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.
When the Body Speaks Instead of Us: Emotions, Alexithymia, and Psychosomatics
Sometimes a person says, "I feel nothing". And the body modestly replies at this moment: "Seriously? I've been clenching your jaws for three days, creating a lump in your throat, a stone in your chest, and as a bonus, keeping your stomach in anxious washing machine mode". Sometimes we genuinely do not understand what is happening to us.
Not because we are stupid, weak, or "too complicated". But because contact with emotions is a skill. Either someone helped you develop it, or they didn't. And sometimes it was actively forbidden, forming a life script where feeling means being inconvenient. From childhood, we might have been told not to cry, not to get angry, not to make things up, and to be normal. Boys are often taught that they don't cry, and girls are taught that good girls don't scream. And there will always be someone who asks why you are so sensitive. From the perspective of transactional analysis, these are classic "Don't feel" parental injunctions that a child internalizes to survive and be accepted. And so, an adult grows up perfectly capable of working, answering "everything is fine," holding on, not interfering, being convenient, and not dramatizing. And then the body suddenly starts sending messages without a subject line: tension, pain, insomnia, fatigue as a persistent physiological state of exhaustion, tightness, trembling, heart palpitations, or breathing and digestion problems. The psyche is silent, but the body speaks, taking the brunt of unreflected experience.
Emotion Is Not Just "In the Head"
An emotion has several levels that function as a single system, which is well explained in the cognitive-behavioral approach. The mental level determines what I experience inside and how I interpret an event.
The bodily level shows what happens to the autonomic nervous system, breathing, muscles, heart, stomach, and hormones—like cortisol and adrenaline.
The bodily level shows what happens to the autonomic nervous system, breathing, muscles, heart, stomach, and hormones—like cortisol and adrenaline. The external level demonstrates how this is visible in facial expressions, voice, gestures, posture, and speech tempo. Therefore, an emotion is not just "something I made up". It is an organism's holistic reaction to what is important to us, an evolutionary adaptation mechanism formed over millions of years. Anger can clench fists and jaws, preparing us to defend our boundaries. Fear can accelerate heart rate and breathing, providing muscles with oxygen for escape. Sadness can give a heaviness in the chest, slowing us down to process loss, while joy can be felt as warmth, expansion, and a desire to move. According to Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions, basic emotions have a clear biological function, and the body doesn't just connect "after the emotion". It participates from the very beginning, creating an unbreakable bond. More about how to distinguish emotions and not confuse them can be read here: Первинні та вторинні емоції: як розібратися у почуттях.
Alexithymia: When the Feelings Are There, but the Words Are Not
Alexithymia is a psychological trait describing difficulty identifying and describing feelings. The term itself comes from Greek and literally means "no words for emotions" (a — lack, lexis — word, thymos — feeling). Put simply, it is a difficulty in recognizing, naming, and describing one's emotions. Neurobiologists suggest that in alexithymia, the connection between the limbic system, where emotions originate, and the prefrontal cortex, which realizes and verbalizes them, is disrupted. A person can be smart, successful, composed, and highly functional. But when asked what they are feeling right now, they honestly freeze. They might answer that they don't know, that everything is fine, that it's just annoying, or that they are in pain but don't understand why. Often, a physiological state is named instead of an emotion, for example: "I'm just tired," although fatigue is physiology, and behind it can hide sadness, disappointment, or anxiety. This doesn't mean there are no emotions. It means there is no sufficiently strong bridge between the emotion and the words. Let's imagine Olena, who always "holds on". At work, she is composed; at home, responsible; in relationships, "it's not difficult" for her. She rarely says "no" because people will get offended. Then her back starts hurting, she develops fatigue, irritability, and a strange feeling of wanting to run away into the woods, preferably with coffee delivery and no people. On the surface is "just fatigue". Deeper down is accumulated anger. Even deeper—constantly violated boundaries. And underneath it all lives a deep fear of being inconvenient, bad, selfish, or losing attachment. In such situations, the body often becomes the ultimate honest commentator on events. It doesn't read motivational quotes about productivity and doesn't try to be good. It simply says, "We can't do this anymore".
