The relationship between mental health and bodily condition is studied by a science that emerged at the intersection of medicine and psychology. The doctrine is based on the concept of the influence of mental factors on the health of the body. Scientists believe that negative emotions, stresses and experiences, negative thoughts affect the development of diseases of organs and systems. The psychosomatics of excess weight is a bodily sign of psychological problems.
Obesity is medically a chronic metabolic disease that is manifested by excessive deposition of fat cells in the body and weight gain. Obesity is reversible in nature - you can lose weight and get leaner.
Excess weight has consequences:
Psychosomatics of excess weight in women
Causes and predisposing factors
Common causes of excess weight:
Secondary gain of excess weight
In psychology, a secondary benefit is a series of benefits that a person receives from the formed symptoms of a disease.
The most common forms of secondary benefit are:
Being overweight as a form of protection
Psychosomatic obesity can be perceived as a mask, or a departure from reality. People seem to be trying to hide behind a layer of fatty deposits.
This form of protection is more often characteristic of women who try to hide their personal core, hide their “I” in the depths, and leave a folded image on the facade.
A look at the problem from Louise Hay
Louise Hay believes that obesity is caused by fear, the need for protection, self-denial and unwillingness to feel around. She also refers to the reasons as the desire to show oneself and hypersensitivity. In order to get rid of this problem, Hay advises every day to repeat the phrases "this place is safe", "now I am not afraid", "I myself create security for myself and loved ones." These affirmations, according to Louise Hay, can solve the problem of excess weight.
Also, the psychologist associates parts of the body with obesity and psychological problems. For example, psychosomatic obesity in the abdomen speaks of internal anger for deprivation of food, the pelvis - aggression against parents, shoulders - a lack of love.
Liz Burbo's opinion
Liz Burbo () associates obesity with three phenomena:
Excess weight according to Sinelnikov
Valery Sinelnikov states that being overweight is an expression of fear and the need for protection. Often, overweight people feel vulnerable and vulnerable. The fatty layer plays the role of a shell that hides a person's feelings from others.
The healer also says that people with a large mass are sensitive, and are not able to cope with inner experiences. Fat dulls unacceptable emotions and thoughts. Sinelnikov also says that the tendency to overeat is a sign of dissatisfaction with oneself, even to the point of hatred.
How to cope with excess weight
Not a single diet on the Internet will help until the overweight person himself turns to a nutritionist. However, there is a set of general rules that are aimed at losing weight:
- you can not starve;
- count the number of daily calories;
- create and adhere to a diet;
- properly distribute carbohydrates, fats and proteins;
- observe water balance;
- eat while sitting and at rest;
- chew food thoroughly.
Psychotherapy
In psychotherapy of obesity, cognitive-behavioral therapy and a hypnosuggestational approach have the best effect. In the first variant, the therapist, with the help of verbal attitudes, destroys the client's mental patterns and teaches him to control his condition with the help of a train of thought. With hypnosuggestational techniques, the doctor gives the mindset for the correct eating behavior.
The appearance of excess weight, if the reason for its gain is not endocrine diseases and hormonal disorders, is almost always associated with psychological discomfort, negative mental perception of one's own life.
To treat obesity and eliminate extra pounds, it is important to conduct a kind of excursion into the depths of your own subconscious, to identify the factors that provoke excess weight gain and try to eradicate them on your own or seek help from a qualified psychologist.According to the basic principles of psychosomatics, gaining excess weight is almost always associated with certain psychological problems, the most common of which is neglect of one's own body, expressed in the absence of self-criticism.
In addition to the above aspect, the following psychological reasons for excess weight are distinguished:
- Seizing nervous stress, anxiety, negative emotions and thoughts. This factor implies the following: in an effort to forget about past unpleasant situations, quarrels, a person consumes a much larger amount of food than usual, while focusing on sweet and fatty foods.
- Lack of attention from family and friends. In this case, food is a kind of a way to fill the inner emptiness, an inadequate substitute for live communication and relationships.
So, the main psychosomatic factor leading to overweight is the absence of an important element in a person's life, be it lively emotions, communication, relationships, pride or something else.
