I often say trauma survivors live on the tail ends of the bell curve.
What I mean by that is, trauma survivors are often afflicted with medical and other conditions that are considered “rare.”
It’s very often the case that trauma survivors struggle with medical conditions that are difficult to diagnose, and which many medical doctors don’t have much experience working with.
Survivors with complicated medical conditions often have to travel, often at great expense and inconvenience, to get their medical needs met.
This often mirrors the situation many survivors face with their mental health: they often have to search far and wide, and often travel, to get appropriate mental health care.
Trauma survivors are more likely to struggle with conditions like CPTSD and/or Dissociative Identity Disorder, which many mental health professionals don’t have a lot of experience or expertise with.
On top of complicated medical and mental health issues, trauma survivors are often up against medical and/or mental health systems that are skeptical of the validity or prevalence of those complex conditions.
I wish this weren’t the case, but there are absolutely medial professionals who more or less dismiss certain complicated conditions because of their supposed rarity.
Similarly, there are absolutely mental health professionals who more or less dismiss certain psychiatric diagnoses because they understand them to be extremely rare and improbable.
Complex trauma survivors, however, know that certain conditions aren’t as “rare” as the world supposes them to be— and even if they are comparatively rare, there are still people afflicted with them, who need competent treatment.
In my role as a trauma specialist, I’m often confronted by people who maintains that serious trauma-based conditions like DID are far rarer than social media, for example, would indicate.
My response is always, I can’t tell you how rare DID is or isn’t— all I can tell you is, almost everybody who comes into my office suspecting they have DID, does suffer from a dissociative disorder or another serious trauma-based condition.
Many complex trauma survivors who also struggle with complex medical conditions develop what we call “medical PTSD” as a result of their encounters with the medical system.
Many survivors have the experience of not being believed or taken seriously when it comes to either or both their medical or mental health struggles.
This is so common that I work with multiple people who have had similar experiences literally eery day in my practice.
You are definitely not alone in struggling with complex medical and/or mental health issues— or in the very complexity and “rarity” of those issues being yet ANOTHER traumatic stressor you’re obliged to cope with.
It can be overwhelming. It can be discouraging.
Enduring the long, complex, expensive, and often painful medical treatments that many survivors are subject to in their treatment is no joke. It is a traumatic stressor.
You are not alone if medical professionals have related to you with skepticism and invalidation.
(This has happened to literally the smartest survivors I’ve worked with.)
Continuing on with medical treatments in the face of such skepticism and invalidation can be a tough ask.
Continuing on with mental health treatment when you’ve been met with skepticism or invalidation over conditions such as DID or CPTSD can be a tough ask, too.
I will never deny or minimize how tough it is. And it’s all common enough that I’m writing this blog about it.
I admire the hell out of you for sticking with it.
I know how big an ask it is for you to stick with it.
I wouldn’t ask if if I didn’t genuinely, realistically think your quality of life could measurably improve.
Yeah. Yours.
Breathe; blink; focus.
Use Your Damn Skills 