It’s no real secret that Western Medicine is deeply uncomfortable admitting that there is a mind and body connection when it comes to the health of an individual. This often mixes with a deep unspoken systematic misogyny that colors a great deal of the field. This is most apparent in the dismissive and devaluing way in which a lot of us are spoken to. How many women have showed up in a doctor’s office only to have it implied that our pain is just “in our head” or worse, being accused of overexaggerating or being a hypochondriac. Here we have classic cognitive dissonance – the admittance that our minds do have something to do with our physical health but that it’s not their problem to figure out.
There have been a lot of studies on this. It’s been found over and over again that people who experience trauma in their lives are significantly more at risk for a whole assortment of physical diseases. More so they are far more likely to be immune-compromised and/or suffer chronic pain which leaves them open to further problems. Clearly, the more abuse our minds endure the more fragile our immune systems become.
But it’s not just trauma that has this effect. There are tons of other people out there whose bodies are burned out and rebelling because of something as simple as stress. These people don’t always have trauma of any sort in their background but their current high stress lives are literally starting to destroy their bodies. Stress kills. Even doctors will tell you this in another flippant moment of cognitive dissonance.
So why is it Western Medicine is so unwilling to make this mind and body connection? I think it comes down to two things. The first I mentioned earlier is just blatant systematic misogyny – the belief that women are just too emotional to really be understood. You get a deep and unsettling feeling about this when you hear frequently male doctors state with exasperation they hate getting teenage girls with mysterious abdominal pains because they’re so hard to diagnose. The inference is that they’re basically bonkers, totally irrational, pickled in hormones that makes them what? An alien species? Sometimes it sounds like it.
But the second and probably even deeper rooted problem is that Western Medicine usually operates in the same way a mechanic does. They treat singular parts, not the whole. For example if you have a problem with your liver you will likely be sent to a specialist, a liver specialist, to see what the problem is and upon finding that problem you’ll be treated for it and nothing else. And for many things this works but it is profoundly short sighted. You might be having liver problems because of some other issue in some other area of your body causing a domino effect and if that’s the case you’re just going to be toppling more and more dominoes while doctors get more and more confused and you end up on more and more prescriptions, each treating only one symptom but never the cause. Sadly it isn’t as easy as just changing out a bad muffler for a new one. Human bodies are more complex than cars.
Doctors who acknowledge and even try to see the whole picture are usually called holistic doctors. They specialize in seeing everything as a piece of the whole and some may even extend into a broader big picture, acknowledging that the mental health and even spiritual or religious side of a person may all be part of their greater physical health. Funny how logical that sounds and yet how trashed the term holistic gets by the rest of the medical profession. It’s distressing how easy it is to once again dismiss them as quacks and charlatans. Each is different and may consider different options when treating a patient but does that mean they’re inherently wrong? How are we supposed to know if something works if we don’t try it? Shouldn’t we be supportive of responsible invention and pioneering?
I know in my own life I have gone to a dizzying assortment of doctors and specialists, had so many tests taken I don’t even remember half of them, have been treated with drugs that frequently made matters worse, and then eventually started to find success when I wandered off the normal path. I went to see an acupuncturist which helped with my pain. I tried eating a better diet with as few packaged foods as possible. I tried to increase the amount of sunlight I was in a day. And the biggest thing of all is I tried to reduce my stress. I had a good run of it for a while. I did really well for a bit when I found myself living on my dream farm with my long term boyfriend. He worked all day every day, sometimes longer hours than a Victorian child in the industrial revolution. He was doing this to make me feel unwanted, unneeded, and unattended to because he was a narcissistic asshole but it actually had the opposite effect. I LOVED being alone on the farm! I had my animals, my life, a purpose, something to do, lots of sunshine and happiness. I could have existed there, completely on my own, for the rest of my life and been a productive member of society, functional, and happy. My health was the best it had ever been. I still had bad days but as a whole I was almost functioning normally… but nothing is forever and just as I was about to make that farm lucrative he decided he was tired of me outshining him and left me for another woman. I lost everything in one moment due to the whims of another. I lost the farm, the house, my partner, my potential for income, the life I had built, all the pets I had, everything.
It’s been four years and because of stress it has been impossible to regain the health I had then. I live on disability because I am not reliable on a day to day basis to work. This means I had no money and nowhere to go so I moved back in with my parents where I still live… and it’s beyond stressful here. My mother desperately wants to protect me from ever feeling hurt again so she tries to control my life wherever possible. And she’s a hoarder. And I just genuinely hate it here. I have found the only way I am even vaguely functional is if I escape here once a week to do anything… but then Covid hit and here I am! To add insult to injury I was recently kicked off disability (which I’ve been on for almost a decade and a half) as they thought I’d improved enough to work. Where they got this information is beyond me because I haven’t been less functional than I am now! I’ve been so stressed out and frazzled that I can’t even keep up a Twitter account I post to a couple times a day. Even that is too much. I write in moments of clarity but there hasn’t been many.
One of the few things keeping me from falling into an unrecoverable depression is my long distance boyfriend who I see once every week or two as my mother stamps her feet of disapproval in the background as if I’m not 35 years old and capable of making my own adult decisions. It’s gotten so bad that for the first time in my life I am thinking of seeing a shrink – but alas, I have no health insurance anymore and if I fail to win my appeal to get back on disability I won’t be able to see one, or further answers to my physical health, or even be able to have gas money to drive and see my boyfriend who sadly is my one connection to the outside world that I have left. Living on $800 a month and limited health insurance was already near impossible – what is life with no income and no health insurance going to be like?! It’s a bleak and worrying vision of a future not living but merely existing.
So, it’s not surprising my liver took this moment in time to shut down. Between not absorbing nutrients and retaining a crazy amount of water weight I’m at a loss. Although stress is clearly causing these issues reducing my stress seems like a fucking joke right now. I wish I had answers or some happy way to end this entry but if there is such a thing it’s hard to see. As I struggle I see so many others struggling just as hard this year and it’s incredibly disheartening to see so many of my peers also trying so hard and failing. We, as a society, need to address this or we are in for a far larger epidemic than Covid – the long term effects of constant extreme stress on a whole population. And let me tell you now that our health care system in this country is not at all prepared for this – and neither are the doctors who think that our failing bodies and pain is just in our heads.
***All photos taken by author – Theophanes Avery***