My view is that the “constrict blood vessels and tense muscles” action (or whatever it is) is less like moving your finger, and more like speeding up your heart rate: sorta consciously controllable but not by a simple and direct act of willful control. I personally was talking to my hands rather than talking to my subconscious, but whatever, either way, I see it as a handy trick to send out the right nerve signals. Again like how if you want to release adrenaline, you think of something scary, you don’t think “Adrenal gland, Activate!” (Unless you’ve specifically practiced.)
I guess where I differ in emphasis from you is that I like to talk about how an important part of the action is really happening at the location of the pain, even if the cause is in the brain. I find that people talking about “psychosomatic” tend to be cutting physiology out of the loop altogether, though you didn’t quite say that yourself. The other different emphasis is whether there’s any sense whatsoever in which some part of the person wants the pain to happen because of some ulterior motive. I mean, that kind of story very much did not resonate with my experience. My RSI flare-ups were always pretty closely associated with using my hands. I guess I shouldn’t over-generalize from my own experience. Shrug.
“Constricting blood vessels” seems like a broad enough mechanism to be potentially applicable to back spasms, RSI, IBS, ulcers, and all the other superficially different indications we’ve all heard of. But I don’t know much about physiology or vasculature, and I don’t put too much stock in that exact description. Could also be something about nerves I guess?
My view is that the “constrict blood vessels and tense muscles” action (or whatever it is) is less like moving your finger, and more like speeding up your heart rate: sorta consciously controllable but not by a simple and direct act of willful control. I personally was talking to my hands rather than talking to my subconscious, but whatever, either way, I see it as a handy trick to send out the right nerve signals. Again like how if you want to release adrenaline, you think of something scary, you don’t think “Adrenal gland, Activate!” (Unless you’ve specifically practiced.)
I guess where I differ in emphasis from you is that I like to talk about how an important part of the action is really happening at the location of the pain, even if the cause is in the brain. I find that people talking about “psychosomatic” tend to be cutting physiology out of the loop altogether, though you didn’t quite say that yourself. The other different emphasis is whether there’s any sense whatsoever in which some part of the person wants the pain to happen because of some ulterior motive. I mean, that kind of story very much did not resonate with my experience. My RSI flare-ups were always pretty closely associated with using my hands. I guess I shouldn’t over-generalize from my own experience. Shrug.
“Constricting blood vessels” seems like a broad enough mechanism to be potentially applicable to back spasms, RSI, IBS, ulcers, and all the other superficially different indications we’ve all heard of. But I don’t know much about physiology or vasculature, and I don’t put too much stock in that exact description. Could also be something about nerves I guess?