The knees in both adults and children are a rather vulnerable spot. Both babies and the elderly often complain of knee pain, it is the knee that is injured more often than other parts of the lower limbs. However, knee problems are not always directly related to traumatic exposure or age.
We will discuss in this article what psychosomatic causes can lead to diseases of the knee joint and its injuries.
Knee from a medical perspective
To understand why knees hurt, why they swell or are often injured, you need to have a good idea of how the knee joint works. This joint is one of the largest in the body and belongs to the category of complex joints. It connects the femur and tibia as well as the patella (calyx). Without a knee joint, the lower limbs of a person would not be able to absorb when running and walking: a person, although he could stand, would be severely limited in movement.
Diseases of the knee joint are different, but they are all united by a common symptomatic picture: pain appears, the knees "click", a characteristic crunch is heard when walking, there is limited movement, and swelling of the knee may develop.
The most common ailments of the knees are inflammatory, which include arthritis, bursitis. Dystrophic changes, such as arthrosis, osteoarthritis, tendopathy, are not the last in medical statistics. Various disorders in the work of the joint can also develop, which will be the result of injuries received: bruises, fractures, dislocations, etc. Such disorders are called post-traumatic.
Traditionally, in medicine, the causes of problems with the knee joint are considered excessive physical activity, as well as injuries. By the way, the vast majority of knee injuries are sports. Dystrophic changes and inflammation are caused by a sedentary lifestyle, overweight, obesity... Often the knees “fail” due to the presence of diseases of the spine or feet, in which the distribution of the load changes, and excessive pressure is exerted on the knee joint.
Often, doctors say that knees also hurt because of muscle and vascular spasm. Psychosomatic pain is not excluded.
Psychosomatic causes
Knees, from the point of view of psychosomatics (a section of medical science that studies the psychological and mental components of human diseases), give us the opportunity not only to stand, but also to move forward. This means that thanks to the joint, a person gets the opportunity to move towards his future, into tomorrow.
If pains appear in the knee or just below the knees, this in a general sense can be interpreted as some kind of internal obstacles that prevent a person from moving forward in his life.
An obstacle can be considered some destructive thoughts, attitudes that affect the state of the nervous system. Example: a person wants to change jobs. And now, finally, an excellent option comes up, but attitudes like "New is always scary" or "Better a tit in the hands than a pie in the sky" begin to sow doubt in him - is it worth giving up what already exists for the sake of what is not yet and not the fact that it will be beneficial.
Doubts gradually turn into an internal conflict, in which one part of a person's subconscious shouts to him that it is time to move forward, change his life, and the conscious part of his mind stubbornly repeats that "it is better to have a bird in his hands." You need to move, but there is a prohibition. Nerve impulses from the cerebral cortex come with distortions, problems with the knees appear.
The stronger the contradictions inside, the more pronounced the symptoms: pain, swelling of the knee, limited movement. If nothing is changed at this stage, the tone of the muscles and blood vessels of the lower extremities increases, which increases the tension of the joint ligaments. As a result, a person runs the risk of injury - from injury to rupture of ligaments.
The easiest way to notice the pattern is in sports injuries, which, according to the Ministry of Health, are predominant.
The athlete gets stuck on one plateau. He achieved something, but you can strive for something else. And the goal is visible - it can be a higher level competition or a need to leave the sport and do something else. But fear of losing what you already have does not allow you to take a decisive step forward... As a result, an experienced athlete, who has done a certain exercise a hundred times and knows how and what to do, has a knee injury literally out of the blue.
One more a common reason is the forced need to go somewhere where a person does not want to go at all... For example, you don’t want to go to an unloved job, but you must, you don’t want to go on a business trip, and that is required by the situation or your boss.
In this case subconsciously, a program is launched that creates the most comfortable conditions for a person to exist... She regards his unwillingness to move somewhere or in some direction as an order - as a result, she creates changes that will not allow him to move, that is, save him from unwanted consequences. The knee starts to hurt, the person is injured.
Often, such "little things" of the subconscious at the physical level cause quite specific changes that can be recorded and determined in the laboratory. In the case of the knees, not only the tone of the ligaments and muscles increases, the blood supply deteriorates, but the intensity of the production of articular fluid also changes at the hormonal level, due to the lack of which the work of the knee joint is disrupted, its fragility increases, it wears out faster.
