Your Pain is Real: Understanding the Connection Between Mental and Physical Health

I’ve hesitated to write this post because I worry it could be misunderstood.

Have you ever worked up the courage to talk about your health concerns, only to be met with phrases like, “It’s probably just stress,” or “You’re overthinking it?” And even if those words were never spoken directly, the message was clear: If it’s linked to your mental health, then it must not be serious enough to matter.

Too often when people hear their pain might be tied to mental health, it feels like a dismissal—and sometimes, it actually is.

But let me be very clear: Your experience is real. Your pain is real.

• If you’re so overstretched that you’re experiencing chronic stomach issues — that’s real. When your body activates the autonomic nervous system in response to your overwhelm, your digestion slows down, causing bloating and other uncomfortable GI symptoms.

• If your deep anger (and worry) about the way the world treats you based on who you are is showing up as persistent back pain — absolutely real. Ongoing emotion and stress causes chronic muscle tension (those muscles are trying to keep you ready to protect yourself if you need to), which leads to back pain.

• If your past trauma is showing up as chronic fatigue, the proof is in the pudding. Your body activates your fight or flight response to protect you. But with unhealed trauma, your body may not be able to go back to its pre-stressor state. And that ongoing release of hormones, inflammation, and general body activation takes its toll over time, keeping you exhausted.

This is real science. Your body wouldn’t be responding this way if everything were fine.

Your Nervous System Tells a Story

Our bodies are complex, beautifully interconnected systems. At the center of this connection is your nervous system — the part of your body that manages both physical and emotional experiences. It’s the reason your heart races when you’re anxious and why grief can feel like a weight pressing down on your chest.

The nervous system responds to both physical health challenges and emotional stress, sometimes in similar ways.

It’s why issues like …

• fatigue,

• muscle tension,

• chronic headaches,

• digestive issues,

• and even chronic pain

… can be difficult to trace back to a single source.

Often, it’s not either a medical issue or an emotional one — it’s both. Sometimes it’s the physical causing mental pain, sometimes it’s the mental causing physical pain, and sometimes it’s a vicious feedback loop of both feeding into each other.

And all three need to be acknowledged.

This complexity can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you’re already feeling overwhelmed. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if there were just one clear cause and one straightforward solution? But the reality is, your mind and body don’t work in isolation. And while that can make healing feel complicated, it also means you have multiple ways to feel better.

When Your Mental Health Shows Up in Your Body

The connection between your mental and physical health runs deep. Emotional stress doesn’t just affect your thoughts — it can have a direct, measurable impact on your body. Understanding how this works can help you make sense of the physical symptoms you're experiencing.

• Headaches & Migraines: Chronic stress and emotional distress are common triggers for tension headaches and migraines. The body's response to prolonged stress can lead to muscle tension and vascular changes, resulting in persistent headaches.

• Sleep Struggles: Anxiety and persistent stress can keep your nervous system on high alert, making it difficult to relax into restful sleep. Literally, your nervous system is releasing cortisol and other hormones to keep you alert, making it difficult for your body to truly rest.

• Autoimmune Flares: Stress can disrupt immune system regulation, contributing to increased inflammation and more intense symptom flares in autoimmune conditions like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Elevated stress hormones, like cortisol, can throw the body's natural immune responses out of balance, making existing conditions harder to manage.

• Back Pain & Muscle Tension: Emotional stress often manifests physically through muscle tension, particularly in the back, neck, and shoulders. When stress lingers, so does this tension, creating persistent discomfort.

• Fatigue: Emotional strain, especially from chronic stress or unresolved trauma, can sap your body’s energy reserves. This can lead to a deep, lingering fatigue. Rest alone doesn’t seem to resolve it since the body remains in a heightened stress state that continues to drain your energy.

• Gastrointestinal Issues: The gut is influenced by the nervous system, so stress and emotional strain can directly affect digestion. Stress can disrupt gut motility, increase stomach acid, and heighten sensitivity to pain, contributing to issues like nausea, bloating, cramps, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

• Pelvic Floor Concerns: Trauma, anxiety, and chronic stress can lead to tension being held in the pelvic floor muscles, contributing to pain, tightness, or dysfunction. This physical response is often a way the body attempts to “brace” against emotional discomfort, even when the stress feels unrelated to the physical symptoms.

