What is Medical Trauma?
Some signs you may be impacted by medical trauma include: frequent distressing thoughts, memories, or dreams about past medical events, avoidance of certain medical situations, feeling mentally distant/zoned out or anxious when in medical settings, and changes in mood (irritable, depressed, frequently disassociated, etc).
There are many aspects of medical care that can contribute to the development of medical trauma. Some of the commonly reported themes that cause medical trauma include: events where there is a perceived threat of bodily harm, times where you are not in control, and shifts in identity (identifying as sick vs well and fluctuations between the two) (Cuneo, 2023).
Perceived threat of bodily harm include situations where there is fear of death and situations where the fear is related to symptoms such as pain. The word perceived is key here, because this isn't just when the symptoms like pain occur, it is also when you thought or felt like either the symptoms such as pain were going to get worse or that you were going to die, regardless of if it happened or not. One of the common ways this presents is in fears about disease progression. If you have researched your disease, been told about the prognosis from your provider, or witnessed others with your illness experience worsening symptoms or pass away these can all increase fears related to disease progression. Symptoms getting worse, hospitalizations, near death experiences, and surgeries or procedures that led to increased pain can all lead to trauma from the perceived threat of bodily harm.
Not having control is really scary and when it comes to health it is particularly terrifying. With illness there are many ways control can be lost. Not having control over your body and health in general can feel very traumatic. When your health is unpredictable and changes from moment to moment and frequently is accompanied by changes in abilities and plans It can be traumatic. Grief is one of the most common emotions to experience with chronic illness, because of frequent losses both temporary and permanent. Some individuals try to avoid feeling the losses by pushing themselves and minimizing their struggles which inevitably backfires and leads to harder recovery days and reality catching up to them. Other times the losses can lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair.
There are many ways control can be lost in medical settings. You can't control how you will be treated by medical providers and the labs, imaging, and treatments they will or won't recommend. In some situations such as during hospital stays control can feel very limited as decisions are made by medical providers and even simple everyday actions can be monitored or altered by the treatment plan (eating, drinking, going to the bathroom etc). Insurance companies can impact the accessibility and timeline of options available to you. Certain medications, procedures, and surgeries can take away your control temporarily. There are so many situations and ways in which control is lost when facing chronic illness.
Our sense of identify is how we view ourselves and the way in which we imagine others view us too. There are many fluctuations with identity that come when navigating chronic illness. There are times that you may feel and be able to present as healthy and other times when being sick takes up so much time, effort and energy and it becomes the identity, and there's often time spent somewhere in between being sick and healthy. Going from healthy to sick is tough and so is the change in identity with going from sick to a higher level of health. It's a lot of change. The way others view and treat you also can fall under this category. Experiences of not being taken seriously or having others invalidate your illness can impact identity and lead to questioning yourself especially when the identity is in the process of change. Getting bad test results, conversations about recent disease progression, and requiring more accommodations from those around you can also impact the way you view yourself. This can all play a role in the development of medical trauma.
These are just some of the many factors that lead to the development of medical trauma. Some signs you may be impacted by medical trauma include: frequent distressing thoughts, memories, or dreams about past medical events, avoidance of certain medical situations, feeling mentally distant/zoned out or anxious when in medical settings, and changes in mood (irritable, depressed, frequently disassociated, etc). If you experience any of these symptoms and would like to learn more about treatment for medical trauma, then please schedule a free consultation.
ReferencesCuneo, A.A, et al. (2023) Medical traumatic stress in cystic fibrosis: A qualitative analysis.” Journal of Cystic Fibrosis, 22: 4, 763-771