254 | From Stress to Shoulder Pain: How Emotions Create Physical Symptoms

Ever noticed how stress can show up in your body—like tension, headaches, or mysterious aches that appear out of nowhere? In this episode, Onnie shares a powerful personal story about how emotional pressure turned into physical pain and what it taught her about the mind-body connection.

Learn how unprocessed emotions can manifest as real physical symptoms, why your body might be trying to get your attention, and what you can do to start healing from the inside out.

✨ Tune in for a story that might just change how you think about stress, pain, and the messages your body is sending you.

Transcript

254 Physical Symptoms

[00:00:00] The morning I was to give my Ted talk. I woke up with a jabbing pain in my neck. It was really on both sides of my neck, and it was the sharp pain

that I couldn't figure out what had happened to me. Up until that day, I had practiced and prayed and journaled and rehearsed and done all the things. I felt like I was totally prepared. But when I woke up that morning, I had the sharp searing pain that hit me right in my shoulders. The whole morning I spent stretching.

I called my husband to bring up the percussion massager and I stood in the corner and massaged my shoulders. I tried rubbing a lotion onto it. Nothing was helping it. The pain was so intense that I was really wondering if I could make it through my talk, and then I did my talk. It was at two o'clock.

So from the moment I woke up, which was about 6:00 AM until two o'clock, the pain was non seizing. It just continued to hurt. I did what I knew how to do. I took some deep breaths. As I stood waiting to go onto [00:01:00] that stage, I went onto the stage and I did my talk seamlessly. And I walked off of that stage and the very moment I stepped off, the pain was gone.

I mean, completely gone. It was so clear that my body had been carrying my emotional stress for me. The pressure, the nerves, the fear, it all showed up physically. I didn't even feel nervous. I felt jittery, but it wasn't like I was in my head all nervous about going on stage, but apparently my body was, my body held my fear, and once the stressor passed, my body was finally able to release it.

And the thing is, my story is not unique. Our bodies do this all the time. They hold onto emotions and trauma that we don't process. They speak to us through pain, illness, and tension.

Welcome back to The Moms Without Capes podcast, the place where moms come to rediscover who they are beyond motherhood, and learn how to prioritize themselves without [00:02:00] guilt. I'm your host, Ani Michalski, and today we're diving into something that might sound a little surprising at first, how emotional stress and trauma can show up as real physical pain in our bodies.

But before we get into the science and strategies.

I'm your host, Onnie Michalsky, and today we're diving into something that may seem a bit surprising how emotional stress and trauma can show up as real physical pain in our bodies. As a mental health therapist with a background and cognitive behavioral therapy. Most of the work I do focuses on our minds looking at rational versus irrational thoughts, long held beliefs, and how we can challenge them.

The inner critic and what we say to ourselves, those words. A lot of the work that I do happens to take place in our minds. However, our emotions are intricately connected. To our thoughts and our emotions will show up, not just in our mind, but in our whole body.

That's what happened to me the day that I did my TEDx talk. In fact, I wasn't even feeling the traditional way of feeling nervous, but my body kept the score. [00:03:00] My body was holding the nerves for me.

What happened to me that morning wasn't just in my head. What I experienced was a somatic symptom. Somatic symptoms are physical experiences like pain, fatigue, headaches, stomach issues. They don't always have a clear medical explanation. And let me be clear, they're not imaginary, they're real. Your body is experiencing them.

The mind and body are deeply connected. When they're stressed, anxious, or carrying unresolved trauma, our bodies often pick up the tab. Sometimes it looks like tension in your shoulders or neck. Sometimes it's an upset stomach or heart palpitations, and sometimes like me, it's sudden unexplained pain. That only makes sense when you connect it back to what's going on emotionally.

This isn't just a woowoo idea. There's research to back it up. One of the biggest studies you might have heard of is the ACE study. Ace is an acronym, a CE, that stands for Adverse Childhood [00:04:00] Experiences. This research found that the more childhood trauma someone has, the more likely they are to experience chronic health problems as an adult.

Things like heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and chronic pain. Other studies show how stress affects our immune system. Chronic stress releases cortisol. When your body is bathed in cortisol for too long, like when you are experienced chronic stress, it leads to inflammation and a breakdown of how your body heals and regulates itself.

