This time, I want to talk about something I haven’t talked about a lot in the past — How trauma affects us even years later. In one of my recent interviews, I talked about how people with a history of trauma have a hard time with doctors’ appointments. After it aired, someone reached out to ask me a question. It was then that I knew that I needed to also write a post about this.
Of course, many people don’t like going to the doctor. But if you are someone who is dealing with the after-effects of trauma, especially surrounding your body (such as physical abuse), you are going to have a very tough time with certain kinds of doctors’ appointments.
Trauma, Highly Sensitive People, and a Fear of Doctors.
In my interview, I’d mentioned that one of the positive side-effects of writing my memoir The Empath’s Journey and learning more about how my sensitivity affected my life was that I had stopped fearing going to the dentist.
This was something I used to be very scared of for many years.
I often put off appointments and neglected myself. And like anything that we need to be doing but are ignoring, it only created bad feelings inside me. I felt irresponsible and “not an adult,” and felt like I was avoiding something important.
But then, during the course of writing my book, I happened to read an article about the connection between a history of trauma and the fear of doctors’ appointments, especially those that were invasive or fear-inducing.
Reading this piece gave me a little seed of compassion — an insight into my struggle. It opened up things for me. It also helped me think of all the different reasons why doctors’ appointments can feel so fraught with anxiety for those of us who have suffered something traumatic.
Apart from the physical disturbance that comes with a body memory being triggered, which is a huge weight in itself, there can be a sense of a huge power imbalance during doctor’s visits, a feeling of extreme vulnerability, or the fear of losing control over our own body.
As I thought more about this, I also started seeing how I was not the only one who felt like this.
I started connecting stories I had heard from different people at different times in my life, people with traumatic pasts –with histories of childhood beatings or sexual abuse or incidents of early-childhood illness (especially illness in the first few years of life) — and their fear of going to the doctor.
Their bodies remembered. Our bodies remembered.
With this, something clicked inside me. Something became a little easier.
Not completely easy. But easier.
I started to realize that I deserved compassion for this struggle, that it wasn’t right or helpful to beat myself over the head for failing to take care of myself.
And while I still did not jump at going to the dentist, this helped me put my feet back into the water. Slowly, as I felt stronger within myself, I started seeing the dentist more regularly.
This happened, in a large part, also because instead of being merely nice and passively taking whoever was assigned to me or available, I started asking for specific people I had had good experiences with in the past.
In my dentist’s office, I asked for someone who had once talked me through the process, whose energy felt softer and who I felt comfortable with. With another doctor, I asked for a video visit prior to the appointment and decided to tell them some of my trauma history. They were actually quite responsive, and giving this context turned out to be the right decision.
When we have trauma in our past, we need to learn to exercise the muscle for advocating for our own needs.
I know that this is not fair. I know that this is not easy.
On top of the fear you already have about stumbling into some deep, dark hole via your body, you now also have to do the work — research doctors, change them if you need to, and sometimes even take the risk of telling them about your history, which can feel extremely threatening.
And I am also painfully aware that not all doctors are like the ones I had positive experiences with. So, while we are trying to reach for what we need, we also need to exercise discernment. We need to start considering who is good for us and who is not.
There are plenty of people in the helping professions who are not there for the right reasons, and in fact, some are in it for exactly the wrong reasons.
More than a decade back, when I was in India, and right before I got married and relocated to the United States, I had such problems with my ankle swelling that I could hardly even walk. It was then that I had an experience with a doctor I still remember.
Looking back, I can see how stress played a big part in this. I had not lived anywhere but in India before that. So even though it was exciting to get married and move into the next chapter of my life, it was also stressful.
Even positive experiences that bring big life changes are anxiety-inducing.
It was during this time that I went to see a doctor.
My ankle was so swollen I could hardly walk. My wedding was just around the corner. And so, I was feeling vulnerable and shaky. The doctor I went to was someone I hadn’t had much experience with before, who happened to practice at a private hospital near my home.
That day, as it often happens in India, the doctor made me & my mother sit on chairs at the back of his office as he finished speaking with another patient. It took me a while to even realize that he was blasting this patient off after he had just been diagnosed with a kind of CANCER.