Psychosomatics Is Not "Something You Made Up"
It is important to think without magical thinking or pseudo-spiritual concepts here. Psychosomatics is not about "all illnesses coming from nerves," nor is it about telling a person that it's just psychosomatics, after which they should gratefully stop suffering. Scientific psychosomatics studies how chronic distress, consistently high cortisol levels, and autonomic tension wear down the organs and systems of our body. No, we are not making up the pain—vascular spasms or muscle hypertonus are absolutely real. If there is a symptom, the first step is to see a doctor. The body needs to be checked, tests taken, and ultrasounds done, rather than heroically interpreting every pain as an "unprocessed grudge against an aunt from 2007". But if the medical part is cleared, the doctor is unsure, and the symptoms worsen against a background of stress, conflicts, tension, suppressed anger, anxiety, or a chronic "I will endure it" attitude, then it is worth looking toward the psyche. Psychotherapy here works not instead of medicine, but alongside it, helping to relieve the internal load that the body is forced to contain. You can read more about stress, the body, and psychosomatics without self-blame here: Стрес, емоції та психосоматика: як не згоріти.
Anger Often Comes First, but Is Not Allowed In
A separate interesting story is anger. In analytical psychology, suppressed anger often becomes part of our Shadow—the parts of ourselves we do not accept and hide from the world. But anger very often stands right at our boundaries. Where I was interrupted. Where I was pressured. Where I agreed even though I absolutely didn't want to. Where I stayed silent but internally started writing a dissertation on why people are sometimes unbelievable. The problem is that many people fatally confuse anger with aggression. Anger is a basic, natural emotion according to Plutchik, signaling danger to our "Self". Aggression is already a specific behavioral way of acting. Anger can say, "My boundaries are violated, something is wrong". But what I do with it—yell, stay silent, leave, explain, set a boundary, or write the perfect message three days later after an internal rehearsal in the shower—is purely a question of my communication skills and emotional maturity. That is exactly why it is important not to suppress anger but to understand and legalize it. Because suppressed anger never becomes kindness. Often it transforms into tension, chronic fatigue as a physiological consequence of fighting oneself, passive aggression, biting sarcasm, a bodily block in the jaws, or the phrase "everything is fine," said in such an icy tone that a ficus in the room instantly wilts. You can read more about anger, boundaries, and emotional literacy here: Емоційний інтелект: як перетворити гнів на силу.
A Little Practice: Catching the Emotion by the Tail
When you feel tension, there's no need to immediately subject yourself to a harsh internal interrogation with a lamp in your face, demanding to figure everything out instantly. Try a softer approach by using a self-observation technique. First, ask yourself what exactly you are feeling in your body right now and where specifically this sensation is located. Next, try to guess, if this bodily sensation were an emotion, which one would it be?. After that, pay attention to the cognitive level and ask yourself what thought is spinning alongside this emotion. Then move to a deeper layer and explore which of your needs is currently remaining unheard or which personal boundary may have been violated. For example, you might realize you are angry and feel your shoulders and jaw clenching. Then you catch the thought that you were ignored again during a decision-making process. This leads you to understand your need: you want to be considered. And the final step is setting the boundary: you have the right not to automatically agree to what is proposed. When you break down your state into such simple components, it is no longer a terrifying internal chaos. It is a clear map. And when you have a map, you no longer have to wander through your internal forest with a pot on your head, repeating that you are just a very complicated person.
An Insight That Might Be Unpleasant but Useful
Sometimes psychosomatics does not start with a person "feeling too much," as it often seems to those around them. It starts with a person not allowing themselves to feel basic things for far too long. Psychological defenses trigger, blocking the right to be angry, sad, want something, refuse someone, admit physiological fatigue, be inconvenient, or simply need something. The body then becomes the last reservoir, the place where everything unsaid, unlived, and swallowed gathers and accumulates. And working with emotions is not about "becoming perfectly calm" like a Zen Buddhist who never loses balance. Perfectly calm people exist mostly in television commercials for antidepressants and sometimes look even a little suspicious to a mental health professional. True emotional work is about gradually, step by step, returning the natural ability to notice your states. It is the ability to openly tell yourself that you are hurt, angry, scared, tired, that you don't want something, that something is truly important to you, or that in this specific situation you desperately need a firm boundary. Because precisely where words for feelings finally appear and where the emotion is verbalized, the body no longer always needs to scream and speak through pain or illness.
