How Negative Emotions Turn Into Pain

Different feelings can lead to different strains on our body

Sitting on our bottoms—at work, at school, at home, in a car, in a chair, on a sofa, in front of the television—has recently been linked to all kinds of health problems. Lisa-S/Shutterstock

You’ve heard the expressions “pain in the neck” or “pain in the butt” and assumed that they’re just figures of speech to describe a person or a situation that’s unpleasant. However, I know firsthand that stress, trauma, and emotional issues can morph into a pain in your neck, in your butt, and many other places in your body.

Here’s how it happens: When you get frustrated or overwhelmed, your muscles tense up, and after a while, the layers of those tight muscles begin to “stick” to the layers of muscle above and below them. Those adhesions are called knots, which you can feel as a lump in your muscle below the surface of the skin. They can be painful, tight, and often tough to get rid of.