Medical Trauma Is Real (And It’s More Common Than You Think)

[00:00:00]If your body goes into panic mode the moment you walk into a doctor's office, this video might explain why. I used to think I was just bad at coping with medical appointments. Turns out I was having a trauma response. Hospitals can save your life. They can also traumatize you. You know the type. I'm one of those people who sees a lab coat and gets a bit nervous, a bit traumatic, a bit overly sensitive.

[00:00:20]>> Don't look at me.

[00:00:21]>> But then I started noticing something.

[00:00:22]You see, every time I walked into a medical setting, my body would react before my brain had even caught up.

[00:00:28]heart racing, hand shaking, that very specific, very urgent feeling of I need to leave right now. And I realized that's not just nerves. Okay, that's a trauma response. And if that sounds familiar to you, if you've ever felt panicked in a waiting room or exhausted after an appointment that was supposed to be routine, I want you to know something right from the start, you're not weak. You're not overreacting. And you're definitely not alone. Because today we're talking about something that almost never gets discussed properly.

[00:00:59]Even though it affects a huge number of people, medical PTSD or medical trauma, especially from a chronic illness perspective, where those experiences don't just happen once, they happen over and over and over and over again. And there is the crushing realization that they will keep happening in the future because we're chronically ill. It's not going away. We have to keep going to see the doctor forever constantly. That repetition matters. You know, because when most people think about PTSD, they think about very specific kinds of trauma. War, violence, natural disasters. But trauma isn't defined by the type of event. It's defined by how your brain and body experience it. And research shows that medical experiences, things like surgeries, hospital stays, invasive tests, or even long periods of uncertainty and misdiagnosis, can absolutely be traumatic. In fact, studies suggest that around 12.5% of patients in primary care develop post-traumatic stress symptoms after medical care. And the rate can be even higher after serious illness or intensive care, which means this isn't rare. It's just rarely acknowledged. And I think part of the reason for that is that we're taught to see healthcare as something that is purely good. Doctors help people. Hospitals save lives.

[00:02:15]Medicine is a success story. And all of that is true, but two things can be true at the same time. Something can be necessary and still be traumatic.

[00:02:25]>> Something can help you and still hurt you.

[00:02:27]>> And for a lot of chronically ill and disabled people, that contradiction isn't theoretical. It's a lived experience. Because when you're dealing with chronic illness, you're not just encountering the medical system once in a single contained event kind of way.

[00:02:42]You're living inside it. appointments, tests, procedures, waiting lists, being believed, not being believed, having to explain your body over and over again to different people in different rooms.

[00:02:52]>> Yes, doctor. Uh, I have a thing called a retro neuropathy with liability to pressure pulses, and I realize that normally a foot wouldn't do that. But it's just what mine does. Okay. Can you please stop hitting it with that stick?

[00:03:03]You're never going to find a reflex. I' I've genuinely never had one.

[00:03:07]>> Bizarre. It adds up. And over time, your body learns to associate medical spaces with fear, pain, and a loss of control.

[00:03:14]Which means that even when nothing objectively bad is happening, your nervous system is already on high alert.

[00:03:21]It's trying to protect you even if that protection feels like panic. And then on top of all that, there are the experiences that so many people have, especially women, queer people, and disabled people, of just not being listened to, being dismissed, or thought it's anxiety, or that it's normal. This does not feel normal. I think my heart is starting to fall out. It's knowing that something is wrong in your body and not being believed. And that's where medical trauma becomes something bigger than just individual experiences. It becomes systemic because it's not just about what happens to you. It's about what keeps happening and what keeps being ignored. And yet, despite all of this, we almost never see medical trauma talked about in mainstream conversations. or if we do, it's simplified, dramatized, wrapped up neatly in a single episode of a TV show.

