Full Circle Fridays|Week 16: Psychosomatic

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We’ve recently talk about the neurobiological problems caused by and/or worsened by trauma. Today, I’m choosing the sensitive topic of psychosomatic after effects. The word psychosomatic literally means an illness or condition caused by or aggravated by a mental component, such as stress and conflict (and of course trauma). This is talking about the interaction of the mind and body, not just that your mind is “making something up”. These are actual ailments, real pains, true sicknesses, and genuine symptoms that your body is experiencing. This is an unconscious process — not something that people are just imagining or pretending that they are happening to them. This is important to stress because, for way too long, the medical community has dismissed people with “imaginary issues” when no cause can be found, so they send them away and with no relief found. Luckily, modern science is evolving, and, in this instance, that’s a really good thing.

Someone with a psychosomatic illness or disorder can’t find a physical or scientific reason for their condition. That’s because the roots aren’t a germ or bacteria or virus — they are psychological. All the while real — just a different cause. On the more mainstream side of things, we know, for instance, that high stress can cause hypertension. Science has now confirmed that a lifetime of high stress or worry can cause heart related diseases and conditions. We can know that short-term difficulties like the loss of a job, grief, or sleepless nights with a newborn can change moods, eating habits, sleep routines, and add physical symptoms like heart palpitations, headaches, or GI distress. All of these are easy ways to explain psychosomatic issues.

For trauma survivors, most of us will find some sort of physiological condition linked to our trauma. This is nothing to be afraid of or ashamed about. This is just the nature of the human body. It was not built to withstand long-term trauma, ongoing neglect, chronic stress, childhood abuse, etc. One way of studying this further is to take a look at the ACE study and see the jarring results of what developmental trauma’s impact is on a survivor’s long-term health as well as the increased risk for many life-shortening diseases. Indeed, the ACE study found that trauma survivors can experience accelerated biological aging due to shorter telomere length!

Here’s another example of how this may play out. Like we talked about in Basics earlier this year, the normal life functioning things like sleeping, eating, physical activity, social interactions, and hygiene are all basic life needs — but are often found to have areas of deficits in trauma survivors. All of those basic functions of healthy lifestyle are necessary to keep the system up and running as well as possible. So let’s say that a trauma survivor may endure a sleep disorder, improper sleep, or truncated sleep due to night terrors. We know from science that sleep disorders are a huge cause of concern with our body’s circulation, capacity, and output of energy. From there, this survivor may be too tired to exercise and often has headaches from lack of good sleep, so the trauma survivor is now at higher risk for heart complications. If they are always tired, which causes cravings of sugars and high glucose index foods such as complex carbs, they may be struggling with their weight. And we all know how damaging that can be to one’s physical health. All of this is just stemming from night terrors due to trauma which is now disrupting their sleep and then in turn controlling all these other functions of the body. To say that trauma survivors have these psychosomatic conditions is very clear to see, and to see why.

That’s why there is no shame here because the trauma was not your fault; therefore, your somatic responses to the underlying trauma and stress as are also explainable. This is also not the end of the story. In addressing the trauma, processing through it, and finding healing, this could restore a peaceful night sleep to the above trauma survivor and start a reversal on all the other associated problems and health conditions.

These types of episodes are difficult to share because they sound so daunting. However, as you know by now, I believe everyone can find healing. The road to the recovery of your trauma will lead you to improved mental health, which in turn brings you to enhanced physical health by way of stress-reduction therapies, rebuilt relationships, creating healthy boundaries, better life functioning basics, finding time for play and creativity, and a cleaner overall bill of health and wellness. No, trauma recovery will not cure you of all your diseases. However, you may be surprised to find that some of your chronic conditions (some even from childhood) may begin to dissipate and diminish in the light of greater mental health status, finding peace, reconnecting to your body, and healing your inner child. As always, I’d be more than honored to come along for the ride as you seek a new way of life on this healing journey. Please reach out if this episode was helpful for you, tough for you, or if you have any questions.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 7: Gaslight

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You’ve probably heard this buzzword throughout the past decade. Gaslight was a 1944 movie created from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton. If you can stomach the film, the insight into the term we now use as a common verb “gaslighting” will make this concept very clear. At 14 years old, Paula, played by Ingrid Bergman, witnessed her aunt being murdered. After that trauma, she was sent to study opera in Italy. Years later there, she has a two-week love affair with a man who she falls in love with, and they marry and return to London to live in her aunt’s home that she has inherited. In order to help her with her traumatic memories in the home, her husband, Gregory, played by Charles Boyer, tells her to put all the house’s belongings in the attic and seal it up. With a criminal mentality and a desire to take these riches for himself, Gregory later goes into the shut-up attic himself to investigate all the pirate’s booty stored from the wealthy aunt’s estate. While up there, Paula is hearing the sounds in the attic, and the gas lights in the home start to dim as he creeks around up there. When she tells him this, he has to cover his tracks, so he lies and tells her she is imagining the whole thing. This is where we get the phrase “gaslighting”. He told her she must be seeing and hearing things because he didn’t see the gas lights flickering. It’s only the start of the many things that Gregory says to get Paula that have her slowly start thinking she’s gone “mad”.