Eating a lot of food, overeating helps to distract from existing problems and create the illusion of psychological comfort. In some cases, to start the weight loss mechanism, it is enough just to fill in the missing element.
Contributing factors or motives
Excess unnecessary weight is often associated with certain motives, which literally give an obese person the installation of eating a large amount of food, literally pushing the body towards the development of a disease called obesity.
The factors that practicing psychologists especially often highlight may be the following:
The listed motives are exclusively impulses to trigger the mechanism for gaining excess body weight. To lose weight and prevent similar problems in the future, it is important to adjust your own thoughts and attitude.
Being overweight as a form of protection
Psychological disorders, negative moments in life are often manifested in the deposition of fat masses in certain parts of the body. Age characteristics can also be a determining factor. Below is a table of diseases, age and gender problems, which will help to consider the problems in more detail.
| Distinctive features | Cause |
| The deposition of fat in men on the thighs, tummy. | The so-called "female" type of obesity is often detected in men who are dependent on a powerful woman, be it a wife or a mother. Gradually, a truly masculine nature acquires feminine features that leave an imprint on external qualities. |
| The deposition of fat on the abdomen in women. | The appearance of a fat layer mainly in the abdomen in the fair half of humanity may be evidence of denial of their own essence, sexuality, and significance. More often, single women suffer from this type of obesity, who do not have the opportunity to realize themselves as a loved one, mother, wife. |
| Childhood obesity. | Obesity is mainly observed in children and adolescents under the overprotection of parents or close relatives from infancy. In addition, children who are regularly subjected to physical or corporal punishment, children who do not have the natural ability to splash out negative emotions, anger, anger can suffer from such a pathology. |
In order to lose weight, it is important to take into account all the factors that can provoke a gain in excess body weight and work with a psychologist, taking into account the identified problems.
Treatment methods
Unfortunately, even if a psychological problem is identified that prompted a person to abuse food, not only psychological, but also physical methods will have to be used to eliminate extra pounds. First of all, it is constant monitoring of the quality and quantity of food taken. Sports activities and an active lifestyle are also required.
As for the most common psychological tricks that will help you lose weight, the common ones are:
- If food acts as a source of relaxation, you should replace it with something that has a similar effect. For example, you can pay attention to yoga, swimming, active sports. An ordinary long walk will be no less useful in this case.
- Before you make your next visit to the refrigerator, you should ask yourself whether this is a feeling of hunger or a feeling of moral dissatisfaction. It is advisable to start a meal only if a positive answer follows to the first question posed.
- It is important to pay attention to your own personality, to accept and love all the advantages and disadvantages, as for the latter, it is quite possible to fight them without using heavy artillery, namely, a large amount of harmful and tasty food.
- If the main reason for overeating lies in the environment, it is important to change the attitude towards loved ones and try to correct their attitude towards their own person. It should be remembered that any conflict can be resolved peacefully.
Fighting overweight, if the main reasons for its gain lie in the mental plane, includes a complex combination of material and moral aspects. Losing weight, paying attention to only one of the sides of the existing problem, is almost impossible. If the habit of compensating for the dissatisfaction from life with food has been developed over the years, the situation can be corrected only by contacting a competent psychologist, it is extremely difficult to cope on your own in such situations.
It is important to remember that for external transformation it is important to achieve inner harmony and tranquility.
In the first part of the article "Overweight psychosomatics" I will describe the cases when the body decides that being overweight is the best decision, based on the inner experiences of a person. In the second part of this article, I will show you what negative inner beliefs can prevent a person from becoming slim.
Before we get better, we make a decision to get better. Let it be not consciously, but we accept. This decision can be made at any age. If children are born inclined to be overweight, this means that their unconscious is already dominated by the program that it is beneficial to be full.
What does profitable mean? This means that the body believes that completeness is the solution to a certain problem.
1) The most common problem in my practice is the need to build a defense against a dangerous world. Excess weight can be seen as a kind of obstacle on the way to the vulnerable soul of a person, as a protection from unwanted communication (after all, overweight people are shunned), as an opportunity to "crush" enemies with their mass. The main idea is the same - I do not want to have contact with the world, because it is either unpleasant or simply dangerous.
