What part of the soma?

• somatisation by Michael Owen, 11/16/97
  
  

When trying to determine the nature and significance of the somatic symptoms that interfere with psychological treatment, it is helpful to list those symptoms and to describe the feelings (affective experiences) that are associated with each. Steady, unremitting pain triggers affect over the range from distress to anguish; sharp, intermittent, stinging pain triggers affect over the range from surprise to startle, as well as fear. Some somatic symptoms are associated with shame, others with self-dissmell or self-disgust. All of the psychological therapies can be helpful in the management of medical illness when they assist the patient by improving the response to the affective component of those illnesses. This, of course, provides an analogue for the illnesses that appear to be infectious or metabolic but are actually ways of expressing affect that has otherwise been blocked from verbal expression.

Can you tell us more about the specific symptoms that prevent the patient from working further with you in therapy?

• Appropriate affect/soma targeting by Francine Shapiro, 11/29/97
• Affect theory & EMDR by Andrew Leeds, 12/4/97