In this book we will discuss many symptoms. Most of these will be related to a specific disease. For example, the child has abdominal pain, vomiting, loss of appetite and constipation. Tummy is tender to the touch, and probably the muscles are in a rigid spasm. Cause and effect. An inflamed diseased organ has produced symptoms which lead to a correct diagnosis and treatment. Acute appendicitis. Surgery. A satisfactory cure.
But take another case. The child has abdominal pains. Probably vomiting, a mild fever, feeling off-colour and looks pale and ill. Stops playing with friends, lies down, and looks and feels unhappy. This happened last month, and investigation revealed that there had been a mild altercation with a playmate over the bat and ball. This time, it was an argument about whose turn it was next. After an hour’s rest, the pains have vanished, the patient has miraculously recovered and is back playing with friends as well as enemies.
In this case, there is no organic cause for the child’s symptoms. But the symptoms are certainly there. The pain is just as real as it is for the little fellow with appendicitis. But the cause is different. Emotional stress and mental tension have somehow reverberated via the child’s mental system to produce very real, organic-type symptoms.
Enormous numbers of symptoms occurring during infancy and childhood are caused by emotional stress. Often the parents are unaware of this, and frequently it has the doctor puzzled also. The symptoms not only relate to abdominal pains (which are enormously common) but to aches and pains elsewhere, as well as many other common symptoms.
Investigators believe that with abdominal and limb pains, fewer than five cases in a hundred have an organic cause. Recurring headaches are similar. Doctors often refer to these as psychosomatic symptoms.
Everybody is born with a brain that has two parts. The smaller part (probably only 20 per cent of the brain) is the so-called conscious part which operates when the person is awake. This is the area that knowingly controls the person’s actions.
The larger part (probably encompassing 80 per cent, or maybe more) is the subconscious brain. This works tirelessly, morning, noon and night, whether the person is asleep or awake. It is often called the body’s in-built computer. Into this is channelled, right from birth, information picked up by all the body’s senses: hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, warmth, sense of pressure, as well as emotional senses. All this is stored in the brain’s memory cells, and much of it will remain there indefinitely. Although much will not be consciously remembered, the storehouse of data builds up, and gradually this forms the bank of information that is often referred to as experience.
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