Chronic pelvic pain can, and often does, have an emotional cause at the root.  

The pelvis is a part of the body that tends to hold emotion, creating tension and nervous system activation that can cause and perpetuate vulvodynia and other types of chronic pelvic pain.

If you’re suffering with pelvic pain, you may already be aware of the connection between mental and emotional stress and your symptoms. 

Most of us have experienced this connection in one way or another, whether through tension headaches or digestive issues, or just increased tension in the places we tend to carry it (neck, shoulders, low back, pelvis, etc). 

There is a very real physiological connection between your thoughts, emotions and the muscles, nerves and fascia in your body – especially your pelvic floor. 

Understanding this connection is an important step to finding lasting relief.

The connection between emotions and pelvic pain

Emotions are energy that is meant to move through our body in response to events in our lives. 

When they are flowing, our emotions not only help us move through our lives with more ease, but also give us access to our intuition and contribute to our health and wellbeing – and they don’t create physical stress, tension or chronic pain.  

For example, can you remember a time when you were sad, allowed yourself to cry, and then felt better afterwards? Instead of drained or depressed you may have felt more free, like the tears helped you release something you needed to let go of. If so, you experienced the benefits of healthy emotional flow.

Problems arise when our emotions get stuck, held, or suppressed

We can develop habits of protection and guarding around our emotions that inhibit their healthy flow. This can be due to trauma or early experiences during which our emotions were not welcome or experienced as unsafe.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture that teaches us to disconnect from our body and suppress our emotions. 

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

• Don’t be so difficult
• You’re too emotional
• You’re too much
• Why can’t you just be happy?

Our brain learns that our emotions are not okay, or that they can be a threat to our wellbeing, safety, or acceptance, and our brain and body start to habitually block or suppress our healthy emotional flow. 

Emotional suppression is a protective response

Emotional suppression can help us survive trauma, or even succeed in certain situations or times in our lives, but over years it becomes very hard on our body. 

Here are the primary ways the brain and body can habitually suppress emotional energy:

1. 1. Muscle contraction: We unconsciously and chronically tense and contract the deeper muscles in our body. This can happen anywhere in the body (jaw, back, pelvic floor, etc). Women with pelvic pain can have habitual patterns of guarding and protecting around emotions in their pelvis and pelvic floor.
   2. Holding your breath: Similar to contracted muscles, shallow breathing or holding the breath, inhibits the flow of emotional energy in your body. If you have a hard time taking a full deep breath, or breathing into your pelvis, this can be why.
   3. Distraction: We keep ourselves distracted from our body and emotions with activities like spending hours on the internet, binge watching Netflix, overeating, obsessing about our to do lists, etc… all things that can increase tension and stress in our body.

These mechanisms are largely unconscious. We’re not aware of the emotions themselves, nor that we are suppressing them, until we bring our conscious attention to our body and begin to observe what’s going on.

Patterns of suppressing emotions in our body can exist for most of our lives without causing any big problems, until something like an injury, birth or significant loss, can be a trigger that sets off chronic pain.

Another important thing to note is that once pelvic pain begins, even if the initial underlying cause wasn’t emotional, the stress and emotion around having chronic pelvic pain and the impact that it can have on our nervous system, brain, and pain pathways, can perpetuate the pain or make it more difficult to relieve.

In other words, the emotional component of pelvic pain is important to address whether the initial cause is physical or emotional.

Are your emotions impacting your symptoms?

One way to determine if there is a connection between your emotions and your pelvic pain symptoms, is to start noticing what happens with your pelvic floor or with your symptoms when you feel stressed, anxious, angry or afraid.

Do your pelvic floor muscles tense when you’re in a stressful situation – or when you feel overwhelmed, angry, sad, or fearful? If so, it’s a good indication that your emotions are impacting your pelvic pain and that addressing these emotional patterns can help to relieve it.

If you can’t tell if your pelvic floor muscles are contracting or not, because you can’t feel them, that’s also an indication that there may be an emotional root to your pain.

When your emotions are impacting your pelvic floor and nervous system, lasting relief can only come when you learn how to welcome and process emotions in your body in healthy ways. This isn’t necessarily about expressing emotions, or figuring out which emotions may be stuck or why, it’s simply about learning how to feel and be with emotions in your body now. 

It’s a process of retraining your brain that emotions are safe to feel. 

The good news is that it is very doable!

How mind body healing can help you overcome pelvic pain

A mind body approach to pain relief that incorporates tools and practices to build emotional awareness and help you welcome and create safety around emotional sensations in your body is a very effective way to release tension, regulate your nervous system, and relieve all kinds of pelvic pain.

Start by paying closer attention to your body and emotions.

Which of your muscles regularly feel tense? Which ones feel relaxed? What happens in your body, and your pelvic floor when you’re under stress or feeling emotional?

What was going on emotionally in your life before your symptoms began? What is going on emotionally for you now? 

Understanding the connection between your emotions and your symptoms is key to finding lasting relief. 

Want to learn more about how to heal pelvic pain using a mind body approach?

Click here to register for my free master class Say Goodbye to Pelvic Pain.

Lorraine Faehndrich, NBC-HWC is a pelvic pain recovery coach with 13+ years of experience helping women relieve pelvic and sexual pain using a mind body approach. Her coaching and programs have helped hundreds of women find lasting relief from vulvodynia, vaginismus, interstitial cystitis, pudendal neuralgia, painful sex and other pelvic and sexual pain.