What Happens if You Don't Address the Emotional Stress Behind Your Physical Tension?
One of the concepts of chiropractic work is that muscle tension can contribute to the pain of a physical injury, and that tension is often the side effect of emotional or mental stress. Now, the relationship between emotional and mental stress and muscle tension is nothing new. But chiropractic treatment treats the whole series of emotional stress, physical stress, and the pain you feel as a related chain of events. You can try to relieve the pain you feel in different ways, but one of these ways should be to address the emotional or mental stress you feel.
Sometimes it is simple; either you know what's causing the stress and can address it head-on, or the stress is due to the pain you feel from the physical injury you have, and you just have to work on general relaxation. Other times, it's not so simple, and you could be tempted to ignore it. Don't do that because the results of that strategy will not help you, and in fact, they could make things worse.
Physical Injuries Could Feel Worse, or Even Get Worse
If you're under mental or emotional strain, chances are your muscles are tensing up. If the muscles around an injury site tense up, that could make the pain from the injury worse as the muscles pull on the injured area and don't support the area as well. And if you get too tense, you could actually make the injury worse, if the injury is to a muscle to begin with.
New "Injuries" Could Appear
The muscle tension could lead to more pain in more parts of your body. It may appear to you like you have a new injury. However, that pain could simply be your tense muscles pulling on ligaments, or the muscles becoming so tense that they themselves hurt.
Treatments for Your Physical Injuries May Not Be as Effective
One of the points of chiropractic treatment is to release physical tension so that the actual injury has a better chance of recovery. If you don't address what's causing the physical tension, though (meaning, you don't address the emotional and mental causes behind it), the chiropractic treatment and other treatments such as physical therapy, acupuncture, and massage might not be as effective as they could be.
If you're not able to or are not willing to address the emotional or mental issues that may be increasing your physical tension, you should discuss this with your chiropractor. The chiropractor can't help you with the issues, but they may be able to adjust the treatment to counter the additional tension you might experience.
Contact a local chiropractor for more information.