[00:04:09]When in reality, for most people, it's not one moment. It's a pattern follows you. Honestly, it really interferes with your life. Like, I should probably call a doctor right now, but I'm scared that they're going to tell me I have to go to hospital, so I'm just going to lie here until I get better or die, whichever comes faster. And, you know, either either way seems preferable than going to hospital, really. Okay, we should probably get you some help, physical and mental. I knew you would say it was all in my head. No, no, your illness isn't, but your fear. So, in this video, I want to unpack all of that. What medical PTSD actually is, why it's so common in chronic illness communities, why the media doesn't really get it, and what trauma-informed health care could and should look like instead, and of course, how we can move forwards living with it.

[00:04:57]because you deserve care that doesn't just keep you alive, you deserve care that makes you feel safe. Section one, what is medical PTSD? Good question.

[00:05:06]It's one of those terms that people are starting to use more, particularly in chronic illness and disability communities, but it's not always clearly defined. At its core, medical PTSD is exactly what it sounds like. It's post-traumatic stress that develops in response to medical experiences, including serious illness, surgery, hospitalization, invasive procedures, complicated birthing, or prolonged periods of diagnostic uncertainty, which, you know, if you've ever spent 6 months trying to convince someone that something is wrong with your body is its very own special flavor of distress.

[00:05:40]Clinically, PTSD is defined by a set of symptoms that tend to form into a few categories. We've got intrusive memories. So, flashbacks, nightmares, you know, unwanted thoughts. Then there's avoidance. That's trying to stay away from reminders of the experience.

[00:05:55]Negative changes in mood and thinking, heightened threat response and hypervigilance. That kind of constant sense that something is about to go wrong, or in slightly less clinical terms, your brain deciding that it's now a full-time job to keep you on edge. And crucially, PTSD isn't about whether something should have been traumatic.

[00:06:17]You don't get to decide that for me.

[00:06:20]It's about whether your brain and body experienced it that way. As researchers often emphasize, trauma is defined less by the event itself and more by the individual's response to it.

[00:06:30]Psychiatrist Bessel van Deco, author of The Body Keeps the Score, puts it very simply. Trauma is not the story of something that happened back then. It's the current imprint of that pain on the mind and body, which very validating, but also slightly inconvenient for anyone who enjoys saying, "But it wasn't that bad." It definitely was that bad.

[00:06:52]Exactly. Some of the most traumatic moments of my life have happened inside a hospital. And when it comes to medical trauma specifically, there's a really important piece of context. Medical events are often physically invasive, high stakes, and involve a loss of control. You might be in pain. You might not fully understand what's happening.

[00:07:11]You might be surrounded by strangers making decisions about your body. Hi, I uh promise I'm here to talk about the good stuff later. And even when everything is being done correctly, and generally it is. Even when the care is necessary and lifesaving and you are happy with the outcome, your nervous system can still register what happened as a threat. Studies on intensive care survivors, including work by researchers like Dale Needm, have found that a significant proportion of patients develop long-term psychological distress, including PTSD symptoms after ICU stays, which is not exactly something they put on the hospital brochure. Uh, we we have a brochure. I I don't think we do that in England. Yeah, I know. So, there is another layer to this, which I think is particularly relevant for chronically ill people because trauma isn't always about one big traumatic event. Sometimes it is about accumulation. There's a concept in psychology called adrogenic harm which refers to harm that is caused unintentionally by medical treatment or healthcare itself. And scholars in disability studies like the sociologist Arthur Frank have expanded this idea to include not just physical harm but psychological and structural harm as well. He writes about how illness can disrupt a person's entire sense of self and narrative, particularly when medical systems fail to recognize or validate that experience. Yeah. I spent my entire childhood trying to convince everyone that there was something actually wrong with me. And now that I have a diagnosis, no one seems to understand my pain. Don't you want these constant tests? No. Of course not. Of course, I don't want to be ill. I just want to be listened to. This is where feminist disability theory gives us some really useful language because thinkers like Rosemary Garland Thompson and Allison Kai Yeah. No, I I know I know it's the feminist queer again. It's a really good book. Anyway, they both talk about how disabled bodies are often treated as objects to be managed, fixed, or controlled rather than as autonomous subject. Which means that medical environments can involve not just physical vulnerability, but a loss of agency. And loss of control is one of the key ingredients of trauma. So when you combine all of that, repeated procedures, uncertainty, pain, being observed, examined, and sometimes not believed, and a system that doesn't always treat you as the expert in your own body, it starts to make sense that these experiences can have a lasting psychological impact. And individually, each of these experiences might not seem like enough to count as trauma. But trauma doesn't always arrive as a single dramatic moment. Sometimes it just builds quietly over time until your body starts reacting as if you're in danger even when you're technically safe.