In this case, in order to lose weight, simply going on a diet will not be enough. The body will resist this, as it will lose the required protection. This means that it is necessary to reconfigure the inner beliefs about danger, to see the world in a different way. Then the need for excess weight disappears.
2) It so happens that slender girls after marriage or after the birth of a child begin to get better. When I began to analyze why this was happening, I saw that girls acquire a subpersonality, which I called Matrona (according to Ozhegov, a plump, solid woman).
At some point, a newly-made housewife or a young mother begins to take into the shadows her inner image of a young carefree girl and unconsciously "brings closer" the image of a solid head of the family. In this case, in psychotherapy, we analyze how it is possible to combine these two images or come up with a new one - a slender young mother and an easy successful housewife.
3) If a woman begins to gain weight, you need to see if she has taken on the male function of making money, for example? Being big is sometimes like being a man. Fragility is a woman's trait, but if a woman cannot be fragile in a family, she has to become strong. And the strong are usually “big”. This decision is made by the body to help the woman cope with the problems.
4) “They don’t notice me” - this is how a child thinks and feels and begins to gain weight.
A woman who is starting to gain weight may also think that her husband does not notice her, and being overweight is the solution. And if the husband once said that he loves soft women, when there is something to hold on to, a woman will unconsciously become big and soft if she suffers from her husband's inattention and tries to attract him.
5) For our body, fat is a luxury tissue: it weighs little, energetically capacious. Interestingly, if we consider ourselves ugly somewhere, the body will add fat in this place. in consolation the owner. For example, this is how lipomas arise. And this is how the phenomena that we call cellulite arise.
That is, when we examine ourselves in the mirror and pass the verdict: “Not what it should be,” the body tries to comfort us with fat.
If there is a constant feeling of self-dissatisfaction inside, this can lead to an increase in fatty layer on the thighs, abdomen, arms, etc.
It is not for nothing that one of the necessary stages of losing weight is creating an internal image of oneself as slender (I will write about this in the second part of the article).
6) And finally, one more observation. If during pregnancy the mother really wanted to eat, but denied herself everything in order to stay slim, the child can weigh decently in childhood, as if solving the problem of his mother.
Likewise, if a woman feels that she is deprived of something, she can unconsciously "gain" the lack of something with excess weight. What is lacking can be anything: from a favorite job that does not exist, to a beloved that also does not exist.
The reasons for being overweight are varied, and when we look for these reasons, we always find them in the personal history of life and the picture of the world that is unique to everyone.
Having found the reasons for excess weight, we remove the prerequisites for this weight. And a person no longer needs to solve his problems in this way. However, the weight has already been gained, and you need to lose weight. But with this, other problems arise and obstacles arise from other beliefs and fears. More on this in the next part of the article.
Why does one woman not feel the need for food, while the other is constantly eating something? In fact, the body doesn't need that much. This is required by her psychological state. In this article I will talk about why the psychosomatics of excess weight appears in women.
The tendency to be overweight (and obese) usually has the following reasons:
- heredity (at the level of genetics along someone else's line);
- diseases in the body (for example, hypothyroidism contributes to weight gain);
But not everyone who has problems with extra pounds has organ disorders.
The point here is the psychological reasons that the woman does not work on and to which she does not pay attention.
What is the reason for the psychosomatics of obesity in women?
To begin with, we note that being overweight and obesity are not the same thing.
These conditions differ in their body mass index. If in the first case it is more about discomfort and what is easier to get rid of, then in the second it is a real disease that can be difficult to cope with alone.
Psychosomatics, on the other hand, is a direction that studies how a psychological state affects the state of our body. These can be manifestations in the organs, and can also be expressed in the accumulation of excess weight in the body.
Eating disorders are associated with unconscious processes.
Therefore, it is not so easy to get rid of them! It is not enough to say to yourself: "From now on I eat less." Here - in some way, as with alcoholism, the same obsessive need to use.
A woman is experiencing a real food addiction, with which she satisfies some of her needs. Only often does not realize what exactly this need is. Such a need, as a rule, turns out to be the need for love, care and attention.
It turns out that she is constantly experiencing psychological discomfort and seizes him. Therefore, when the stomach is saturated, the body receives some kind of satisfaction, which is very difficult to obtain in other ways.
