When the Body Hurts but Tests Say You're Fine
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 21
- 6 min read
Written by Michael Brener, Holistic Health & Life Coach
Michael Brener is a certified Holistic Health and Life Coach, helping individuals activate their self-healing potential through integrative mind-body practices.
When your body signals pain, but medical tests show no abnormalities, it can feel confusing and frustrating. Many people experience symptoms that don't show up on traditional diagnostics, yet their discomfort is very real. Explore how these unexplained symptoms can be connected to deeper emotional or energetic imbalances, and how holistic approaches can offer valuable insights and relief.
Mathew (name changed) was exhausted and frustrated by the time he walked into my coaching room. Two years earlier, he had started fainting without warning. It was happening suddenly to him and sometimes in the middle of daily activities: on a train to work, in front of the TV, during a family dinner, or while waiting in line at the supermarket.
Some episodes left him with minor injuries, others were less dangerous thanks to the quick response of bystanders. Concerned, he turned to his family doctor, who referred him for a variety of tests: MRI scans, blood screen, urine analysis, and eventually a consultation with a neurosurgeon.
None of the results showed anything abnormal. Even the more advanced brain scans requested by the neurologist came back clear.
Over the next two years, Mathew’s life became a relentless cycle of medical appointments. More scans, sleep studies, specialist visits, physiotherapy, and even relaxing massage sessions with calming music in the background. But the fainting continued. No one could explain why.
At one point, a doctor speculated it could be genetic, but no concrete diagnosis or treatment path was offered. Mathew was left with real symptoms and no answers, a story that is far more common than most people think.
When tests say “normal” but the body says otherwise
Looking into the official medical statistics, Mathew is not alone.
Medical research shows that up to 30% of patients in primary care report symptoms that cannot be explained by conventional diagnostic tools like imaging, lab work, or physical examination. In specialist clinics, the number is even higher, with some studies indicating that more than 50% of new patient referrals involve symptoms without a clear medical cause.
These cases are often labeled as “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS), functional disorders, or worse, quietly dismissed as psychosomatic (often with the unfortunate implication that it’s mystical or imagined) or anxiety-driven. Yet for the person experiencing them, the pain, fatigue, fainting, or dysfunction is very real.
But what often goes unnoticed, aside from the emotional toll, is the enormous cost of these diagnostic journeys.
In many countries, including those with public health systems, the constant cycling through tests, specialists, emergency visits, and second opinions creates a significant financial strain on national healthcare budgets. In systems without universal coverage, the burden shifts to the individual. Some patients spend tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket in their desperate search for answers, all while continuing to suffer, still without a clear diagnosis.
Even when the patient is fortunate enough to have financial resources or insurance coverage, the deeper cost remains: lost time, lost trust, and rising hopelessness.
Why so many cases go undiagnosed
There’s a fundamental limitation in how modern healthcare is structured: it’s overwhelmingly focused on identifying and fixing physical dysfunction. Our medical systems are built on the assumption that if something is wrong, it must be visible in a lab result, a scan, or a biomarker. This works exceptionally well for trauma, infections, poisoning, organ failure, and mechanical damage.
But what if the root of the illness doesn’t live in the physical body alone?
What if the symptom is a result of an imbalance between the physical, vital, and mental layers of the person?
Mainstream medicine is still catching up to this understanding. We are not just bodies made of molecules, chemicals, and electrical impulses. We are also emotional, energetic, and conscious beings, and when these aspects fall out of sync, symptoms emerge, even in the absence of any physical abnormality.
In my health coaching practice, I often see clients whose vital body, the energetic interface that regulates flow, vitality, and coherence, is disrupted. Others carry deep emotional wounds, unresolved grief, suppressed anger, or long-standing identity conflicts that eventually crystallize into bodily symptoms. When these deeper imbalances remain unacknowledged, no blood test or scan will ever detect them, and yet, the person continues to suffer.
This doesn’t mean the pain is imaginary. Quite the opposite: the pain is the body’s way of expressing what the voice cannot say.
Although mainstream diagnostics often overlook the vital body, it's important to note that today, scientific instruments like the Bio-Well camera can already offer measurable insights into the body’s energetic field, providing early clues to imbalance long before physical pathology appears.
How holistic work helps translate the body's messages
This is where holistic mind-body work becomes not just helpful, but often essential. Unlike conventional diagnostics that focus solely on physical dysfunction, holistic approaches explore the deeper layers of human experience – the emotional, energetic, and unconscious aspects that may be driving the symptoms. Through guided conversation, somatic awareness, emotional inquiry, and safe interpretation of bodily sensations, a practitioner can help the client "translate" what the body is trying to say. The goal is not to suppress symptoms but to understand them, and in many cases, this understanding alone initiates a shift in the body’s behavior.
The turning point
In our coaching sessions, Mathew and I began a kind of downward investigation, not into lab results, but into the timeline of his life. When exactly did the fainting begin?
We traced it back to a deeply emotional moment: the day he was unexpectedly laid off from his previous job. He recalled receiving the termination letter and feeling, in his own words, that “the whole world had fallen on [his] shoulders.”
His profession required a highly specialized skill set, and the very idea of reskilling and reentering the job market filled him with unbearable fear. Despite all his fears, Mathew decided to move forward. He enrolled in new courses, gained updated certifications, and eventually found a new position, albeit with a lower salary and increased pressure to prove himself again.
From the outside, it looked like a successful recovery. His professional life had been reset. But as we explored together, it became clear that he had never updated his internal systems (his physical, vital, and mental bodies) on the fact that the danger had passed. Subconsciously, the fainting had become a kind of biological reset. His body was doing what he couldn’t articulate: collapsing under the weight of unresolved stress and unacknowledged fear.
When Mathew made that connection during our third session, he described it as “some missing pieces of the puzzle finally being placed back where they belong.” He felt immediate relief, emotional clarity, and a surprising sense of wholeness.
He experienced one more severe fainting episode approximately two weeks after that session, something we had anticipated together, a final discharge of accumulated stress. This is a common pattern in psychosomatic healing. And since then, Mathew reports that the fainting has never returned.
Conclusion: When the body speaks louder than tests
For those who suffer from symptoms that have no medical name, it can feel like drifting in a diagnostic no man’s land, dismissed, misunderstood, or left without options. But as Mathew’s story shows, just because medicine cannot see the cause doesn’t mean the body is wrong.
In fact, the body may be doing exactly what it needs to do: expressing what the conscious mind has not yet been able to feel, speak, or resolve.
Holistic work does not reject science, it expands it to include additional layers of human experience. It listens where machines cannot. It looks not just for malfunction, but for meaning. And in doing so, it often brings relief not by fighting the body, but by helping it finally feel heard.
If you’ve been suffering without a diagnosis, know this: your symptoms are real, your experience is valid, and healing is still possible even if no one has named what you're going through yet.
Read more from Michael Brener
Michael Brener, Holistic Health & Life Coach
Michael Brener is a certified Health and Life Coach specializing in mind-body modalities. With nearly a decade of experience in health coaching and life coaching, Michael helps clients integrate holistic approaches to well-being. Holding a Bachelor of Holistic Health Sciences from Quantum University (HI, USA), Michael is currently pursuing a Master’s and PhD in Natural and Holistic Medicine. Accredited by AADP, IPHM, and ICTA, Michael combines science-based methodologies with deep intuitive work to guide clients toward balance and transformation in their personal life and health.
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