How to Help Yourself When Your Physical Complaints Aren't Taken Seriously

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“It’s probably just anxiety.” These are some of the most invalidating words you might hear when seeking help for physical symptoms. For example, many long-COVID sufferers have reported that health care providers have not taken their complaints seriously. However, recent studies have estimated that between 30 percent and 50 percent of people experience persistent COVID-19 symptoms after recovery.

Millions of people struggling with conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, post-concussion syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome have also had challenging interactions with the medical establishment. They have found that when symptoms are not readily addressed or diagnosed, sometimes health care professionals default to blaming mental health, leaving patients feeling frustrated and hopeless.

The sheer numbers of people who struggle with post–COVID-19 symptoms now make this syndrome impossible to dismiss, and we just might be turning a curve with how the medical system addresses challenging chronic conditions. Major medical centers and universities are beginning to research and treat long COVID. For example, the University of Illinois Chicago just received $22 million in funding to study it, and Mount Sinai in New York City has launched the Center for Post-COVID Care.

Nonetheless, whether you are COVID long hauler or have frequent migraines or another chronic health condition that is difficult to treat, behavioral and psychological interventions can still be helpful.

The Link Between Mental Health and Physical Health

Let’s face it; when you have a chronic medical condition or unexplained physical symptoms, it can be incredibly depressing and stressful. Moreover, anxiety can manifest physically (e.g., gastrointestinal distress, difficulties breathing, chest pain), and anxiety about a physical problem can intensify the symptoms.

For example:

• One recent study found that individuals who developed long COVID were about twice as likely to develop mental health symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, as compared to those who did not have long COVID.
• It is estimated that 50 percent of people with fibromyalgia have major depressive disorder or a mood disorder.
• People with neck or low back pain were estimated to be 2 to 2.5 times more likely to have depression than those without the pain.
• About 35 to 40 percent of people with migraines or arthritis have severe anxiety.

How to Improve Your Quality of Life

Psychological treatments like cognitive behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy have been used to treat various physical problems. Learning from these treatments, here are some steps you can take to start to decrease your distress.

1. Validate yourself. Self-validation is particularly important if you have received a lot of invalidation from the medical community. You can tell yourself things like: It’s really upsetting to be experiencing these physical symptoms, or, It’s not my fault that I feel this way.

2. Accept your current situation. People often confuse acceptance with liking something, but it’s not. When you accept reality, you stop fighting against it, and you stop telling yourself things like, Why me? or, This is unfair! By fully accepting your situation, you are taking a big step in reducing your mental suffering and anguish, and it also frees you up to take action.

A self-statement that combines validation and acceptance might look like this: It’s OK I’m upset about these symptoms, but this is the situation I’m in right now.

3. Assess your values. Think about what types of things are most important to you. Family? Friends? Work fulfillment? Spirituality?

4. Shift focus from what you can't do to what you can do. When you have a chronic medical condition or unexplained symptoms, there is often a sense of loss and rumination about what you can’t do anymore. This focus on what has been lost contributes to depression and other mental health symptoms.

This step is where the assessment of your values fits in. Ask yourself, What can I do that fits into my values? For example, if you value family or friends and have been out of touch with people, this could be a great time to reach out to them.

You might need to make adjustments based on your physical limitations. For example, if you highly value physical activity but are more limited in what you can do, you might need to adjust. Maybe you can’t run right now, but can you walk, swim, or do gentle yoga?

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5. Notice where you put your attention. Have you or your children ever been at a school where there was a case of head lice? Maybe upon hearing this news, you noticed that your head suddenly felt itchy. There is a powerful mind–body link. So, if you are dealing with ongoing physical pain or issues, the more you keep your attention on it, the more you will notice it, and the worse it will feel.

To illustrate, turn all of your attention onto the sensations in your foot. Notice how it feels to be resting on the floor or wherever it is. Chances are, once you started paying attention to your foot, you became aware of sensations that you hadn’t noticed before you put your attention there.

Try to be more aware of when you are paying attention to the parts of your body or painful and uncomfortable sensations. When you notice you are paying attention to the discomfort, gently redirect your attention to something in your environment—a picture in your room, a tree outside the window, anything. By training yourself to turn your attention outside of yourself, you will focus less on your discomfort, which might help alleviate it.

6. Find support. Getting support around a chronic physical problem can help you feel less alone, which might help your mood. You might want to find a therapist for yourself or connect with others who are dealing with a similar issue as you. There are a lot of online communities, but be mindful of whether or not the group is helpful. Some groups might overfocus on suffering, which might be counterproductive.