Doctor-psychotherapist Valery Sinelnikov claims that joint problems, and in particular with knees, means that a person is activating their aggressive feelings, such as anger, anger, irritation.
If you do not release them, do not direct them into a constructive channel, as they accumulate, they will necessarily "be deposited" inside the joints.
Diseases - root causes
Arthritis is an inflammatory process in the knee joint. Psychosomatics claims that it can arise exclusively against the background of aggressive experiences. If a person simply does not want to go to hateful work, but endures it with a feeling of doom, without anger, submissively, then inflammation will never develop.
There will be other problems associated with swelling, “clicks”, but there will be no talk of arthritis with its acute and aggressive pain.
Only when the need to move forward or the fear of moving forward and the future causes anger, irritation, anger, a truly painful inflammatory process develops, which, in addition to restricting movements, will also cause a rise in temperature and a general deterioration in the condition.
Degenerative changes, such as arthrosis of the joint, are usually characteristic of the elderly, as well as the categories described above "submissive and meek", dissatisfied with the chosen or imposed path.
There is no anger in them, there is only hopelessness (lack of faith that there is anything ahead that will make them happy). An old man with arthrosis of the knee joints will rarely say that he is expecting good, usually when asked about the future, such a patient says that "he has everything in the past, and there is only a cemetery ahead." Something like this is argued and said by both quite young people and middle-aged people who humbly move with the flow, do not like their job and do not see goals. In fact, they also creep smoothly towards the cemetery. With crumbling knees.
Researcher Liz Burbo claimed that the curvature of the knees in itself indicates that a person suffers from insufficient personal directness and sincerity, cannot go to the goal.
Long-term observations of psychoanalysts over a group of people with destructive changes in the structure of the knee joints showed that the right knee usually bothers those who have negative attitudes towards work and men (in relation to women with arthrosis), and the left knee more symbolizes the world around; to look for the cause of the obstacles in movement that have arisen in front of a person should not even be in him, but in how relatives interact with him, to which they are persuaded and forced against his will.
Often in men who live with authoritarian women and are forced to obey them, do not what they themselves consider necessary, but what is important for the wife, it is the left knee that begins to collapse.
Inflammatory disease bursitis very often develops due to stubbornness and aggressive pride, unwillingness to "kneel", "bow" before someone's point of view or achievements, blind confidence in the exclusive rightness.
It is the inflexibility, unwillingness to change the direction of one's path according to the situation that the main cause of knee problems is called by the researcher in the field of psychosomatics Louise Hay.
The psychological portrait of a person with knee diseases, indeed, quite often corresponds to this description. He may be quite modern and adequate, but internally he will deny the new, the non-standard, clinging to old beliefs, and in his convictions he will be persistent before aggression.
Gout is a disease of power-hungry... Many kings of medieval Europe, as well as rulers of the times of the USSR, suffered from gout, which is described as historical facts that cannot be doubted.
The available power becomes small, you want even more, but there is nowhere else to go, and therefore an internal conflict arises that incapacitates the joints responsible for moving forward, flexibility.
In children
Arthritis and arthrosis, polyarthritis in children are not so common. They are usually called juvenile and in most cases lead to disability. But it is not this that makes one think, but why children who do not want power yet, are not forced to go to an unloved job, generally develop such pathologies.
Physicians cannot clearly explain the causes of the same juvenile arthritis, and therefore most often consider hereditary factors, infectious and idiopathic (unidentified) causes as the cause.
In childhood, everyone is led. Everyone is being led somewhere. To the section, clinic, school. You don't always want to go there. And some parents persistently make children out of those whom they did not become themselves: Olympic champions, great maestros.
At the same time, the opinion of the child is not particularly interested in adults. Negativeness gradually accumulates, and according to a mechanism similar to adults, by the age of 14–16 the stage of aggressive expression of one's protest begins. Official statistics say that it is by this age that knee arthritis in children is detected, previously they are often asymptomatic.
Treatment of an adult and a child should be based not only on medications, but also on finding out the reasons at the level of psychology... In this case, tables are ineffective. Need advice from a psychologist or psychotherapist.