[00:09:56]>> I told you so.

[00:09:59]Will you please phone a doctor?

[00:10:01]>> No. So, this is where I think medical PTSD is so often misunderstood. Like, yes. From the outside, it can look like an overreaction. Why are you anxious?

[00:10:13]It's just a checkup. Oh, it's just a blood test. It's just a doctor's appointment. And logically, you might even agree. But trauma isn't logical.

[00:10:23]It's physiological.

[00:10:26]It's your nervous system remembering things that your conscious brain is trying very hard to downplay. Sometimes the thing that saves your life. It's also the thing that traumatizes it, which which is why you can be sitting in a perfectly normal waiting room, perfectly normal chairs, and a slightly concerning number of outdated magazines, and your body is just still telling you that something terrible is going to happen. To be fair, sometimes it is, but that is a separate issue. So, when we talk about medical PTSD, we're not talking about people being dramatic.

[00:10:57]We're talking about a very real, very documented response to experiences that involve fear, pain, uncertainty, and a loss of control. And once you start looking at it through that lens, becomes a lot less surprising that so many people, particularly those with chronic illnesses, recognize themselves in it. I do. Do you? Section two, why chronic illness makes medical trauma more likely. We mentioned iatrogenesis earlier, so let's dig a little deeper into that. iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, harmful complication or other ill effect by any medical activity. You know, the good stuff, the bad stuff, the yay, your diagnosis has been achieved. The oh, I'm reporting my colleague for negligence. I mean, not me, never me. I'm one of the good ones.

[00:11:42]So, I promise I I have a whole section at the end about how we can do better.

[00:11:46]Just keep watching. I I I promise.

[00:11:48]According to the Marryiam Webster dictionary, the term was first used in this sense in 1924. But the term was introduced to sociology in 1976 by theologian and social critic Ivan Ilitch who argued that industrialized societies impair quality of life by overmedicalizing people. Thus, we can use the term for mental suffering that is inflicted due to medical beliefs or a practitioner's statements. But not a doctor telling you to vaccinate your kids. That's just perfectly sensible.

[00:12:17]They're not out to get you. In a 2013 estimate, about 20 million negative effects from treatment had occurred globally. One example is the condition of chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encphylamitis.

[00:12:30]I was diagnosed with this once uh so I should probably be able to say it. Me, which was historically viewed by medical professionals as a psychiatric condition. It was treated with the now very outdated graded exercise therapy which is known to have caused iatrogenic harm. As I talked about in this video that you can watch. Many neurological conditions including multiple cerosis and oh my own are still frequently misdiagnosed as functional neurologic disorder. A condition in which patients experience neurological symptoms but there is no known disease process affecting the structure of the body.

[00:13:06]Meaning it's all in your head. Don't talk right now. Except I do cuz I'm missing a jean. So why are your arms paralyzed, Jessica? Must be fake. Must be lying. If I had a pound for every time someone said the word functional to me about one of my symptoms and then went, "Oh, wait. The list of symptoms for the genetic neurological condition you have has just been updated. Oh, looks like the symptoms on it. I would have maybe £20 because that is a really niche circumstance. but more than no pounds. One day I will unleash my full trauma and tell you about why I can't think about large areas of my past without feeling like a chaos demon inside me is going to rip me in half.

[00:13:49]But that will be far in the future once my children are older and it's okay for me to be destroyed for a week or more.

