By Chris Gilbert, MD, PhD

Can frustration and repressed emotions be to blame for back pain? How about fatigue or infections?

I have been a physician for more than thirty years and have practiced medicine all over the world: from a state-of-the-art UCLA hospital in Los Angeles to a hospital tent in a Mauritanian refugee camp at the Mali border during my time with Doctors Without Borders. My experiences have led me to view disease and healing in a very different—and unconventional—way. 

I have learned that many of the most common ailments that send patients to doctors—such as joint pain, abdominal pain, fatigue, sexual disorders, obesity, skin rashes, and headaches—are not purely physical problems. Instead, they have their origin in intense and extreme, but suppressed, emotions stemming from internal conflicts deep within the human psyche. 

In my view, burying strong feelings such as anger, frustration, fear, sadness, loss, lust, and envy can be the root cause of a variety of illnesses and ailments. 

For this reason, I have found that the route to healing many ordinary maladies begins with my patients’ minds. In many cases, the physical symptoms are mere surface manifestations—the tip of the iceberg—that signal that something is very wrong and must be attended to. In these instances, healing can never be permanent until the patient’s feelings of stress and strain from internal struggles are dealt with. 

The overwhelming majority of family practice and internal medicine physicians do not spend much time dealing with their patients’ emotions and inner lives. They focus on physical symptoms and not much else. The result is that patients are treated with prescription drugs, most of them painkillers. They undergo expensive tests and sometimes surgery that treats the symptoms they suffer from but do nothing to heal the underlying causes of the illness.

All too often, cures achieved in this manner are temporary or force the patient to suffer debilitating side effects of drugs. These methodologies, the fruit of modern medical practice, may help alleviate discomfort and pain but, tragically, often ignore and rarely fix the root causes of illness. The underlying emotional health problem is almost never diagnosed, let alone treated. 

Here’s a remarkable statistic: It’s been estimated that 80 percent of illnesses treated by primary care physicians are related to stress or to behavioral or emotional problems—exactly the kinds of problems that are almost never addressed in medical appointments! 

“Bottled-up emotion” is not just a convenient phrase; there is a great deal of truth in these words. When we suppress negative feelings, such as anger, fear, and hurt, the brain’s limbic system goes into action. It sends out signals that make the adrenal glands release stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, that are supposed to prepare our bodies physically to deal with difficult or dangerous situations. This is a great process if, say, we are being attacked and have to defend ourselves or run away. But in everyday life, it can cause more problems than it solves. 

Cortisol Levels

What happens is that cortisol depresses the immune system, making us prone to infection. Our muscles, bathed in excess cortisol and adrenaline, get more excitable and irritable, leading to muscle tension and spasms in various parts of the body. All this is occurring inside us even as the conscious mind has moved on, and we may no longer feel actively angry, upset, or fearful. 

A great example is Alvin (not his real name). Alvin had a disturbing conversation with his wife an early spring morning just before going to work. They had been married for six years and had two beautiful children, a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl. The previous night, when Alvin wanted to have sex with his wife, she had refused, saying she was too tired. He had trouble falling asleep, although he was finally able to. When he woke up in the morning, since the children were still asleep, he cuddled with his wife and tried to initiate sex again, but she refused again.

She couldn’t still be tired after a good night’s sleep, so he asked her the question: Why had she not wanted sex for the last three months? She told him bluntly that she was not interested in sex anymore. When Alvin heard that, it was like having a bomb explode in his brain. How could she do this to him? What was he supposed to do—live the rest of his life without sex? That thought horrified him. He tried unsuccessfully to calm down. His level of frustration and anger rose, but he had no time to dwell on them because he had to go to work. After a quick milk and cereal breakfast, he was off.

During the hour-and-a-half commute to work, he kept on thinking about what his wife had said. A part of him was hoping she would change her mind in the future, while another part feared that she might not. That thought was very stressful. What would he do then? How could he possibly sleep next to his wife every night without sex? The thought triggered his heart to race, his hands to clench into fists, his back to stiffen, and his stomach to tighten, as if it were tied in knots.

When he got out of his car, he noticed that his back was hurting. He tried to loosen his back muscles by stretching for a few seconds, but that didn’t work. As he climbed up the stairs to the third floor of the building where his accounting office was, he noticed that his legs were stiffer than usual and he felt more tired than usual. He blamed it on his poor-quality sleep the night before. The whole day, he worked at his desk and was so absorbed in the new accounting problems of the firm that he didn’t get up, even when his coworker brought him a sandwich and a diet soda for lunch.

From time to time, he would think about his wife, and his back would tense up. After eight hours, when it was time to drive home, he finally tried to stand up but then fell back into his chair. It felt as if his back was locked into a sitting position, and it was excruciatingly painful when he tried to get up.