This. Is. Psychological. Abuse.

There’s a broach she thought she had lost, which he actually stole. He tries to make her feel forgetful, so he moves a picture off the wall and tells her she moved it and that she must have forgotten. He hides a piece of jewelry, and then in front of everyone at a party, she pulls it from her handbag and gets hysterical thinking she stole it. After this meltdown, he decides it’s best for her not to go out in public, which starts an abuser’s favorite tactic: isolation.

This real-life process doesn’t happen in a two-hour movie time frame. This is a slow, manipulation over days, months and sometimes years. An abuser uses gaslighting as a control move to make the victim feel, through their lies, that they are going insane. Without having a trust in their own sanity, the victim begins to not trust themselves to do another else. It turns into a helplessness where now they rely more and more on their abuser because they think the abuser is the only one helping them. This can look similar to Stockholm Syndrome. In the movie, in order to “keep her safe” from herself, Gregory has a plan lined up to get her placed in an institution and take over the legal rights to the estate and her care, which would allow him full say over her life and inherited wealth. So dangerous. All this time, he is straight out lying to her making her think she is the one who has gone crazy. This is brainwashing. These are invisible chains.

When a detective, Inspector Cameron, played by Joseph Cotton, eventually gets involved in Paula’s life, he starts to piece together what is really going on. One scene I love goes like this:

Paula (distraught and hollering about the events): He said I was going out of my mind!!

Inspector: You’re not going out of your mind. You’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.

Well, if that isn’t the truth! What’s the irony here is that it is so upsetting to think you are not mentally well, so when someone makes you feel like that even though you are well, you actually can start to feel confused enough to question the reality of everything. Everything becomes messy and garbled as if you are insane. It’s a terrible abuse that truly can make you mentally unwell even when you weren’t in the beginning.

This is one of the most common types of abuse techniques used. When the gaslighter’s control or abuse is recognized in the early stages of a relationship, the victim may speak out to their abuser. Gaslighting is a response like “trust me, I’m only doing this because I love you”. “Why are you being so sensitive?” “If you were better with spending, I wouldn’t have to do be in charge of the checkbook. I don’t even want to handle the finances, but you can’t do it, so I have to.” They will also straight out lie once they’ve gained trust. They’ll tell you a friend said something horrible about you to them and make you start questioning your outside relationships. Isolation and confusion are always what they are going for.

Any type of relationship can have gaslighting. From a boss, partner, child/parent, even friends. I have had a number of relationships where I have discovered I was being gaslit. A rule of thumb I use now in given situations is: When I’m in a discussion and I start to think “wait, am I going crazy?”, I stop and think “Gaslighting!!” And I end the conversation. Do I really think to myself, “am I going crazy?” Yes. There are people in my life that will twist me in a corner, and I actually have a cognitive thought about the confusion of my actions, words, perception. If they tell me “you didn’t say that”, and I start to wonder, “wait, did I say it or am I going crazy?” If they say “you’re being too sensitive, I didn’t even mean it like that”, my brain whispers “are you too sensitive or are you just going crazy?” It’s the strangest thing, but psychology calls this “crazy making” — something that draws your cognition, emotions, or feelings to start feeling illogical or not able to trust your perception. This makes you start wondering about reality all together. It’s very scary. Once in a while, it may truly be a miscommunication — but if I find myself thinking this over and over with the same person or in the same conversation, it’s time to run!

If you are in a relationship of any kind with someone who is a narcissist, you know this type of gaslighting behavior better than anyone! If you’ve had any type of experience with gaslighting, this is a type of trauma — a psychological abuse. This is not just something to brush off. You may still be struggling with lack of self-trust if you’ve endured gaslighting for any season of your life. This also makes you more susceptible to gaslighting relationships in the future, so it’s common if you’ve encountered multiple gaslighting traps. Maybe you are even still in one right now. Maybe because it’s gone on for so long and you love the person so much, you aren’t even sure if you are in a gaslighting situation, but you are wondering.

With any of this, and more, I’d love to help you discover the truth from the lies your abuser told you, help you rebuild the self-trust bridge inside yourself, and work through any narcissistic healing. Please reach out if you need support in this area. If not to me, to any professional who can help you get a reality check from the outside looking in. Be careful who you choose to talk to about this — because if they are close to and believing your abuser’s side of the story, they may confirm their lies and make you doubt yourself even that much more. On the “Connect” tab of my website, please send me a message if you have questions about this episode’s content.