• Chronic Pain & Illness: Stress and mental health challenges can amplify chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia by increasing the brain’s sensitivity to pain signals, in an off-target attempt to protect you from any further harm. Additionally, chronic stress can worsen conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and asthma by impacting inflammation, immune response, and overall body regulation.

Why Do We Dismiss Mental Health's Role in Physical Symptoms?

It’s understandable to want quick answers when you're in pain. It can feel discouraging when the solution isn't as simple as a single pill or procedure. But when emotional health is involved, healing often requires a deeper look at patterns and stressors in your life, and sometimes even past or current traumas.

Here are some common reasons people dismiss the link between mental health and physical symptoms:

1. We crave certainty.
   It's human nature to want a clear-cut answer: This symptom comes from that condition. When the reality is more complex, it can feel overwhelming and confusing.  

2. It also can make us doubt ourselves.

   Did I create this problem? Am I being too sensitive? If it’s “just because of stress,” why am I unable to fix it? When there’s no clear-cut answer, we start to blame ourselves, which usually just makes it worse. 

3. The fix feels overwhelming.
   If you're already exhausted or hurting, being told you need to "reduce stress" or "work on emotional patterns" can feel impossible. It’s not fair, and it’s okay to feel that way. But small, sustainable steps can make a difference — even when the big picture feels out of reach.

4. It feels unfair to be the one responsible for fixing it.
   Sometimes, the root of your stress isn't even yours to fix — it could be a toxic work culture, systemic oppression, or ongoing life circumstances that are beyond your control. Injustice can absolutely impact health. But working on your emotional resilience can still empower you in meaningful ways.

The Importance of the Right Support

Because the link between mental and physical health is so intricate, it’s essential to have the right support system in place. A compassionate, thorough medical provider who truly listens can help you explore both physical and emotional factors contributing to your symptoms. Unfortunately, in today’s medical system where insurance dictates and limits physicians, time with your doctor is often limited. But it’s worth the effort to find a provider who will take your concerns seriously. 

I strongly recommend having a primary care provider to help you navigate any specialty care and help connect all the pieces. When you’re working with multiple specialized practitioners, it can be difficult to understand what is happening in the big picture, and you’re not supposed to be able to do that alone. Work with a qualified medical professional you trust to help you navigate it all.

Ask for recommendations for physicians from friends and trusted medical providers. Seek second opinions. Your health matters, and you deserve to feel heard.

How Therapy Can Be Part of the Solution

This is where therapy plays such a powerful role. A skilled therapist can help you explore how stress, trauma, and emotional patterns might be affecting your body — without invalidating your physical experiences. The goal isn’t to “blame” your mental health for your pain but to expand your toolkit for healing.

Therapy can help you:

• Understand the mind-body connection.
  Learning how your nervous system responds to stress can help you feel more in tune with your body’s signals.

• Develop stress management tools.
  Learning skills in mindfulness and relaxation, as well as making lifestyle changes like improving your sleep and connecting more with loved ones, can calm your nervous system, which often leads to physical relief.

• Explore emotional patterns.
  If people-pleasing, unresolved anger, or perfectionism are contributing to your stress, therapy provides a safe space to understand and shift those patterns.

• Heal deep wounds.
  Sometimes past traumas that we haven’t had the opportunity or guidance to heal show up in our body. By working through those experiences and difficult emotions, we can heal physically as well as emotionally.

• Feel empowered in your health journey.
  Healing doesn’t mean the symptoms were “all in your head.” It means you're using every resource available — including emotional support — to care for yourself fully.

You Deserve to Feel Better

Your pain is not imagined. Your struggles are not insignificant. Your health deserves attention, and so do you.

Healing takes time, and it often involves multiple layers of care — physical support, emotional processing, and lifestyle shifts that feel sustainable. But you don’t have to figure it all out alone.

If you’ve been feeling dismissed or unheard, I want you to know there are professionals out there who will take your concerns seriously. You are worth that care.

If you're ready to explore how therapy can be part of your healing, I would love to help. I offer a free twenty minute consultation that is a chance for us to explore whether we are a good fit to work together.