[00:13:56]Moving on. For most people, a doctor is a person they do not see particularly often. Oh, hello. Gosh, it's been 6 years since I saw you last. I'm assuming that nasty bug bite got better. which is where chronic illness changes the picture quite dramatically. Because with chronic illness, there often isn't an after. You don't get better. That's what the word chronic means. That's just ongoing. Yeah. Still here, still ill.

[00:14:22]Same as last Wednesday in the 30,000 before it. When psychologists talk about trauma that happens repeatedly over time, they sometimes use the term complex PTSD or CPTtsd. This was first really articulated by the psychiatrist Judith Herman, who described how prolonged or repeated experiences of threat, especially in situations where you don't have control, can lead to a different, more chronic form of trauma.

[00:14:45]And while her work originally focused on things like abuse or captivity, a lot of chronic illness experiences kind of map onto those same patterns in ways that are slightly uncomfortable to think about. Oh, sure. You don't lock up disabled people as kids anymore, but the inaccessibility of the world and our bodies is doing it for you. Oh, you get out a lot. I constantly see you at the hospital for appointments, tests, procedures, medication adjustments.

[00:15:12]Not that cough yet, although you should really come in for that. Going to the hospital is not a fun day out. It doesn't count. It's just me bashing up against the thing that upsets me again and again and again. Oh, and why do you have to send me a letter, an email, three NHS app messages, and two text messages just for one appointment? I'm stressed enough as it is.

[00:15:38]>> Yes. U sorry about that bureaucracy, but you really should should come and get that chest looked at.

[00:15:48]>> I'm fine. It's probably just pneumonia again. Encountering the thing that stresses you again and again and again means that your nervous system doesn't really get a chance to reset. It's not great for a body that's already struggling rather than that was scary, but it's over. It's that was scary. Oh, there's another one next week. Research supports the idea of cumulative medical trauma. Studies looking at people with chronic conditions have found higher rates of anxiety, PTSD symptoms, and healthcare avoidance compared to the general population. Chronic illness often comes with what researchers call, and say it with me friends, diagnostic uncertainty, which is a very polite academic way of saying something is wrong, but no one's entirely sure what, and you may have to explain that repeatedly to increasingly tired professionals. Arthur Frank talks about this in the wounded storyteller, how illness can disrupt a person's sense of narrative, their understanding of who they are and how their life is supposed to go. And when you add uncertainty into that, it becomes just harder to feel grounded because you don't just lose control of your body, you lose predictability. Then predictability is something our brains are very fond of.

[00:17:01]And then there's the issue of being believed, which unfortunately is not always guaranteed. research by Kirsty Moltter and colleagues, including that well-known paper, it is hard work behaving as a credible patient, chef's kiss on the title, explores how patients, particularly women, often have to actively perform credibility in order to be taken seriously, which is a fascinating concept >> and also deeply exhausting >> because it means that on top of being ill, you also have to be convincing >> but not too much. You have to present your symptoms clearly >> but not too emotionally.

[00:17:38]>> You have to advocate for yourself >> but not be seen as difficult.

[00:17:41]>> You have to persist but not annoy the person who is theoretically there to help.

[00:17:46]>> It's a very delicate performance. And when that performance doesn't work when you're dismissed or misdiagnosed or told it's anxiety or stress or just one of those things can be incredibly destabilizing because now it's not just your body that feels unreliable. It's the system you're supposed to trust.

[00:18:04]institutional betrayal, >> a concept developed by psychologist Jennifer Freigh, referring to the harm that occurs when institutions that are supposed to protect you fail to do so.

[00:18:14]And research has shown that institutional betrayal can actually intensify trauma responses, making experiences more psychologically damaging and harder to process, I think, resonates quite strongly with a lot of chronic illness experiences because healthcare isn't just any system. It's the system you rely on. So when something goes wrong there, whether it's dismissal, neglect, or even just not being listened to properly, it doesn't just feel frustrating, it can feel like a breach of safety. Well, yes, I am rationing my medicine now because of that one time you forgot to refill my prescription. You didn't sign it even though it was sitting on your desk for 3 days and I almost died again. So, how am I supposed to trust you? We now have an electronic system.

