Chronic Illness Trauma Studies
How Adversity Shapes Health & Why It's Not In Your Head
Over the past year I've followed a number of very subtle, thin-as-air, "whiffy," seemingly over-the-top, yet very clear impulses. Some have come during trauma therapy sessions and some as part of listening to my body in my ongoing process of working with my chronic illness and gradual ...
Right now, with all the painful, difficult stuff streaming into all of my newsfeeds and throughout so many of my social media channels, I need something gentle, compassionate and positive to read. Something that gives me hope and reminds me of all the good in people and in the world. Something that ...
Getting stuck in states of fight, flight, freeze or faint can lead to physiological changes that drive disease. Regaining the ability to come out of survival states is one way that helps us resolve chronic illness. We can experience stuck states of F/F/F/F as high or low blood pressure, high or ...
It's still summer time for just a little while longer and I've been talking and writing a lot about trauma. It's time to play and I want to introduce unexpectedly fun ways to support your social nervous system (also known as "The Vagus"). I've updated this 2016 post with new content and ...
While treating trauma is an important tool for improving our health, following impulses for pleasure is an aspect of trauma therapy that can be used in everyday life. It is a way of working with an overactive nervous system. It's a way of listening so you can heal social nervous system functions and ...
The links between chronic illness and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) come from a set of studies that changed my life. The ACE studies are therefore near and dear to my heart and to my trauma-therapist-medical-doctor-and-gradually-recovering-from-chronic-illness-Self. The ACE studies ...
Even though I was once a family doctor, it wasn't until I developed a chronic illness and started having to make frequent office visits as a patient that I realized I needed an easy-to-read summary of my history to bring to new doctor appointments. This was partly because I didn't remember every ...
The chronic illness resources in this post are about everyday little things that support healing the nervous system and patterns in our physiology that affect symptoms. Without much effort and without us ever quite realizing it. Making time for them is not a frivolous act but one of self love, ...
These somatically based therapies for chronic illness are designed to work with the nervous system and are not about will power, "positive thinking," managing an illness, or healing through life style changes and behavior changes. Many of these things can help, but for many with chronic disease they ...
