This material is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical, psychological, or psychotherapeutic advice. If you are experiencing an acute psychological condition or need professional support, please contact a doctor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or crisis service.
Back and Joint Psychosomatics: Stress, Pain and Support
Author: Dmytro Telushko
Hello, friends! I'm practical psychologist Dmytro Telushko, and today we are going to talk about our foundation — what holds us up both literally and figuratively. By the way, this is exactly why we in the mriyaRUN project consciously moved away from running or any sports symbols in our logo. Our true "marathon" is the internal distance to understanding ourselves, where the body acts as the most honest navigator.
The material has an educational and self-reflective nature. It does not replace a doctor's consultation, diagnosis, treatment, physical rehabilitation, or psychotherapy. If you have pain, restricted movement, inflammation, trauma, numbness, a sharp deterioration in your condition, or suspect a rheumatic or autoimmune disease, consult a doctor first. Psychosomatics does not cancel medicine. It simply adds a question: what else is happening to the person while their body is sending a signal?
The musculoskeletal system sounds like the name of a respectable government institution where everyone walks down the corridors, keeps their back straight, and is never late. You walk in, and there are stern vertebrae-bureaucrats shuffling papers with your unspoken grievances. In reality, it is our living system of support, movement, protection, shock absorption, and adaptation. Bones, joints, ligaments, cartilage, muscles, fascia, intervertebral discs — all of this is not just a "structure" that occasionally needs to be greased with an ointment and asked to hold out until Monday. It is your personal chronicle.
The body is constantly negotiating with us. At first quietly: a slightly tense neck, heaviness in the lower back, stiffness in the shoulders, a desire to stretch. Then louder: pain, restricted movement, chronic discomfort, the feeling as if the back is no longer a back, but a bulletin board for all unresolved conflicts.
And here psychosomatics begins. But not the kind where a person is told: "You just thought incorrectly, that's why it hurts". No. This approach is better left in the museum of psychological shame, next to the exhibit "just don't get nervous". At MriyaRun, we look at it differently: the body is not to blame, the psyche is not to blame, the person is not to blame. There is a system that held tension for a long time, adapted, stayed silent, compensated, and then said: "Colleagues, I can't do this anymore".
The body as a support system: not only bones, but the right to lean
The musculoskeletal system has several basic functions: it supports posture, protects internal organs, provides movement, softens impacts, and participates in important biological processes. On a psychological level, this topic very quickly leads us to the concepts of support, boundaries, flexibility, responsibility, and the ability to move through life.
When a person says "I carry everything on myself," the body usually doesn't applaud. It doesn't think: "What a beautiful metaphor". It thinks: "Great, working overtime again". Every time you take on someone else's work or rescue someone who didn't ask for it, your back receives a microscopic invoice.
The back often becomes a symbolic place where experience accumulates:
- "I have no one to lean on";
- "I must endure";
- "If I ask for help, I will be considered weak";
- "Everything depends on me";
- "I cannot bend, because then I will break";
- "I have no right to stop".
Of course, back pain can have purely medical causes: injuries, inflammation, degenerative changes, poor posture, excessive strain, a sedentary lifestyle, osteochondrosis, arthrosis, arthritis, osteoporosis, and other conditions. But even when the cause is physical, the psyche influences how we live with the pain, whether we ask for help, or whether we heroically continue to carry the refrigerator to the fifth floor because "it's awkward to ask someone".
You can also read about how emotions become signals of needs and boundaries in the MriyaRun article “Емоційна грамотність: Аутентичність та Рекет”.
The neck: when the head understood everything, but the body disagreed
The neck connects the head and the body. In a psychological metaphor, this is the place of dialogue between "I understand everything" and "I can't stand this". It is here that the conflict between control and living feeling often resides. You try to prove to yourself with logic that "everything is going according to plan," while your body screams about fatigue.
Pain or tension in the neck can accompany periods when it is difficult for a person:
- to say "yes" to something they have wanted for a long time;
- to say "no" to something they've been sick of for a long time;
- to look at a situation from another perspective;
- to admit that control is no longer working;
- to stop keeping up the appearance of a person for whom "everything is fine," even though a crisis management meeting has been taking place inside for a long time.
The therapeutic humor here is simple: if it is difficult for you to turn your head, perhaps the psyche is also saying: "I don't want to see this from another angle, I already have my favorite version of suffering".
But behind the joke lies a serious matter. Rigidity of thinking often goes hand in hand with bodily rigidity. Not because a person is "bad" or "stubborn by nature," but because rigidity might once have been a way to survive. If flexibility was punished in childhood, and having one's own opinion caused conflict, the psyche might have learned to keep itself in armor. The neck, shoulders, and jaw are the first candidates for the role of guards of this armor.