[00:18:58]Also, I'm very sorry that happened. I I probably should have said that first. I am related to a lot of doctors. They aren't my doctors, but they seem great.

[00:19:08]So, I'm not saying that all doctors are bad or that every experience is traumatic. But the structure of healthcare itself can create conditions where trauma is more likely to occur, especially when you're exposed to it repeatedly. And over time, your body adapts, it learns, it starts to anticipate. So instead of walking into a medical appointment with a just a neutral baseline, hi, you might already be bracing yourself, what's going to go wrong this time for pain, for dismiss, or for not being believed something going wrong. Even if this time everything's perfectly fine, which is the part that it's so important to understand if you're watching from the outside perspective. Yes, that reaction can look disproportionate. What are you so worried about? It's just routine. But from the perspective of that patient's nervous system, oh, this is a pattern.

[00:19:56]We've got to get the red lights flashing. So, when we talk about medical PTSD in the context of chronic illness, we're not just talking about isolated traumatic events. We're talking about repeated exposure to vulnerability, uncertainty, and loss of control within that system that doesn't even acknowledge those experiences. And when you put all that together, it's just easier to understand why so many chronically ill people just feel stressed by healthcare. And not just that, they feel unsafe in it. Hi, promise. I'm I'm I'm one of the good ones.

[00:20:28]Section three, the hidden trauma of medical systems. And let's zoom out a little because up until now, we've mostly been talking about individual experiences. But medical trauma doesn't just happen on an individual level. It's also shaped quite significantly by the systems those experiences happen within.

[00:20:46]And those systems are not neutral. They never have been. Medical racism. If you're sick, you're sick. What does race have to do with that?

[00:20:52]>> Racism has everything to do with how people are treated in the healthare system. Medical racism refers to systemic biases and discriminatory practices that impact the health care of minoritized communities.

[00:21:02]>> You might have come across the concept of structural inequality. The idea that institutions, including healthcare, can systematically disadvantage certain groups of people. It's something we have covered on this channel many a time.

[00:21:14]Research still consistently shows that women's pain is taken less seriously than men's. A well-known study by Diane E. Hoffman and Anita J. Tazian, the girl who cried pain, a bias against women in the treatment of pain, found that women are more likely to have their pain dismissed or underestimated in clinical settings. It's not ideal, particularly if you are in fact a woman in pain. And when you bring race into the picture, those disparities become even more pronounced. A 2015 study looking at racial bias in pain assessment found that a significant number of medical students and residents still held false beliefs about biological differences between black and white patients, including ideas like black patients having thicker skin or feeling less pain.

[00:22:02]in 2026.

[00:22:04]Those beliefs were associated with less accurate pain assessment and treatment.

[00:22:08]So, this isn't just theoretical bias. It has very real consequences.

[00:22:13]>> If the patient had been white, they would have ordered further testing. But because the girl was black and black and Latino girls go through puberty earlier, more testing wasn't needed and they could go home.

[00:22:22]>> And we see similar patterns when it comes to queer and trans healthcare.

[00:22:26]Research by organizations like Stonewall has found that a significant proportion of LGBTQ plus people report negative experiences in healthcare settings, including discrimination, lack of understanding, or having to educate their own providers, which again is not ideally something you want to be doing whilst trying to receive care.

[00:22:45]>> Well, I mean, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm trying to make this video, and if you will just keep watching to my section. For trans people in particular, studies such as the US transgender survey led by the National Center for Transgender Equality found that many respondents had experienced mistreatment, refusal of care, or had delayed treatment due to fear of discrimination. And when healthcare becomes something you have to brace yourself for, that fundamentally changes your relationship to it.

[00:23:14]>> Hi, is this dead name? So, do you have like the do you have a do you have a are you going to make me say it? So again, the idea of trauma becomes really important because trauma isn't just about what happens or happened to you.

[00:23:28]It's about whether you feel safe. And if you're entering a medical environment knowing that there's a reasonable chance you might not be listened to, respected, or even treated appropriately, your body is not going to interpret that as a neutral situation. It's going to interpret that as risk.