Diary of the Mistress of Her Boundaries
What Can Help in Self-Reflection
For deep and structural work with the themes of emotions, suppressed anger, and bodily signals, the specialized workbook "About Emotions. Anger: How to Understand and Live It" is an excellent choice: Про емоції. Гнів: як зрозуміти та прожити. For processing the themes of boundaries, separation, developing self-respect, and legitimizing the right to one's own space, another workbook was created, "Diary of the Mistress of Her Boundaries": Щоденник Господині Своїх Кордонів. If you are interested in group work, hosting training sessions, therapeutic evenings with friends, or simply deep self-exploration through real-life stories (of which there are 49 in the initial version of the game), consider the tabletop psychological game RedLines: Emotional Detective: RedLines: Емоційний детектив. All MriyaRun products, which are based on evidence-based psychological approaches, can be viewed in the official catalog: Каталог MriyaRun.
The body, nervous system, medical assessment, and psychological support in one integrated picture
What “psychosomatic” actually means
Contemporary clinical care does not divide symptoms into “real physical” and “imagined psychological” categories. Pain, fatigue, dizziness, palpitations, and gastrointestinal symptoms are real experiences. Biology, sleep, medication, physical load, stress, anxiety, prior learning, relationships, and the nervous system’s threat predictions may interact. This is the biopsychosocial model: it broadens medical care rather than replacing it.
Association is not causation. Research finds links between difficulty identifying emotions and more frequent reports of bodily symptoms, but it does not prove that alexithymia creates illness or that every symptom hides one specific emotion. A symptom also remains real when initial tests do not reveal a cause.
Safety first: when to seek medical help
Self-observation belongs alongside medical assessment, not instead of it. A new, severe, sudden, or rapidly worsening symptom; fainting; severe breathlessness; pressure-like chest pain; sudden one-sided weakness or numbness; speech difficulty; or other acute changes require emergency help. In Ukraine, call 103 or 112; elsewhere, use your local emergency number. For any persistent or worrying symptom, contact a clinician and describe its onset, pattern, medications, and impact on daily life.
Practice: signal — context — action
This practice cannot diagnose a condition. It helps you collect useful information for yourself and for a conversation with a clinician or therapist. For seven days, make a brief note without trying to discover a single “correct” psychological cause.
- Signal: what exactly do I notice, where, how intense is it from 0 to 10, and how long does it last?
- Context: what came before it — sleep, food, exertion, medication, cycle, infection, conflict, anxiety, or another event?
- Emotion and need: what might I name without demanding 100% certainty? What support or boundary may be needed?
- Action: medical advice, rest, food/water as appropriate, brief grounding, a conversation, or one concrete boundary.
- Review: what became better or worse? Which patterns repeat, and which may be coincidental?
MriyaRun tools for three levels of observation
The EQ Emotion Journal supports emotion and body-signal vocabulary; CBT SHIFT helps separate an observable fact from an automatic thought and a prediction; the Boundaries Journal helps turn a noticed need into a specific request or “no.” These are reflection tools, not diagnostic instruments or substitutes for medical or psychotherapeutic care.
Sources and limits of the evidence
- Löwe et al., 2024: persistent physical symptoms — definition, mechanisms and management
- Psychological factors in somatic symptom disorder: systematic review and meta-analysis, 2024
- Alexithymia and somatic symptom reporting: quantitative review
- EURONET-SOMA: functional somatic disorders as a neutral, integrated clinical category
- NHS: persistent physical symptoms are real and deserve appropriate assessment
- NHS: urgent warning signs for chest pain
Summary
Psychosomatics is by no means a sentence or proof that "something is globally wrong with you". Most often, it is simply a persistent invitation from your own body to take a closer look at what has been asking to enter your field of consciousness for a very long time but is ignored. It is a reason to ask yourself what emotions you stubbornly refuse to call by their names, what personal boundaries you are not defending, allowing others into your territory. It is an opportunity to explore exactly where you constantly endure discomfort, and where your body is already openly saying what you yourself do not yet dare to say out loud in words. Sometimes the most important path to your true self begins not with some massive sudden epiphany or drastic life changes, but with one very simple but honest sentence: "I think I feel something". And believe me, to begin this process, that is already a very, very big step.