It's when the emotional pain manifests itself as physical pain. It's the main reason the I sought help when things got really, really bad for me. I had dealt with depression and anxiety for years-although not to the extreme that full-blown PTSD caused. But I had never had any body pain before. 90% of the pain was in my low abdomen (this I believe is related to my initial trauma). It got so bad that my GYN was considering doing a hysterectomy on me. He thought it was a complication of an existing issue.

I now use the pain I still sometimes get as an indication of my stress levels. Different stresses affect different areas of my body. But it has this cumulative thing going. One area starts out hurting and if the stress levels don't go down it moves onto another area, but the first area keeps hurting. It's kind of like my body is saying, 'OK...you're not going to take care of this with the first hint, then I'll just have to give you a bigger hint that you have to deal with whatever is bothering you.'

Lisa