[00:23:49]I will use whatever intersectional language you want. Would you please just come in so I can give you a chest X-ray?

[00:23:55]Why? I've had this cough for 6 weeks.

[00:23:58]What's another four? Which is where an awareness of intersectionality becomes crucial. A term coined by Kimberly Cruncher, which basically describes how different forms of inequality like race, gender, disability, and sexuality can exist separately, but also interact and overlap. I'm aware and you're not distracting me. So, if you are, for example, a queer disabled person or a trans person with a chronic illness or a woman of color navigating long-term health issues, you're not just experiencing one layer of vulnerability.

[00:24:31]You're experiencing several at the same time in the same room, often whilst wearing slightly crushed hospital gown, which I think we can all agree is not doing anyone any favors in terms of emotional resilience.

[00:24:44]>> Oh, yeah. you can wear your own pajamas, whatever. Could you just get some treatment? When you layer those experiences over time, the dismissal, the misunderstanding, having to advocate for yourself, having to explain your identity, having to assess whether it's actually safe to disclose certain things about yourself right now to your healthcare provider, that can become incredibly draining. And for many people, it is genuinely traumatic.

[00:25:04]Research also shows that anticipation of discrimination, not just discrimination itself, can increase stress and avoidance behaviors. Which means that even if nothing explicitly negative happens in a particular appointment, the possibility that it could happen is enough to put your nervous system on high alert. Hospitals are supposed to be places of safety. When harm happens there, the psychological impact can be profound. Conversations about medical trauma need to include these systemic perspectives because some people have very good reasons to not feel safe in healthcare. And those reasons are not random. They are patented. They are documented and they are increasingly being studied. Section four, how media gets medical trauma wrong. This section could be a whole video in itself. Let me know if you want that. But in the meantime, one of the things that I found the most devastating when I was a teenager and the illness that I had been born with finally decided to ramp itself up into a crescendo of failing body parts to the point where I was hospitalized and no one could ignore it anymore was that there was no doctor with swishy hair and a brusk yet somehow charming bedside manner who swed into the room and made it their personal mission to discover what the problem was in just the length of one episode.

[00:26:20]Excuse me. I've been wanted to. I thought that my suffering was going to be so inspirational that a heroic surgeon would come and enact a miraculous recovery arc or else, you know, just find out what the problem was really quickly and then sign me up for all that physical therapy and stuff. You watch too much TV. No one told me. The grazed atom was a lie. Oh, you couldn't tell from all the good-looking people and romance in areas of the hospital that are not in any way romantic. Just don't judge me right now, okay? I don't need it. You can't blame me for having been sucked in by TV. Other than the pit, when we do see medicine on screen, it tends to look like this very specific kind of story. Fast-paced, high drama, an alarming number of people making life-changing decisions in under 45 minutes, which structurally is very impressive, medically slightly concerning. Shows like Grey's Anatomy or House are built around this idea that medicine is dramatic, exciting, and ultimately resolvable. There's a mystery, there's a crisis, there's a breakthrough. And then by the end of the episode, there's usually just some kind of emotional resolution. Even if it's a sad one, it's still, you know, contained. And that structure works beautifully for storytelling. But it's not how most people experience healthcare, especially not if you're chronically ill. In reality, there often isn't a single moment where everything becomes clear. There isn't always a diagnosis neatly delivered with a meaningful speech and a swelling soundtrack. Sometimes it's just more appointments, more waiting, more uncertainty, more googling symptoms at 2 a.m. and immediately regretting it, which I believe is a universal experience, but it's not one that's made it into many prime time dramas. For good reason. Please don't do that. And more importantly, these shows almost never explore what happens after the medical event, the long-term emotional impact, the fear of going back, the way your body might react the next time you walk into a hospital. That part of the story is usually skipped. And when trauma is shown, it is often framed in very specific ways. It's dramatic. It's visible. It's tied to a single identifiable event. A major surgery goes wrong. A patient nearly dies. something clearly terrible happens and then understandably there's a strong emotional response. But what we don't see very often is the quieter kind of trauma. The cumulative kind, the kind that builds over time through repetition, uncertainty and not being listened to kind that doesn't look dramatic from the outside but feels very real on the inside. That absence matters, right? Because media doesn't just reflect reality, it shapes how we understand it. There's a concept in media studies often associated with researchers like George Gner called cultivation theory which basically suggests that the more we're exposed to certain narratives, the more we start to see them as normal or true. So if most of our exposure to healthcare looks like competent doctors, clear answers and emotional closure that becomes the expectation. And when real life doesn't match the expectation, it can be very confusing. Because if the story we've been told is doctors help, hospitals fix things, everything resolves eventually.

