Category Archives: Neuroscience and abuse

Medical Gaslighting

07 Saturday Oct 2023

Posted by in Abuse, Abuse victims, Blog about abuse, Controlling People, Emotional abuse, Injustice, Medical Abuse, Medical Gaslighting, Neuroscience and abuse, Oppression of women, Psychological abuse, Psychology, Retraumatizing, Uncategorized

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/imagerymajestic

Today I delve into a unique form of abuse perpetrated against a unique group of people…those with invisible illnesses. The culprits are our respected and trusted medical professionals, to whom we turn at our most vulnerable.

A demonstrable link exists between long term abuse and the development of chronic, auto-immune and neurological illnesses. This is not because these diseases are psychosomatic, but because relentless abuse keeps us hypervigilant, stressed and anxious for years on end. This unremitting stress eventually collapses the immune system, allowing opportunistic viruses, bacteria, fungus and parasites to cause irreparable damage to multiple bodily systems.

Because these diseases are often invisible, with complex aetiology, disease patterns and prognosis, they are frequently dismissed by medical professionals as ‘all in our heads’, despite modern MRI, SPECT and other medical imaging that reveals clear biological damage. Brain lesions, cardiac disease, adrenal insufficiency and muscle abnormalities are but the tip of the iceberg. Despite this evidence, and because these invisible illnesses largely befall women, medical professionals conveniently put us in the too hard basket. We’re labelled hysterical women and offered no guidance or treatment, only disdain. In many cases, doctors are downright negligent and responsible for the rapid decline of far too many patients. Whatever happened to ‘first do no harm’?

For many seriously ill people, this medical mindset rubs off on family, friends, employers and government agencies, who label us lazy, neurotic, self-centred malingerers. Yet couch potatoes rarely contract invisible illnesses. Chronically sick people, once hardworking and committed, are left with no ability to perform basic daily functions, too sick to work and left to cope completely unsupported; living in poverty, sometimes homeless, going without food and basic necessities. They are largely friendless and forgotten, neglected and maligned by every facet of society.

This, my friends, is medical gaslighting. It is systemic abuse at its finest.

A snapshot of my own personal experience of medical gaslighting:

In 1994, while single parenting two young daughters, I began to experience excessively heavy and lengthy menstrual periods. I bled pretty much non-stop, with the occasional few days off per month. Even donning heavy flow, double-protection right before driving the kids to school, blood would be dripping into my boots by the time I arrived home. Doctor after doctor fobbed me off, occasionally prescribing me a different contraceptive pill. None made a difference. No doctor took my blood count, or thought to palpate my uterus.

Eventually, I stuck with a doctor who seemed like a ‘nice guy’ but even so, six months later, nothing had changed. I continued to decline under his care until a friend popped in one day, took one look at me and ordered, ‘Take your makeup off, get in the car! I’m taking you to the doctor and I’m not leaving until he’s booked you into the hospital.’ And so, I did.

The doctor spoke briefly to the hospital registrar. ‘She’s a bit anaemic. Her blood count’s probably around 10.’

In fact, it teetered around 6.4. I needed a massive and immediate blood transfusion with doctors hoping I wouldn’t fall into a coma. Fortunately, I didn’t, and weeks later I went under the surgeon’s knife to remove a huge uterine fibroid tumour. A nasty wound infection and reaction to antibiotics followed.

Before I recovered from surgery, I contracted the virus that caused my Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). I firmly believe that, had I received timely medical treatment, my life would have followed a vastly different trajectory. You see, I never recovered, and am now a 28-year veteran of the disease.     

1995 though, was only the beginning of the medical gaslighting. After contracting ME, and desperately seeking answers, working part time and raising my girls unsupported, I was floundering. I needed time off work and went in search of an appropriate medical certificate. It was only when I left the surgery that I read it: ‘Melinda Jensen is suffering from Melinda Jensen.’

Back I went to show the doctor her her, ‘mistake’. She laughed. ‘I think it’s pretty accurate.’

Being disbelieved, shamed, and invalidated is soul crushing.

Another day, another doctor. This guy’s words both stunned and stung me. ‘You just need to make up your mind that this is it. This is as good as it gets. It’s a woman’s lot in life to suffer.’

