Yeah I totally agree that the physical symptoms are important, and feed back into the emotional reaction to create a virtuous cycle that's very very hard to bre

Yeah I totally agree that the physical symptoms are important, and feed back into the emotional reaction to create a virtuous cycle that's very very hard to break. And I don't believe the physical symptoms should go untreated; throughout my illness I've put a lot of work into alleviating physical symptoms, and continue to do so. Indeed, I'm well aware the whole concept of "primary cause" in such a complex system as the human organism is very fuzzy. But my experience is this: for the first few years of being ill, I focused purely on physical symptoms and undertook physical treatments; I experienced some level of improvement, but it was never profound or sustained. Since finding a treatment that focuses on underlying emotional issues, and persisting with it over a couple of years, the improvement has been profound and sustained. And having developed a deep understanding of the way emotional traumas can lead to physical symptoms, it now makes complete sense to me that the trauma came first, and physical stuff happened as a consequence, so to completely reverse the illness, the original trauma needs to be completely healed. From talking to others with similar illnesses, a significant level of early life trauma seems to be a consistent factor.