of that is fibromyalgia: for whatever neuroanatomical or neurophysiological reason, the brain overreacts to any discomfort/pain signal. It's been proven with MRIs: now they just have to find out why.

So yes, it IS in my head. It's inside my skull, in fact. So. There. NYAH!


Similarly, my schizoaffective best friend has problems which are inside her head. Inside the skull. We both get SO pissed off at 'it's in your head' being used dismissively.

[cindybubbles]

We're getting off topic here. Let's go back to discussing our monthly "ows", please, before the mods see this thread and close it off.