Mental Illness and Psychosomatic Aggravation

Anxiety and depression are possibly the most common mental illnesses and I do believe you can make them worse for yourself.

Now, I was criticised for saying: If you have anxiety, that's fine. Just don't exaggerate how bad it is. You will legitimately make it worse.

I don't think this is an unfair comment. If you overplay anxiety and pretend it's affecting an aspect of your life which it isn't, it's probably going to start affecting that aspect of your life. Other examples of similar situations can be found in the TV shows House and Sherlock. Dr House gives a patient mints instead of tablets and they magically work aka the placebo effect. In Sherlock, the great detective proves Watson's limp is psychosomatic. Now let's define psychosomatic:

psychosomatic

ˌsʌɪkə(ʊ)səˈmatɪk/

adjective

1. 1.

   (of a physical illness or other condition) caused or aggravated by a mental factor such as internal conflict or stress.

   "her doctor was convinced that most of Edith's problems were psychosomatic"

   synonyms:

   (all) in the mind, psychological, irrational, stress-related, stress-induced, subjective, subconscious, unconscious "a diagnosis of psychosomatic illness should not be made lightly"

Now doesn't that sound like it might apply to mental illnesses too? "Or other condition." Because, whilst you might have a mental illness, it can be aggravated by a mental factor. In fact, one of the main issues thought to be prone to aggravation is in fact anxiety.

Let's come up with an example. I get anxious when it comes to relationships. If I stay clear of guys I like and guys who like me and anything to do with it... I'm not going to learn to deal with it. In fact, I'll probably start imagining it's worse than it realistically is. HOWEVER, if I keep working towards building up the courage to ask out a guy I like... Am I not working to overcome that one thing that makes me anxious?

Now I have been working on that and I'm not quite there yet. I've also been doing this with trampolines and I very rarely have panic attacks on them anymore. Now I'm not saying I'm going to start going to my college's trampolining club... But sure, I'll go on the one in my back garden with my brothers and not freak out. I can even do seat drops again now.

However, if you start making up situations in your mind (which lets be honest we all do sometimes) and you have anxiety... Isn't it possible you'll be having a panic or anxiety attack over nothing?

So maybe, just maybe, I have a point in saying that exaggerating a mental illness will make it worse. Now I know I've used anxiety as my main example here, but I'm sure you can apply it to depression. "School will be awful and I will get bullied." Will not help you. "Today will be better and I'm going to force a smile." Might. It's not certain. But to me, it's a risk worth taking.




I am not a health expert.