Trauma And Chronic Illness

CPTSD
Written By Rebekah Brown

It’s Not In Your Head

“Doctor, I have chronic pain, fatigue, depression, problems with blood pressure, sleep problems, anxiety, headaches, restless legs and my stomach hurts all the time. What is wrong with me?” 

“We’ll run some tests.”  The tests come back negative. The doctor looks at you. “Have you ever thought about seeing a psychiatrist?” Dismissal of physical symptoms is a familiar experience for survivors of childhood trauma.

It’s not in your head. You haven’t made your symptoms up, and you haven’t caused them. The medical community is woefully under trained when it comes to the connection between illness and childhood trauma. “Memory is not only in the brain, it is also in the cells of the body. Fear triggers more than fourteen hundred known physical and chemical stress reactions and activates more than thirty different hormones and neurotransmitters.” Imagine a constant bath of fear and threat during the formative years of development, then carrying those same fears into adulthood and living life from that perspective. No wonder chronic illness has such a powerful impact on childhood trauma survivors. 

The Impact of STress Hormones

During periods of stress, the hormones, epinephrine and norepinephine have a dramatic effect on the sympathetic nervous system or SNS. The SNS governs the “fight or flight” response and impacts every tissue and organ system in the body.

Adrenaline, a hormone that is meant to be short-lived in order to motivate us to move towards safety, becomes a constant source of elevated levels of cortisol in trauma survivors. 

Effects of Cortisol On The Body

  • -Impaired immune function

  • -Reduction of glucose utilization (a factor in diabetes and obesity)

  • -Increased bone loss

  • -reduction in muscle mass

  • -increase fat accumulation

  • -impaired memory and learning and destruction of brain cells 

Not only did I inherit generations of childhood trauma, I also inherited a genetic disorder called Charco Marie Tooth Syndrome. Named for the French doctors who first identified it in the nineteenth century, CMT affects 126,000 people in the United States and 2.6 million worldwide. Country singer Alan Jackson recently announced he inherited the disease from his father and has retired. CMT symptoms vary wildly with some people in wheelchairs by the time they are in high school while others are able to live a relatively normal life. My particular version comes with large doses of chronic pain, numbness, balance problems and fatigue among other symptoms. CMT took away my teaching career over twenty years ago. 

The losses associated with chronic illness are profound. The ability to earn a living and quality of life are impacted in immeasurable ways. My family of origin knew about CMT, but lived in denial not only about trauma but about the physical affects exactly half of us had inherited from this terrible disease. You were expected to continue in PE class and chores and ignore any physical symptoms. Growing up in the 1940’s, my father, who has CMT, used to tell a horrible childhood story about being forced to stand for hours catching wood at the end of a band saw. In addition to CMT, he had a hernia and was blind in one eye. All that was ignored. The most his parents ever did to help was buy an insurance policy on him.

Trauma survivors are already disengaged from their body. Add sexual abuse into the mix and the physical part of who we are is seen as an enemy. In general, we do not take care of ourselves. We survived by ignoring physical symptoms and most survivors continue to do so. Toxic emotions from trauma latch on to physical illness and make it worse. Much has been written on the way toxic emotions affect physical health. The toxic emotional aftermath of trauma includes but is not limited to the following list:

Emotional Pattern Of Trauma

  • -Emotional damage

  • -Denial 

  • -Chronic pain 

  • -Dysregulated emotions

  • -Emotional flashbacks

  • -Insomnia 

  • -Depression

  • -Anger

  • -Guilt and Shame

  • -Learned Helplessness

  • -Fear

  • -Anxiety

  • -Resentment

  • -Bitterness

The Most Common Killers In The United States

All the above patterns lead to some of the most common killers in the United States: cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Nearly everyone in my family dies from cancer, but perhaps it might be more accurate to say that the cancer of trauma has killed my entire family.

When I think about the correlation of childhood trauma and chronic illness, I am struck by the irony of my situation. CMT, a genetic disorder affecting the myelin sheath surrounding the nerves is inherited. So is childhood trauma. And the affect of trauma on my illness is perhaps even more profound than the problems caused by faulty DNA. 

What are we to do? It can be depressing to read an article such as this. I can’t change what happened to me. I have enough to worry about, now what am I supposed to do about chronic illness?

What to do about Chronic Stress

Recognize that trauma has an impact on health and stop blaming yourself

Take control of things that are within your purview:

  • Eating

  • Exercise

  • Be kind to your body

Heal from addictions and implement habits that are life-giving instead of numbing

I know it isn’t easy, but sometimes, just knowing the truth about a thing helps to set us free. Defy trauma, embrace joy. 

Information and quotes taken from:

Don Colbert, MD, Deadly Emotions:Understand the Mind-Body-Connection That Can Heal or Destroy You, Emanate Books, 2003

Rebekah Brown
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Trauma And The Brain