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Chronic Illness Trauma Studies

How Adversity Shapes Health & Why It's Not In Your Head

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Welcome to Chronic Illness Trauma Studies (CITS): A Blog

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Welcome. This is a good place to start to learn more about Chronic Illness Trauma Studies (CITS), my blog.

This is where I share the research that explains how subtle or serious adversity or trauma increase risk for disease and why it’s not in your head. I also share the tools this perspective offers you that  your doctor may now know about.

CITS is also where I describe how I’m gradually healing from my own disabling chronic illness using these trauma perspectives. I talk about what works, and why.

I left my career as a family practice physician and assistant professor 20 years ago because I felt I was causing harm. I didn’t have the time or the support to listen as deeply to my patients as I wanted to and I believed that symptoms reflected something intelligent our bodies were trying to tell us.

I’ve found a better way.

Let’s Improve Health – and Health Care

My passion is to share the research I never knew in my medical career with others, including health care professionals.

I want people with chronic illness to know about the research explaining how symptoms and disease may not be as incurable as we’ve thought. That the science is discovering it’s about more than the genes we inherit and cannot change.

I want you to realize there are helpful tools that can make a difference. That you don’t have to wait until medicine figures it out or catches up with the science.

I want you to know it’s not you fault, not because you are weak, and not because you are “wanting attention.”

I want to stop the blame and the judgement and the trauma that medical care often causes.

I also want to help inform medicine and medical schools. My long term vision is for people with symptoms and their clinicians to work together to find better solutions, as a team.

We need to incorporate the new science in training for all health care professionals, and to incorporate it in education for everyone at all ages. This is how we can start to prevent and decrease the suffering.

California is proposing exactly this.

I present the research in a variety of ways:

  • blog posts including summaries of the science
  • my personal story
  • fact sheets
  • patient guides
  • more than 25 free ebooks
  • interviews and podcasts
  • videos
  • 2 published journal articles and a book chapter
  • events such as talks and conferences and my bio
  • and more

 

Welcome

My illness has unexpectedly been one of my greatest teachers and gifts. Many of the lessons have come from learning how to listen to, befriend, and trust my body.

May the information here help you make friends with your body and illness too, and better hear the clues that can guide you in your process of healing.

And may it provide you with hope, show you that you are not alone, and offer you validation, respect, compassion and helpful insights for your journey.

To learn more bout Chronic Illness Trauma Studies and get an overview of the content, start with my top posts or follow one of the links below:

Summary of the Science

My Story

Adverse Babyhood Experiences

Adverse Childhood Experiences +

Adverse Multigenerational Experiences

Adverse Pre-Onset Experiences (that can trigger onset)

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About Me

Hello! I'm Veronique Mead. On my blog I look at how chronic illness may be a natural response to one or more overwhelming experiences of threat. While this includes infections and toxins, I specialize in the role of psychological and physical trauma. Because the research - still overlooked and underestimated by medicine - has knocked my socks off.

 

Symptoms, it is turning out, may not be caused by mistakes our bodies are making but because our nervous systems have gotten stuck in states of fight, flight or freeze. Our bodies are our best friends and risk everything to help us survive. We are designed to recover or at least begin to heal from the effects of those survival strategies. I never knew any of this as a family physician or assistant professor. And it’s not in your head.

 

I've been testing these ideas with my own disabling disease for the past 20 years (I am much improved and get a little better every year). I share the research, challenges, why some things that seem so logical do not work for everyone (or make things worse), as well as my favorite 11 tools. This is so you can explore what might help you stabilize, improve or possibly even begin to reverse underlying drivers of your chronic illness too. For an overview with links to my most important posts, start here.

Awarded Top 100 Chronic Illness Blogs

#WEGO Patient Leader 2019 Finalist

#WEGOHealthAwards 2019 Patient Leader Finalist for Best in Show Blog Chronic Illness Trauma Studies Veronique Mead MD, MA

I and we - it feels so much like a WE - were among 6000 nominees for 15 categories of patient leader awards and one of 5 finalists for Best in Show Blog at the #WEGOHealthAwards. Learn more here.

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