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For a long time, I misunderstood the word psychosomatic—and honestly, I think a lot of us do. In my early adult years, I had persistent pain in my back, up near my left shoulder. It went on for years. There were also heart flutters that scared the hell out of me, headaches that wouldn’t quit, and a general sense that something in my body was not okay. At one point, a doctor looked at me and said, “I believe your symptoms are psychosomatic.” What I heard was psycho–symatic—with a y, not an o.
Psycho, as in crazy, and symatic, which I interpreted as the symptoms themselves. Put together, it sounded like the doctor was saying my symptoms were psychological, not physical. When I asked a friend what it meant, she said, “Oh, that just means they think it’s all in your head. Like… you’re imagining it.” That interpretation landed hard. Because the pain was real. The heart flutters were real. The fear was real. And “it’s all in your head” often translates to you’re making this up or there’s nothing actually wrong with you. That framing alone can feel dismissive, shaming, and isolating—especially when your lived experience says otherwise. What I’ve come to understand—honestly, only fairly recently—is that what I was hearing was actually “somatic'“ and it certainly isn’t imaginary. It means psyche as in- thoughts, ideas, beliefs- influencing soma meaning in or of the body. The body isn’t lying. It’s responding. And once I understood that, my symptoms started to make sense. My headaches increase when I’m under sustained stress. My TMJ is connected to grinding my teeth at night—and that grinding gets worse when I’m overwhelmed or holding things in. My body has always been communicating with me. I just didn’t know how to listen. Here’s where things often go sideways in medical settings: when symptoms are labeled psychosomatic, patients are frequently told to “go see a therapist” without being told why. No explanation of the nervous system. No discussion of stress physiology. No acknowledgment that the body is actively involved. It can feel like the doctor is saying, This isn’t my problem. You’re just anxious. (which I’ve heard doctors say) But what if the explanation sounded more like this? “What you’re experiencing is real. Your nervous system is under strain. The signals your body is sending to your brain—and the signals coming back—are dysregulated. The system needs support.” Because the truth is, the primary communication highway between the body and the brain is the vagus nerve. And that nerve doesn’t live in the brain. It lives in the body. The body sends information upward first. The brain responds second. Which means this whole idea that healing only happens by “changing your thoughts” is incomplete. Read that again- Yes, therapy can be helpful. But somatic work—working with the body through sensation, breath, movement, and awareness—meets the issue at its source. When the body learns safety, the symptoms often soften. When the nervous system settles, pain can reduce. When we listen instead of override, the body doesn’t have to scream as loudly. So maybe it shouldn’t be psycho-somatic. Maybe it should be soma-psycho. Because it isn’t “all in your head.” If you feel it, it’s in your body.
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