For a gentle return of contact with emotions, the Щоденник Емоцій EQ can come in handy here. It helps to not just write "I feel bad," but to distinguish more precisely: is it anger, fear, shame, overwork, resentment, or is the body simply asking for normal sleep instead of another coffee fueled by heroism?
Thoracic region: “I must be a support for everyone,” or how the back got a family group chat
The thoracic region is often associated with themes of responsibility, family, guilt, love, and the need to be needed. When a person internally lives by the attitude "I must withstand everyone," the chest can seem to shrink. Shoulders move forward, breathing becomes shallow, the back slouches, and the inner voice says: "Don't relax, everything will fall apart without you".
Sometimes a childhood role is behind this: to be good, strong, convenient, useful, unpretentious. Such a person may not notice their own needs for years, because their internal KPI sounds something like this: "to make everyone else feel good, and I'll figure it out later". How many times in my office have I heard stories of a person taking on the function of a "rescuer," hoping that one day they too will be rescued. But the body cannot be deceived.
The problem is that "later" often arrives in the form of exhaustion, pain, irritation, and a quiet hatred for everyone to whom we ourselves didn't say "enough". The body in this place becomes more honest than the consciousness. It doesn't know how to explain beautifully, but it knows how to squeeze the shoulders. When we were developing the concept for our products, Myroslava Baranovska (my co-author who proofread, edited, and enriched our key workbooks with ideas) aptly noted: if we don't learn to throw off this invisible burden of "the good person," no massages will help for long.
“Щоденник Господині Своїх Кордонів”
The MriyaRun product “Щоденник Господині Своїх Кордонів” is very appropriate here. Because boundaries are not a barbed-wire fence around the heart. Boundaries are an operating manual for yourself: what I can do, what I cannot do, where I am ready to help, and where I am no longer a person but a free 24/7 support service.
Lower back: the zone of “I can do it myself,” “I’m scared,” and “the loan for adulthood”
The lower back often becomes the bodily stage for themes of support, security, material fears, sexuality, family burden, professional realization, and the prohibition against asking for help. Imagine you are an entrepreneur (like me) balancing reports, taxes, and creativity — your lower back knows perfectly well how much this responsibility weighs.
On a psychological level, the following thoughts might sound here:
- "I have no right to be weak";
- "If I stop, everything will fall";
- "I must provide";
- "My well-being depends solely on how much I control";
- "No one will help, so it is better not to ask".
The lower back is not very fond of the cult of self-sufficiency taken to the point of absurdity. Self-sufficiency is a wonderful thing, until it turns into a prohibition on being alive. A person can look confident, hold themselves straight, work hard, not complain, not ask for support, and then one fine morning bend down for a sock and receive a short but convincing letter from the body: "We are terminating the service of this scenario".
To work with such states, it is important to return to yourself the right to support. Not dramatically. Not with a flag saying "from now on everyone owes me". But in an adult way: I can distribute the load, ask for help, verify the reality of my fears, and not make my spine the proof of my own worth.
The Щоденник Прийняття is well-suited for this: it helps reduce internal pressure, notice your states, and not turn self-reflection into yet another form of self-criticism.
Joints: flexibility, movement, and the internal permission to change
Joints give us the ability to move. Literally — to bend, unbend, turn, adapt. In a psychological metaphor, they are very close to the theme of flexibility: can I change my position, acknowledge a need, abandon an old role, and not lose myself? Like ungreased door hinges that creak from every draft, our joints "creak" when we get stuck in old patterns.
When a person lives in the "I must be right" mode for years, the body can support this internal statute. Rigidity becomes not only a character trait but a bodily organization. Everything seems to hold up, but at the cost of great tension.
A separate important topic is rheumatoid arthritis and other systemic diseases. Here we must be particularly careful: this is not a "disease caused by resentment" and not "joints because of your character". These are complex medical conditions that require diagnosis and treatment. The psychological level may relate not to the cause in the literal sense, but to the lifestyle with the disease, chronic tension, the prohibition of aggression, the conflict between autonomy and dependence, the shame of asking for help, and the exhaustion from the role of "I am enduring".
Sometimes behind external compliance hides a lot of anger. A person smiles, nods, agrees, while inside their anger sits in a corner with a notepad keeping a list: "I remembered that". If anger has had no right to be expressed for years, it doesn't disappear. It seeks detour routes: passive aggression, self-blame, tension, control, exhaustion, a bodily symptom.
This is precisely why the MriyaRun ecosystem includes the workbook “Про емоції. Гнів: як зрозуміти та прожити”. Anger doesn't need to be romanticized, but it does need to stop being demonized. Healthy anger is not shouting, destruction, and a dramatic exit from the room with a blanket over your shoulders. It is the energy of boundaries, clarity, and action.
You can read more about the workbook itself in the review “Книга Про емоції. Гнів: як зрозуміти і прожити”.