There's even a recognized diagnosis in the DSM five, which is the guide that we use as mental health professionals to diagnose. Our clients, this diagnosis is called Somatic symptom Disorder, and that's how seriously the mental health and medical fields take this mind, body connection. So when we say stress is making me sick, it's not just a figure of speech, it's often literally true.

So

this might show up to you as experiencing migraines or tension headaches. While it's often [00:05:00] linked to prolonged stress or unresolved grief, maybe you're experiencing digestive issues like IBS or IBD. This can be sometimes triggered by anxiety, shoulder and back Pain commonly tied to carrying burdens.

It's like you're carrying the world on your shoulders and you're literally feeling the pain from it. Chronic fatigue is often linked to burnout. And emotional overload. Now, of course not. all illness is emotional, but it's worth noticing the patterns in your own life.

Now there's some great books about this. The Body Keeps a Score, which I just mentioned a little bit ago. This is by Bessel VanDerKolk, and this is my top recommendation. It explains how trauma impacts the brain, mind, and body. I will link to that in the show notes of today's session. There's also Your Body on Trauma by Meg Bauman and Waking The Tiger by Peter Levine.

My therapist has a book and I can't think of what it's called right now. I actually looked into buying it, but if I figure out what it is, I'll actually text her and find out what the name of it [00:06:00] is and put it in the show notes of today's episode. But she's got like this key chain. Thing that, when I say key chain, it's like huge, but it's connected by a key chain. So that's on a key chain. what I'm gonna call it. But in it, it was amazing to look at because I was looking up all kinds of different symptoms. I have hypothyroidism. So I was looking up thyroid issues. I was looking up obesity. I was looking at pancreatic cancer. I was looking at, just all different things and how there's an underlying emotional trauma that is linked to that physical ailment or illness or pain For example, overweight or obesity is tied to your body, basically stuffing down your emotions. Like not being able to express your emotions in a healthy way can be an underlying contributor to your body holding onto weight.

It's just super interesting to me.

But I'm wondering what patterns are showing up in your own life. Like for example, do your headaches flare up during weeks that are extra [00:07:00] stressful, or does your stomach act up before a big meeting or after a conflict with a spouse? Just noticing what could be happening in your life when you start feeling physical.

Symptoms. Here's why it happens, because the body stores what the mind avoids. When we push down our emotions, our bodies often hold onto them. Trauma researchers like Bessel, VanDerKolk, explains how trauma can get stuck in our nervous systems. Our fight, flight freeze responses can get activated, but if we don't resolve or process those emotions, the body keeps reacting as if we're still in danger.

Over time, this dysregulation shows up as pain, illness, or chronic stress in the body. In other words, the body speaks when the heart holds too much. can we do with this first? Become aware. Pay attention to the connection between your symptoms and your emotional state. Start journaling when pain shows up and what's happening [00:08:00] in your life at that time.

Second, support your body. Gentle practices like yoga, stretching, deep breathing, or simply placing your hand on your heart and taking a pause. Can help regulate your nervous system. Third, get help. Therapy, especially trauma informed or somatic based therapies, can make a huge difference. Working with a counselor can help you release what your body has been holding, and finally, show yourself compassion instead of getting frustrated with your body.

Ask, what message are you trying to send me? Remember, it's not about ignoring medical care. You should always get checked out. But alongside that, be curious about the emotional or psychological roots too. So here's the big takeaway. Your body is not betraying you. It's communicating with you. You need to get curious as to what it is telling you.

For me, that shoulder pain, the morning of my TEDx talk was my body's way of carrying all the fear, all the pressure, and all the [00:09:00] stress

that I hadn't given voice to, and the instant that moment passed, my body released it. Maybe your body has been trying to speak to you too. Through headaches, fatigue, or pain that comes and goes with the stress of life instead of ignoring it, try listening. Your body is wise. It holds stories that your mind hasn't told yet.

And when we start to pay attention, we can begin to heal, not just physically, but emotionally too. If this episode resonated with you, I would love it if you could take a moment to leave a review on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify reviews, help this show reach more moms who might be struggling with overwhelmed stress or feeling like they've lost themselves.

So please pause for just a second. Click those stars, and if you can write a short sentence or two about what you've gotten from listening, your words could be exactly what another mom needs. To find this podcast

and thank you so much for listening to this episode of Moms With Without Capes Remember, [00:10:00] you are 100% responsible for your own life and for creating the joy that you wanna feel. Stop living on autopilot. Slow down. Check in with yourself and please, above all, take care of yourself because you, my friend, are worth it.