As I look back, I am so sorry I didn’t register things until the last moment. And that when I did, I felt so frozen and in shock that I didn’t say anything.
Within a few quick minutes, he had wrapped up his meeting asking the patient to come back later (the patient possibly had just a few minutes with him as it happens in busy clinics there), that man who had just learnt about his frightening diagnosis was gone, and he was on to me.
It didn’t take him long to look at my reports and come to the conclusion that I needed to have surgery for my swollen ankle, that THAT was the way.
I remember feeling super-anxious, mumbling something, saying that we would call him later, and then just getting out of there.
To cut a long story short, after I had gotten over the fear that he had invoked in me, I ended up getting a second opinion from a doctor my sister recommended.
That doctor recommended a physical therapist, and I had to do physical therapy exercises for more than a month. I think she also gave me some medicines but mostly it was the physical therapy that was the answer.
AND THAT WAS IT.
There was no surgery required. In fact, I learned from this doctor that she had heard about the earlier doctor’s unsavory reputation from different people. (As a side note, in India, suing doctors is not common).
This happened to me even though I lived in an upper middle-class neighborhood, even though the hospital he practiced at was a thriving one.
The reason I am telling this long-winded experience is to underline the fact that we need to be aware of people who prey on us in our most vulnerable moments.
As someone whose wedding day was just around the corner (I started walking almost in the nick of time for my wedding), I was almost at the point of panicking. So was my mother. And if I hadn’t happened to see the tail-end of the shameful exchange that alerted me to the kind of person this doctor was, I might have actually believed him.
And done what what he recommended I should.
All this to say that when we’re sick, we are already feeling scared.
That, coupled with the fear that past trauma brings up means we are feeling even more vulnerable. We might feel old feelings of helplessness, of feeling frozen, of feeling frightened that there’s nothing we can do.
And so, it’s really important that we surround ourselves with people that are worthy of our trust.
As far as I am concerned, the most important thing in a doctor is not just their medical qualifications, but also the fact that they will listen to me, give me context and be respectful through the process.
This is CRITICAL.
And to you, I want to say: As someone with a history of trauma, you deserve someone who is BOTH well-qualified and someone you’re comfortable with. No matter that other people may think you’re making a big deal out of nothing, no matter that they might think you’re being “precious,” or that all that matters in a doctor are their qualifications.
They are not the ones who have had to endure your pain.
And so, they are not the ones who get to decide what you need.
In fact, they might never have had to feel the kind of vulnerability that makes you alert to red flags that they can often miss.
I also want to say that I know this process of advocating for our own needs is a process. For me, I know it’s something I do well at times and not-so-well at other times. It’s not a one and done thing.
But once we do start doing this, we start seeing that even if no one else understands how we feel, we do.
And instead of thinking that we are dependent on other people’s goodwill or on chance, we can start actively taking care of ourselves. WE can give ourselves the gentleness and kindness we need.
This gives us that precious feeling of being self-effective, of being in charge of our own selves.
We are the ultimate witness to our own trauma. And we can also start to be the ones who bring the salve to it.
I hope you remember all you’ve been through on your own. And I hope you see that you can do this too, no matter how hard it feels right now.
A step at a time. Probably imperfectly, like we all do. And building strength slowly.
But you CAN do this.
While trauma sinks in deep for sensitives, so does all the good stuff. And so, I hope that you will reach for it. And I hope that you will honor the depth of your own wound. It only gets inflamed whenever it is touched without compassion, and when it is touched with callousness.
By caring for yourself, you make yourself stronger.
By protecting yourself, you give your wound a chance to heal.
By taking action, you step into your own power.
And please know that we are all doing this imperfectly. We are taking two steps forward and one step back. And that it is okay to do it like this, as long as we keep going.
And so, I hope you take very good care of your precious self, the hurt self that is invisible to others but that you walk with everyday.
With love,
Ritu
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which TEDx speaker Andy Mort calls “a fascinating insight into the life of a highly sensitive person & emotional empath.” Ritu is a Silver Medal awardee at the Rex Karamveer Chakra awards, co-presented by the United Nations in India.
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