This is the very source of getting positive emotions. At the same time, the woman herself does not seek to say goodbye to being overweight. If she didn't need him, she wouldn't have him. She needs him. Needed to protect against something disturbing and unsafe.
Where does this state originate?
Like many neurotic disorders, it originates in the family. There are several options here.
First option.
Usually in our country teenagers are kept on a "short leash" so that they do not do all sorts of stupid things. Parents begin to control their every step, every word. "That is not allowed, and this is not allowed, you cannot dress like that and you cannot paint like that either." Otherwise, you will be "bad".
Of course, there is nowhere without control. But parents fanatically adjust the teenager to their own expectations. And this is what affects his psyche. If everything is impossible, then somehow you need to compensate for all these prohibitions, to get at least some kind of freedom.
They begin to find this freedom in food. Where there are numerous prohibitions, extra pounds are also possible. Further, this ligament is fixed in the psyche, and a person, being already in adulthood, continues to behave in the same way.
Second option.
The mother understands that "a well-fed child is a contented child." And she begins to feed him not only for the sake of satisfying hunger, but also in order to calm him down (that is, the psychological aspect is mixed here). For some children, parents relieve tantrums in this way.
Sometimes mothers regard what they have eaten as a form of expression of love: “Eat porridge, otherwise I will be offended. Isn't it tasty? " And I don't want to offend my mother. Pure water manipulation.
So the girl understands the following: when you eat everything, then you show your love and respect.
If at the same time the child has some kind of unpleasant internal state (fears, stress, shame), and at the same time it is removed with food, the psyche very quickly remembers this way of relieving stress.
Therefore, in adulthood, someone takes antidepressants to calm down, and someone “takes” food.
Option three.
Many still have habits from the past, when it is simply a pity to throw out the uneaten food. They paid, tried, cooked. Therefore, in order not to remain, you need to finish eating here and now.
So the body receives the surplus, which is not needed for him, but rather for our mind to calm down.
How are all women who have psychological causes of obesity similar?
Obesity is a more serious condition. This is already a diagnosis. And best of all, go through all medical examinations to be sure that this is exactly it.
With it, diets and sports are no longer so effective. Often, they produce little results. The occurrence of obesity is influenced by the following.
Low self-esteem.
It plays one of the decisive roles. First, as much as we value ourselves, the environment communicates with us. If we do not value ourselves, others do not value us either. Not at work, not in the family.
Therefore, it is most difficult to lose weight if your self-esteem is low. You do not see this image in which you are in demand and beautiful. Many in this state make another attempt, during which they are convinced that they are not given to be different. “I tried to lose weight - it didn't work, not for me. Here they are, beautiful, - yes, they have willpower, and in general they are from another planet and from a different test. "
Low self-esteem is highly related to the body. This connection for many, again, comes from childhood. The rejection of the body in adolescence, when it seems to us that something is wrong, causes the desire to constantly think about our imperfection. Leads to insecurity in our behavior. It seems that everyone is only thinking about "my shortcomings."
A person with low self-esteem has very little motivation for change. Not worthy - and that's it.
Self-pity.
“Today I felt so bad morally, at work it was difficult, and I do a lot, don't I really deserve a small reward ... Moreover, the only thing the boss does is that he notices one bad thing ...”
We often experience victim states. From which, of course, you want to get rid of. When eating, satisfaction comes both at the level of the body (with the help of the release of insulin into the blood), and at the level of the psyche. But this is fickle and does not remove the cause.
People feel sorry for themselves and justify their inaction with this pity.
There is no skill to resist the outside world.
Sometimes a girl infringes on her needs to please others, does not know how to say "No". Does something even if she doesn't like it.
Obesity often appears in those who were suppressed in childhood, whose opinion was not considered, forced to do something against their will. Moreover, not only in the family, but also in the circle of friends.
Some have psychological trauma, and in order to isolate themselves from them and protect themselves from new ones, the body builds new boundaries at the physiological level.
And since many of us do not know how to calmly defend our boundaries, express our feelings and work with emotions, the body comes to the rescue. So it turns out psychosomatics (the psyche influences the somatics).
How does the inner woman feel, suffering from the psychosomatics of gluttony?
