The term psychosomatic was misused for a long time as people, including much of the medical community often referred to it as meaning ‘it’s in their mind’; rather suggesting that the mind is separate from the body, and therefore cannot affect the body.

The term psychosomatic is derived from two root words in Greek: psycho, meaning mind; and soma, meaning body. The term itself refers to a mind-body connection, and not a ‘it’s in the mind’ definition as it has so often been misused.

Stress is a major cause in illness, weight gain, and even death. As much as mental stress can have a debilitating affect on the body, physical stress can affect the mind just as much; an example would be someone who is in pain or otherwise ill becoming difficult with which to deal.

I have, in dealing with stress, or just life in general, certainly abused things. I was a heavy drinker and resorted to the use of too many painkillers for what I perceived to be helping to alleviate the pain, when in reality it was causing it as it was eating a hole in my stomach, literally. This was my poor way of dealing with taking care someone in their last few years and trying to work. I ended up with a perforated ulcer and had to have part of my stomach removed.

That was a two way street as stress, mental, was affecting me and I was doing physical damage to myself, and, in turn, the physical damage I was doing was affecting my state of mind.

Though a bit of an extreme example in associating the state of one’s mind to weight gain or loss, but it is essentially the same. perhaps it is safer to use food rather than abuse the body with drugs and alcohol.

Interestingly, neither helps with the stress, but, on the contrary, makes it worse. We turn to something to feed a nedd, or drown a pain, but it becomes an addiction, and now we have two problems.