After a few minutes, he managed to stand, got into his car with difficulty, and drove an hour and a half back home. He had trouble getting out of his car but finally made it to the house. The kids had already had dinner and were getting ready for bed. Fortunately, his wife had left a good chicken dinner for him.

That night, he didn’t ask for sex, and he had trouble falling asleep again. When he finally slept, he had terrible nightmares. The following morning, he could barely get out of bed because of a shooting pain going from his back to his right leg as soon as he put pressure on his right foot. He skipped breakfast and managed to drive to an urgent care facility near his house. The doctor there diagnosed lower back pain and sciatica, gave him a prescription for anti-inflammatory pills, and sent him on his way. 

Alvin stopped by a pharmacy to pick up the medication, took two pills right away, and drove his usual hour and a half to work. There, again, he sat at his desk for long hours without getting up, thinking about his frustration with his wife. He really didn’t deserve the way she was treating him. What was he supposed to do with his sexual desires? Life was not fair. His anger grew, and his back muscles tensed up more.

As a consequence, his pain increased. He took two more anti-inflammatory pills, but since he had taken them on an empty stomach, his stomach started hurting. This was not a good day: He had a backache, fatigue from poor-quality sleep, and now a stomachache from the pills. He somehow managed to finish his work day and drove back home, tired and in pain.

After a good dinner and another difficult night’s sleep, Alvin stopped by the urgent care facility in the morning again before driving to work. This time, the physician gave him a prescription for an opioid painkiller to take at night and stomach ulcer-prevention pills. After filling the prescriptions, Alvin drove to work, but since the pain in his back was horrible, he decided not to wait for the night and took two opioid painkillers plus two anti-inflammatory pills with his lunch. Soon afterward, the pain decreased, but he felt very sleepy. He barely managed to finish his work and decided to drive back home early. Unfortunately, traffic was horrible at that hour.

Suddenly, the driver in front of him pressed on his brakes unexpectedly, and, since Alvin was deep in thoughts about his wife and still sleepy from the painkillers, he didn’t apply his brakes fast enough. His car slammed violently into the car in front of him. He felt enormous pain in his lower back, and he couldn’t get out of his car because the pain was excruciating. Paramedics arrived and transported him to the hospital. Fortunately, no bones were broken, and he slowly recovered, but it took him several months to get back to normal.

Why did I tell you Alvin’s story? Because it explains how frustration and repressed anger can trigger physical symptoms. Once physical symptoms get triggered, things can snowball very quickly because of the apparent need for medications and because of their potential side effects. But this isn’t true only with frustration and repressed anger. It can happen as the result of any kind of repressed emotion. Whenever we repress emotion, a battle takes place between that emotion and the part of us that is repressing it.

That inner battle takes much of our energy. As a consequence, we become tired and don’t pay attention to our surroundings, which is how accidents can happen. We get stressed out and oversecrete cortisol, which depresses our immune system and prevents us from healing quickly, and adrenaline, which causes muscle spasms and a rapid heart rate. If we don’t correct the situation soon after the emotion is repressed, things can go downhill rapidly.

Releasing Repressed Emotions

The first key is to release repressed emotions as soon as they start being bottled up, before they damage the body. The second and more difficult to achieve key is to find a solution to the emotional problem. 

How can repressed emotions be safely vented? There are different ways to clear emotions: People can go to the gym, go for a run or a bicycle ride, use a punching ball, talk to a friend, practice forgiveness, scream or sing in a car, write, draw, practice reiki or yoga, or do whatever else works for them.  

Do you have repressed emotions? Do you have physical symptoms that are difficult to treat? Do you think there could be a relationship between those symptoms and your repressed emotions? If yes, try one of the options above to release your emotions and see if your physical symptoms are better afterward. This will help you find a solution to your emotional problem, which will, in turn, make you happier and, as a consequence, healthier.

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This article is adapted by permission from The Listening Cure: Healing Secrets of an Unconventional Doctor (SelectBooks) by Chris Gilbert, MD, PhD, with Eric Haseltine, PhD. Copyright © 2017 by Chris Gilbert, MD, PhD, with Eric Haseltine, PhD. All rights reserved. The book is available at all bookstores and online booksellers. For more information: www.DrChrisGilbert.com. 

Chris Gilbert, MD, PhD, is the author, with Eric Haseltine, PhD, of The Listening Cure: Healing Secrets of an Unconventional Doctor (SelectBooks). She is an integrative and holistic medicine physician, specializing in the combination of Western and Eastern medicine. She has dedicated her life to treating and curing symptoms and illnesses that other physicians haven’t been able to address. www.DrChrisGilbert.com.

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