She has these feelings:
- vulnerability,
- resentment,
- sensitivity,
- and etc.
A woman needs to fill the inner emptiness, but she cannot do this with positive emotions, so she has to fill her stomach, which also affects the psyche.
Sometimes, of course, the trigger is a strong stressful event. For example:
- husband's death,
- divorce,
- hard work,
- difficult situation with children.
Here some go to alcoholism (which, of course, is more typical of men). It is no coincidence that there is a saying “Get drunk and forget”. And women use food instead of alcohol.
What does the psychosomatics of excess weight lead to in women? What are the consequences?
The consequences are familiar to many.
- in the summer "a hundred sweats go down",
- you have to buy clothes which fit, and not what you like,
- it is not always possible to sit comfortably, because "the belly hangs down",
- fear of dating,
- others perceive it as an unkempt person,
- ridicule from the uncultured that hurt. ("Today is exactly six months, as I go jogging tomorrow morning").
Obesity as a disease affects not only the appearance, but also the body as a whole. Over time, there are consequences such as diabetes, hernia, depression, arthritis, heart attacks, and more.
How to lose weight with psychosomatics?
1 - Understand the reason.
If you understand the unconscious motives, it will be easier to work with it.
2 - Deal with secondary benefits.
By her weight, a woman is fenced off from the outside world. And this condition is very important for her!
If she has a negative experience with a man, then now she may gain weight to confirm that she really has become unattractive to others.
The thing is, she subconsciously wants to avoid the trauma of rejection. Or is simply afraid to make mistakes. Fenced off from mistakes. Strives to be a perfectionist.
Fat always protects from something. From potential failure. Therefore, it is necessary to work with anxiety and fear, in some cases with childhood trauma. And in all cases - with self-esteem and self-love.
Critical:
3 - Learn to say "No".
4 - Work with self-esteem.
5 - Workout.
6 - Work with taking responsibility for yourself.
People who are overweight are often lazy. Therefore, extra pounds are just a punishment for laziness. But the responsibility for your appearance and health lies only with you. You can always pull yourself together.
This is how the psychosomatics of excess weight in women is being worked out!
The good news is that it can be done much faster with the help of an experienced technician. Especially if there is an internal conflict that was laid down in childhood. Here, simple physical activity is definitely not enough.
How to deal with psychosomatics faster?
Two points are important: getting into the exact cause and choosing the right psychological techniques. If you break down all the work in stages, then it is more expedient to go this way:
- define the initial situation,
- to concretize the root emotion (anger, guilt, shame, grief - everyone has their own),
- select suitable psychological techniques,
- check the correctness of their implementation,
- correct emotion (develop new reactions to provocations).
Example: you can read for a long time about constipation - that these are mental blocks, self-dislike. But in 95% of cases, he appears in a state of choice, in limbo. If at the same time you have basic distrust and anxiety, constipation develops into a chronic one and worsens during the period of choice.
Therefore, situations with a choice will never end, but attitudes towards them can be changed in psychotherapeutic ways.
What is the majority doing?
They study theory but do not make improvements.
The fact is that independent work with your unconscious requires a lot of preparation.
Do you need a specialist?
It will just be faster with him. You can cope on your own, but only a few can manage it for a long time.
In my practice, the terms varied from 1 consultation to a year. The most common cases are:
- headache,
- gynecological problems,
- lungs,
- childhood illnesses through parents and others.
You can find out about work with me.
I wish you health and psychological comfort.
If you are interested in psychotherapy of excess weight, then this publication is for you. Psychosomatics is an interesting science, because psychology is able to overcome the psychological causes of obesity at different stages. Also find out what kind of counseling people with this problem are.
Millions of people are involved in the fight against obesity. In this unequal battle, many lose, passing from the stage of obesity to the category of obese. Most try to cure by adhering to diets, exercise, without thinking about the sources of the disease. You can help in this matter relying on psychosomatics, and psychotherapy offers to get rid of problems.
Psychological reasons for being overweight
Psychosomatics experts believe that obesity has more serious reasons than an improperly formulated diet or a sedentary lifestyle. Each person is individual, so he himself determines a comfortable body weight.
