So many diseases — now recognized as real, physical illnesses — used to be thought of as “all in your head.” Migraines. Epilepsy. Even tuberculosis!
During my Great Headache Crisis, a lot of people suggested my pain was “psychosomatic.” It made me feel very offended. Even the psychologist in charge of the Cleveland Clinic IMATCH program suggested that during my eval — which made me hate him, and refer to him as “that asshole psychologist who thinks it’s all my head” until I actually went through the IMATCH program and discovered he’s actually a very nice person and very competent.
I know some things like headaches can have psychological causes. I don’t know how to bring that up without offending the patient. I actually got back into counseling during the GHC, just in case my continuous headache WAS stress-related. The counseling helped with my depression, autism, etc., but didn’t help my headache one bit.

Thank you for sharing this post.  I suffer from chronic low back pain and have arthritis in my upper back.  I sometimes feel as if I have Fibro as well because other joints in my body start hurting from time to time.