Evaluation Of Adult Psychosomatic Fibromyalgia Caused By Early Childhood Traumas With Relational Therapies Combined With Emdr

Serife Can / Psychological Counselor Psychotherapy Institute, Istanbul, Turkey pdserifecan@gmail.com

Each of us is born with a biological attachment system from birth, and this system allows us to connect with other people around us throughout life. Emotionally or physically when we feel threatened, we become anxious, upset, and the dynamics of our attachment system are activated. Our primary and innate strategy is to establish intimacy with our attachment figures. This way, we feel more secure. In childhood traumas where emotional support is not suffi- cient, our body can keep records and somatize them in future periods. During the First World War, functional disor- ders of soldiers which were unresponsive to medical treatments but relieved by mental treatments were frequently observed. Unspeakable mental processes and emotions are expressed in bodily expressions. Since they cannot be symbolized, they are flu and do not have a clear meaning. In this context, exposure to early childhood traumas may result some psychosomatic disorders even after years. “Fibromyalgia” is one of these disorders. When fibromyalgia patients experience that they have been understood in the intersubjective field of relational therapies and change their current irrational-negative cognition with EMDR, improvement in their existing somatization can be observed. In therapy, the client’s experience in the ‘avoidance-confrontation-desensitization’ phases are proportional to the se- verity of the trauma and somatization. Lacan says; “Transference’ is essentially just an act of speech. When a person starts talking to the other, transference occurs in the symbolic order.” In the relational process of the therapist with the client, as Lacan said, development of new neuroplasticity with communication experience.could be considered. Psychotherapy paves the way for the counselor to delve deeper into the individual psyche. At the same time, it also provides the opportunity to deal with interpersonal and intergenerational relations in a different way.

In this study, in the view of the literature the transformation and progress of individuals who have psychosomatiza- tion and fibromyalgia in adult age with the relational therapy and EMDR is discussed

Keywords: Psychosomatization, EMDR, fibromyalgia, bodily expressions, relational therapy