Chronic Illness Trauma Studies
How Adversity Shapes Health & Why It's Not In Your Head
On my return from time with my parents for my annual summer visit in the early 2000s I finally connected the dots to realize that my unquenchable thirst and dry mouth were not solely from living at 5000 feet in the arid climate near the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Eating desserts and vinegary ...
Understanding the connections between trauma and ME/CFS (myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) has helped me begin to heal and change the direction of my life in the best possible ways. I never realized that I'd experienced adversity until I left medical practice, retrained as a trauma ...
One of my favorite experiences so far this Christmas season was feeling loved for who I am. All because of my soft spot for (yet another) Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. Well, that and my latest thing for flying pigs. A Charlie Brown Christmas Tree Story The day I put up the first Christmas ...
Last summer I focused some more on healing IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and long-standing severe constipation from a trauma perspective. This is an update to the process of following my impulses and using art as an approach to listening, which I first wrote about in October. I'll tell you about ...
In today's installment of my journey with chronic fatigue I want to tell you what I've been learning about the art of listening. Because it turns out to be a much more complicated task than we realize. And because, in unexpected and potent ways, it's what has enabled me to find a pathway to healing. ...
There were a number of ripple effects following the onset of my chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and the accompanying symptoms of back pain and grief (see my CFS story 1). The first was that the discomfort of my symptoms quickly became stronger than my fear of following my heart. And so I started ...
When I explored ways of alleviating my initial symptoms of chronic fatigue, low back pain and grief 20 years ago (see post 1 in my Chronic Fatigue Story series) it lead me to a path I hadn't known existed. In looking back I can see how each new step was a testing of the waters as I looked for ...
My First Symptoms Of Physical Exhaustion The onset of my chronic fatigue was so gradual that I didn't realize what was happening. In the first few years that I experienced the symptoms of physical exhaustion that would later become diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), I went ...
With no improvement in my longstanding symptoms of constipation despite daily walks, almost 2 years on the strictest version of the GAPS diet, stress reduction, mindfulness practices, and more I have started rooting into the role of trauma with greater focus and intention. I see my gut symptoms and ...