Sick of hearing it yet? I was definitely sick of living it. But 2009 brought another opportunity to be treated like the village idiot. A vehicle accident landed me in hospital where I was examined by the duty doctor. I described my pain intensity…high!..and indicated where I believed my bones were broken. After a gruff examination, Dr Couldn’t-care-less refused an Xray, since I ‘clearly’ had no broken bones and was just suffering from a bit of bruising. (Oh, silly bloody me!) I begged to differ. He argued the toss. Thank God my oldest daughter arrived. Fixing him with her ‘don’t mess with me’ stare, she insisted.

He caved…angrily. ‘They won’t find anything!

He was wrong. The radiologist identified 6 broken ribs, a broken collar bone, punctured lung and torn rotator cuff. The doctor stormed off!

A couple of years and many doctors later I chanced upon a GP who seemed genuinely kind. I presented him with the current research and asked specifically for a SPECT scan and MRI of the brain. He hummed and hawed, gave me a goofy grin, and said the scans would find nothing. But he was willing to order them! A small win.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/stockdevil

The results revealed significantly reduced blood flow on the brain SPECT (indicating brain pathology) and significant white matter lesions on the MRI (ie brain damage not unlike that seen in Multiple Sclerosis). My ‘kind’ doctor was surprised (I seem to surprise doctors quite a bit.) Then he hit me with, ‘Are you working yet?’

He concluded every appointment after that the same way, ‘Are you working yet?’

I’ve been too ill to work for decades now and am currently bed-bound for the best part of the day.

I’d like to say that was the end of the medical gaslighting…but not much has changed since 1995.

In the grand scheme of things, my story isn’t important, but it is illustrative. I’m one of millions of people who have invisible illnesses, including . We receive criminally negligent treatment from medical professionals the world over…an appalling abuse of trust perpetrated against some of the most vulnerable members of society by some of the most powerful.

For shame!

(For more information on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) please see https://www.nightingale.ca/)

Traumatic Memories & the Trauma Response

23 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Abuse, Childhood wounds, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Counselling, Emotional abuse, healing from domestic abuse, healing from emotional abuse, help for abuse victims, Narcissistic abuse, Neuroscience and abuse, Personal growth, Psychological abuse, Psychology, Recovery from abuse, Relationships, Retraumatizing, self love, spiritual growth, Triggering, Uncategorized, Verbal abuse

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silhouette of a man asking for help

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/foto76

Memories can be wonderful … but not always. Sometimes they thrust themselves into consciousness without warning or invitation, knocking the air clean out of our lungs. Like a kick in the gut with steel-capped boots, an unwelcome memory can force us to your knees , gagging, or send us stumbling numbly in search of a dark, dark cupboard in which to hide … a cupboard that holds no Narnia on its other side, but only ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.

Some time after the witching hour last night, a memory came to visit. I tried to grab it by the throat and force it back through the door of my dreams, but still it came … stealthy and relentless. And then came another … and yet another. Today I’m barely able to function.

Such is the reality of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a response all too common to survivors of verbal, emotional and psychological abuse. I wish I could tell you how to make it stop. Psychologists will teach you cognitive behavioural techniques (CBT) – the mode of therapy that is currently flavour of the month. It aims to mediate your emotions by getting you to control your own thought processes and attitudes. What the ‘experts’ don’t seem to understand, or tell you, is that the deep-seated feelings of horror and terror that result from years of cruelty actually circumvent the normal neural pathways. And that lack of understanding comes very close to ‘victim blaming’; it unleashes a barrage of guilt and alienates us from much needed love and support.
During my own (long-ago, pre-illness) studies of psychology, I learned that it is, in fact, not possible for researchers to determine whether the physical responses associated with anxiety – the release of stress hormones, which lead to rapid heart rate and pulse, etc) – pre-empt the feeling of fear itself, or whether the fear triggers the physical response. It’s the physical processes that make us shake with fear or paralyze us; that make us feel sick and our palms sweat as the blood thuds and throbs through our heads, leaving us spent. Researchers still don’t know whether the chicken comes before the egg.

