Your friend tells you that psychosomatic disorders are just imaginary and the person should see a psychologist. Explain why your friend is mistaken regarding the seriousness of psychosomatic disorders, how seeing a psychologist who uses biofeedback may be a good idea, and how this technique has been able to alleviate certain types of psychosomatic disorders

What will be an ideal response?

Answer will include that psychosomatic disorders involve actual physical damage to the body caused by stress, while hypochondriasis is an imaginary illness in which there is no physical damage to the body. Common psychosomatic disorders include: stomach pain, asthma, migraine headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease, sore muscles, insomnia, sexual dysfunctions, and more. For some of these problems biofeedback may be helpful. Psychologists have discovered that people can learn to control bodily activities once thought to be involuntary. This is done by applying informational feedback to bodily control, a process called biofeedback. Biofeedback holds promise as a way to treat some psychosomatic problems. For instance, people have been trained to prevent migraine headaches with biofeedback. Sensors are taped to patients' hands and foreheads. Patients then learn to redirect blood flow away from the head to their extremities. Because migraine headaches involve excessive blood flow to the head, biofeedback helps patients reduce the frequency of their headaches. Biofeedback has proved helpful but not an instant cure. Biofeedback can help relieve muscle-tension headaches and chronic pain and shows promise for lowering blood pressure and controlling heart rhythms. The technique has been used with some success to control epileptic seizures, hyperactivity in children, and insomnia.Some researchers believe that many of its benefits arise from general relaxation. Others stress that there is no magic in biofeedback itself. The method simply acts as a "mirror" to help a person perform tasks involving self-regulation. Just as a mirror does not comb your hair, biofeedback does not do anything by itself. It can, however, help people make desired changes in their behavior.