Psychosomatics without magical thinking: the body doesn't punish, the body signals
One of the biggest mistakes in the topic of psychosomatics is turning it into an accusation. Saying, if your back hurts, it means you're living incorrectly. If your joints are stiff, it means you're not flexible enough. If your neck won't turn, it means you don't want to face the truth.
It sounds impressive, but it is therapeutically dangerous. Because a person who is already in pain also receives a bonus package of guilt. A sort of "all-inclusive" for the inner critic.
A healthy approach is different:
- First, medical checkup and body care.
- Then, an analysis of lifestyle: sleep, movement, load, work, stress, nutrition, recovery.
- Next, psychological questions: where am I overstraining, what am I not allowing myself to feel, what role am I playing, where am I not asking for support, where are my boundaries violated?
- And only then — a gradual change in behavior.
Psychosomatics is not "it's all in your head". It is "your head, body, emotions, relationships, and lifestyle working as one system". And if the system is overloaded, it will find a way to communicate that.
A good fit for this topic is the MriyaRun article “Психосоматика онкології та стрес: підтримка MriyaRun”, where we just as carefully separate medical reality, stress, support, and the person's right not to be guilty of their illness.
MriyaRun Practice: “What am I carrying on myself right now?”
Take a piece of paper or open a journal. You don't need to write beautifully. This is not a calligraphy contest, it's a conversation with yourself.
1. The Body
Write down:
- where in the body is there the most tension right now?
- if this area could speak, what would it say?
- is this more about fatigue, fear, anger, shame, resentment, or overload?
2. The Load
Finish the phrases:
- “I drag on myself...”
- “I'm afraid to stop, because...”
- “I don't ask for help, because...”
- “I have long needed to say no regarding...”
3. Boundaries
Ask yourself:
- where do I agree physically, even though my psyche has already said "no"?
- where do I hold myself straight only because I'm afraid of looking weak?
- who am I helping out of guilt rather than out of love?
4. A New Micro-movement
Choose one small action for the next 24 hours:
- ask for specific help;
- postpone one task;
- do 10 minutes of gentle stretching;
- make an appointment with a doctor or physical therapist;
- honestly say "I can't right now";
- write out your anger without sending it to the addressee;
- go to bed earlier, even if your inner workaholic throws a mini-rally.
A small action is more important than a big insight. Because the body believes not in our declarations, but in repeated experience.
The Jacobson Method: tensing up to finally notice the relaxation
When working with muscle tension, Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation can be helpful. Its logic is simple: we alternately tense muscle groups, notice this tension, and then relax. The body learns to distinguish the difference between "I am holding on" and "I am letting go".
This sounds trivial, but many people are so used to chronic tension that they no longer understand what their normal state is. For them, "relaxing" is not an action, but a mysterious legend told by people who take vacations. Try doing this tonight. Tense your shoulders as hard as you can, as if trying to touch your ears with them, hold for 5 seconds, and suddenly let go. Feel the difference?
Important: if there are injuries, acute pain, inflammatory processes, or medical restrictions, any exercises are best agreed upon with a specialist. Self-care begins not with heroism, but with adequacy.
Dmytry Telyshko, psyholog
Insight & Conclusions: Your back doesn't have to be your resume of strength
The body is not an enemy. It doesn't sabotage your life, it doesn't take revenge on you for deadlines, and it doesn't want to ruin your plans. It is trying to keep you in contact with reality. Sometimes very straightforwardly.
The psychosomatics of the musculoskeletal system reminds us: we need not only strong bones, but also the internal right to support. Not only flexible joints, but also flexibility in our relationship with ourselves. Not only strong muscles, but also the permission not to carry everything single-handedly.
My personal insight as a psychologist: adulthood begins not when we have learned to withstand everything. But when we finally ask ourselves:
Which of these do I really want to carry further, and which is long overdue to be put down?
To make this process soft, safe, and structured for you, we create our products, which, by the way, we always send to print to our partners at MentalHub, because creating an ecosystem of support is a team effort.
My personal recommendations of tools from MriyaRun:
CBT SHIFT
- "CBT SHIFT: Перезавантаження" workbooks. We recently finalized the fifth, concluding part. This is an in-depth work with your scenarios, which helps to take the unnecessary burden off your shoulders.
- The psychological board game "RedLines EQ: Детектор емоцій". We are preparing to release the sequel! A great way to legalize anger, fear, and joy among loved ones.
- Metaphorical associative cards (MAC) "Діти підземелля" in convenient and stylish Compact packaging (we decided to abandon the name "Premium Toch" in favor of convenience). Ideal when you need to quickly "peek" into the subconscious and understand exactly what emotion your body is blocking right now.
More tools:
Allow yourself to lean not only on your bones, but on your true feelings!