My wife was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia and the doctor explained it exactly this way. It literally just means "nerve pain". There were no markers for r

My wife was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia and the doctor explained it exactly this way. It literally just means "nerve pain". There were no markers for rheumatoid arthritis so they just give it a label that is essentially just a placeholder. They can only treat symptoms anyway so it doesn't matter. I've got narcolepsy which was identified decades ago, but the mechanism was only isolated about 20 years ago and there's no direct treatment. Only ways to reduce symptoms. My condition definitely originates in the brain and can be treated with the same kind of CNS stimulants they give to people with depression or ADHD. So declaring a condition to be "in your head" isn't really synonymous with it being imaginary. For narcolepsy, most patients have a very explicit emotional trigger for symptoms. Emotions trigger neurotransmitters and neurotransmitter failure is the specific mechanism for causing the syndrome. So you can say it is most assuredly "psychosomatic" without that connotating it being some kind of emotional weakness. Your brain is part of your body. It controls thought, perception (including pain), emotion and literally every physical process beyond basic reflexes. Malfunctions in your brain can do all sorts of unpredictable things.