Persistent symptoms are not random; they’re often the body’s way of keeping unfinished stories alive.
In The Tree of Symptoms, psychiatrist Emil Šabanović guides readers through the landscape of psychosomatic medicine with the precision of a clinician and the clarity of a storyteller.
Through real-world cases and simple metaphors, he reveals how body, biography, and biology form one living system, and how understanding that system changes the way we treat, teach, and live.
Persistent symptoms are not random; they’re often the body’s way of keeping unfinished stories alive.
In The Tree of Symptoms, psychiatrist Emil Šabanović guides readers through the landscape of psychosomatic medicine with the precision of a clinician and the clarity of a storyteller.
Through real-world cases and simple metaphors, he reveals how body, biography, and biology form one living system, and how understanding that system changes the way we treat, teach, and live.
Picture this: you’re walking in the forest… the air is calm, the path quiet… Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bear charges toward you. In that instant, survival mode takes over and stress hormones surge through your system. Your autonomic nervous system pushes every cell into high alert. There is no space for emotions; you don’t stay there feeling fear in that moment. There is also no room for thought; you don’t analyze. You won’t think: Wow, this bear is so fast, and it has big claws. You just run. When the danger passes, your body begins to settle. First come the physical aftershocks: trembling hands, weak legs, a pounding heart. Then emotions surface: the fear you didn’t feel while running, or the relief of having escaped. Finally, the rational mind returns. Now you can reflect: that was dangerous; maybe I’ll take another path next time. But what happens if you’re running from a bear for five years? Or ten? Or your whole life? The body and brain adjust to constant threat, until increased alertness becomes the new normal. Feelings grow dull or blocked. Thought narrows into short-term coping and the prefrontal cortex yields to limbic control, leaving little space for creativity, planning, or reflection. A lot of people live like this. Over time, the body itself starts to reshape around survival. Stress hormones keep circulating, slowly wearing down organs and tissues. The balance between activation and recovery skews toward constant alert. Muscles tighten, sleep shortens, digestion falters. The inner alarm stays on too long, reacting to small signals as if they were danger itself. Even gene expression can shift under this pressure, leaving traces of long stress in our cells. And the same forces that keep us alive can, over years, hasten our aging. Human bonds also write themselves into our physiology. Safe relationships calm the inner alarm and teach the body how to settle. But isolation, conflict, or unsafe homes can keep the system on edge just as surely as a predator would. Early experiences of instability or overwhelming stress don’t just influence the mind; they sculpt the body’s patterns of protection for years to come. Yet the same biology that encodes suffering can also encode healing. Safety, connection, and new experiences of regulation give the nervous system the chance to reset. The body can learn balance again. The path ahead leads through that same forest, this time at a calmer pace.
Title: THE TREE OF SYMPTOMS
By: Emil Šabanović
Publisher: Independently Published
Published Date: November 13, 2025
ASIN: B0G26FCD34
Page Count: 145
Triggers:
Chronic illness and unexplained symptoms, medical gaslighting by implication, trauma and early stress, talk of anxiety and depression, references to transgenerational trauma, body focused distress, subtle burnout vibes for clinicians.
Star Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
What Did I Just Walk Into?
A psychiatrist looked at the usual medical shrug of your tests are normal and decided absolutely not. Instead of blaming patients for being mysterious and difficult, he built a metaphorical tree to explain how symptoms hang out in the leaves while the real mess lives in the roots. Then he turned that into a book that feels like getting a masterclass and a kind clinic visit at the same time. This is psychosomatic medicine written for humans who do not want to read a dry manual but also do not want glittery wellness nonsense.
Here’s What Slapped:
The central tree metaphor is annoyingly effective. Leaves as symptoms, trunk as development and behavior, roots as biology and history, soil as generational influences. It sounds simple, then you realize it quietly rearranged how you think about your own body.
Mr. Šabanović has that rare clinician voice that can handle words like epigenetics, telomeres, autonomic nervous system, and still sound like an actual person you could talk to in a hallway. The science is there, just woven into stories, case composites, and images patients actually understand.
The structure, moving through biology, assessment, psychoeducation, body based work, schema therapy, ISTDP, and complex cases, feels like following a thoughtful guide through a very confusing forest. He keeps pausing to ask your perspective, your practice, which is code for please use your brain and not just memorize buzzwords.
The clinical vignettes manage to be compassionate without turning patients into trauma zoo exhibits. The emphasis on collaboration, curiosity, and flexible methods is a breath of fresh air compared to one true therapy cult thinking.
What Could’ve Been Better:
If you are looking for a step by step protocol you can slap on every patient, this book will annoy you. It meanders on purpose. At times the reflective tone circles back over the same images and ideas, which I liked, but readers who want bullet point hacks may get twitchy. A few more concrete how to scripts for explaining concepts to patients would have been a nice bonus for overworked clinicians.
Perfect for Readers Who Love:
Psychology that respects both data and story, Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, thoughtful psychosomatic work, and books that make you feel slightly called out in a good way.
Reviewed by Robin for Robin’s Review