Statistics show that hereditary and hormonal influences, organic disorders are not the main factors affecting excess weight. Psychosomatics is engaged in helping to understand your own perception of the world, based on the data of your body.
| Psychological reasons for being overweight | |
| Seizing problems | Having personal discomfort. The joy of eating drowns out any unpleasant emotions. |
| Remorse | Having committed an unworthy act, a person feels guilty. Quenches feelings with alcohol, smoking or overeating. |
| Imitation of parents | Some believe that it is not worth canceling the family tradition: if the ancestors were fat, then the next generation should not follow the figure. |
| Strength of will | Weakness in denying yourself tasty things, preventing you from passing by bakeries with inviting aromas, pastry departments or McDonald's. |
| Lack of interest | Lacking hobbies, friends, hobbies, many simply wrap themselves in a hoodie and eat in order to diversify their boring life. |
| No motivation | If a person underestimates his own importance, does not see the point in losing weight, he continues to gain excess weight, consuming unnecessary calories. |
| Fear of Sexual Intimacy | Fat deposits that form in women in the abdomen indicate a fear of relationships. |
Psychotherapy helps patients with depression, anxiety associated with excessive weight gain.
Psychosomatics of obesity
It has been proven that the main percentage of all diseases have psychological causes. Psychosomatics explains that obesity in the abdomen is a defense against stress, suffering, fear. Seizing negative emotions temporarily suspends emotional experiences.
Such people are characterized by:
- internal twitching;
- vulnerability;
- loneliness;
- feeling of imperfection.
The psychosomatics of obesity looks at the disease as an external manifestation of various psychological problems. A person himself regulates hormonal imbalance and metabolic rate in his body. He unconsciously controls all processes.
The current state of the problem of obesity requires pathogenetic schemes of psychotherapy as a method of choice in the development of the disease.
Psychotherapy and psychology of excess weight
Psychology is a science that deals with the structure of the inner world and can help in revising eating behavior. The point of treatment is to bring the body and soul into balance, to get rid of the factors that interfere with being healthy, slim and happy forever.
Weight loss psychotherapy has several directions:
- identifying the onset of overweight;
- actions to eliminate interfering factors for weight loss;
- the ability to hear and feel the true needs of your body;
- normalization of eating behavior;
- the formation of a new way of life;
- fixing the results.
Psychotherapists try to explain to their patients the relationship between behavior, thoughts, and weight. To instill that obesity is a symptom that is the tip of the iceberg of a person's inner world.
The founder of the self-help movement, Louise Hay, in her tables of possible factors for obesity, points to fear and the need for protection. The psychology of being overweight includes the eternal search for the meaning of life and not the ability to self-actualize, which leads to illness.
The American offers psychotherapy in the form of healing self-hypnosis formulas for every cause of obesity that psychosomatics will help to identify.
Doctor's opinion
If a person experiences constant dissatisfaction with himself, this can lead to an increase in fatty layer on the thighs and abdomen. When you are not satisfied with what a part of your body looks like, the body adds fat there, consoling the owner. To understand how to build, you first need to see yourself thin, draw your inner image. Without this, you will not be able to lose those extra pounds. Psychotherapy is to think over what figure you need to reach when losing weight and try to imagine yourself in a new body. Any changes must take place without internal resistance.
Psychological counseling for obese people
Many obese patients are interested in ways to change their figure. Such people can be helped by psychological counseling from experienced specialists. Since excessive mass is based on psychosomatics, they offer a unique psychotherapy.
Almost all experts believe that the body in a stressful state is not able to adequately control hunger and satiety, so a person experiences a constant feeling of malnutrition or a reluctance to eat at all.
Psychological counseling for obese people has several directions:
- prevention of the use of various dietary restrictions;
- study of the negative manifestations of perfectionism;
- correction of personal anxiety;
- psychological diet, the essence of which boils down to a serious revision of the attitude towards your diet and overeating.
For each case, psychotherapy sessions are individual, but changes occur after the first sessions. A person monitors his mass himself and decides for himself when to refuse the help of doctors.
In order to properly and harmlessly lose weight, you need to combine personal work on yourself with the recommendations of specialists, then losing weight will be as comfortable as possible. Say no to being overweight and start leading a healthy lifestyle.