Truth is, memories or events that evoke a trauma response trigger automatic emotions first … and the thoughts then follow. From there we scramble to make cognitive sense of them while our fight or flight responses are on auto-pilot, ready to take off like a jump jet. Add in the fact that stress (in all its forms – anxiety, fear etc) shuts down our normal cognitive processes, making it impossible to think straight, and we have a wrecking ball massive enough to demolish the very fabric of our being.

Under these circumstances I believe it’s virtually impossible to be rational – although I baulk at fully embracing that concept with its implication that we just can’t help ourselves. There has to be some level of personal responsibility, certainly, but there needs to be an attitude of compassion, too. Compassion not only from others but also compassion for ourselves. Sometimes we need to cut ourselves some slack. That doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be out of control; to rant and rave at others; to get drunk and drive fast in an attempt to get away from ourselves; or to engage in any other forms of destructive behaviour.

What it means is to understand that the feeling itself is okay.

We are NOT DEFECTIVE! We are injured and may always carry painful scars that adhere to our souls … wounds that are easily reopened. It is NOT OUR FAULT. We are who we are. Survivors.

shy girl

We need to accept ourselves with all our battle-scars even if no-one else does, and we need to nurture our own wounded inner child. Imagine how you might treat a little girl or boy who has been irrevocably damaged by some adult monster. What would you say to her? How would you soothe and reassure him? If you were harmed by an intimate partner and not by a parent, your inner child is still just as wounded. We all carry that vulnerable facet deep within us and it is this very precious, fragile part of our souls that our abusers hone in on in their attempts to destroy us.

Some of us turn to God and hand our brokenness to Him; the perfect parent; the ever-loving spouse who cherishes us in a way no human being ever can. He is the keeper of my soul and my only true solace when the demons of trauma return to torment me. He scoops me up and cradles me in His powerful yet gentle arms and kisses me like the wounded child I truly am.

 

 

 

Verbal punches and brain changes

01 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Abuse, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Counselling, Emotional abuse, healing from domestic abuse, healing from emotional abuse, help for abuse victims, Justice system and abuse, Narcissistic abuse, Neuroscience and abuse, Personal growth, Psychological abuse, Psychology, Psychopathology, Relationship abuse, Relationship advice, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Verbal abuse

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When someone delivers a physical blow, no one questions whether or not damage has been done to the victim, and no one tries to deflect the blame from the perpetrator. The bruises, scratches and broken bones are there for all to see.

Until relatively recently, abusers have been able to hide behind the smokescreen provided by the societal perception that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me’. Of course, verbal, psychological and emotional abuses go well beyond name-calling, and yet, victims of this most insidious and devastating form of abuse face an uphill battle when it comes to being taken seriously. Already in a depleted emotional and cognitive state, with energy levels at a lifetime low, they rarely have the wherewithal to pursue understanding, let alone deliverance, from their personal hell.

Legislation however, is beginning to catch up with the truth. There’s a long way to go yet but the first seeds have been sown, at least in my own county – Australia. Most other nations are lagging a long way behind.

But I’ll save the legislative changes for another post. Today, I want to shed a little light on what emotional/verbal abuse victims have known for millenia, and which is only now being backed up by the latest research from neuroscience. To put it in very plain English, recent studies have proved that the brain changes that occur as a result of physical abuse are exactly the same as the changes that occur as a result of emotional, verbal and psychological abuse. In other words, the source of the abuse doesn’t matter. The brain encodes it the same way, regardless. The bottom line is that all abuse is physical.

That means the long term effects are identical. Well … almost. It has also been established that only one form of abuse consistently leads to Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(CPTSD). Surprisingly, it’s not sexual or physical abuse. It’s our old foe – emotional, psychological and verbal abuse. Although physical and sexual abuse are usually accompanied by emotional control and abuse, on their own they don’t lead to long term CPTSD. Emotional/verbal/psychological abuse however, is a reliable predictor of CPTSD without any other form of abuse being present. It’s a sobering thought, and something few therapists or authorities are aware of.

Knowledge is empowering. Spread the word.

 

Sources:

http://www.narcissismaddictionsabuse.com

https://www.psychologytoday.com

http://www.blueknot.org.au

More on Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in a future post.