[00:29:26]Then where do you put the experiences that don't fit that narrative? The ones that are messy or ongoing or unresolved or frankly just a bit traumatizing. Oh, I I'll get to that. It's it's in my notes somewhere. Just stay with me. This is where I think a lot of people end up questioning themselves rather than questioning the system. I know I do.

[00:29:47]Meredith Gray can't be wrong. Maybe I'm overreacting. House would say it's lupus and it's not lupus. So maybe I'm just anxious. Doctor Who might think I'm not coping very well. That's a that's a different kind of doctor. But maybe, just maybe, you're not the one in the wrong. Maybe your experience simply isn't being represented on TV. There's also something to be said about how patients themselves are portrayed, particularly chronically ill or disabled patients. Because when we do appear, we're often framed in one of two ways.

[00:30:17]Either as inspirational, overcoming adversity with remarkable positivity or tragic defined entirely by our suffering. But most people exist, you know, somewhere in the between as human beings living just complicated, sometimes difficult, generally quite ordinary lives. Notably, very few of these betrayals engage with things like medical gaslighting, systemic bias, long-term trauma, or the emotional reality of navigating healthcare over years or decades. I think that absence contributes to why medical PTSD feels so invisible. Because if you've never seen your experience reflected anywhere, it's much harder to name it, let alone validate it. Section five, the chronic illness community and trauma literacy.

[00:31:03]So, how do we recognize it? How do we make sense of our experiences?

[00:31:07]>> I will get to that in just a moment. For a lot of people, increasingly, the answer is each other. Since the internet began, people have decry the dangers and the bad part, but often overlooked the positives, like its ability to bring together people who are often isolated.

[00:31:22]The rise of online chronic illness and disability communities on platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube has meant people are able to compare notes, share their experiences, and find language of things they have felt for years, but never had the words to explain. And I know that you do that right here on my channel. Hello. And one of the most important powerful things that happens in those spaces is validation. I knew it. the moment where you hear someone describe something, feeling, reaction, an experience, and you think, >> "Oh, that's not just me."

[00:31:52]>> And that moment might seem small, but psychologically it's actually incredibly significant because trauma is often reinforced by isolation and self-doubt.

[00:32:02]that feeling you're experiencing that you're exaggerating that what you have is somehow not quite legitimate.

[00:32:20]Research shows that social support is one of the most important protective factors in trauma recovery. Clinical psychologist Chris Brun's research for his book Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Malady or Myth has highlighted how validation and shared understanding can reduce the long-term impact of traumatic experiences. That means it really does help to talk about it.

[00:32:39]>> You needed a study to tell you that >> online communities have made that kind of connection much more accessible, particularly for people with rare conditions, invisible disabilities, or experiences that aren't widely understood, and for people who just can't leave the house. I was on bed rest for 2 years. Um, being able to talk to people through the internet is very important to me. I will fight for this.

[00:33:01]Right. Alongside that validation, something else has started to emerge.

[00:33:05]Something we might call trauma literacy, the language for your own experiences.

[00:33:10]As Judith Herman writes in her book, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, naming trauma is a crucial step in recovery. Moving from confusion and self-lame to recognition and meaning. And I think online spaces have played a really important role in that process. Not perfectly, the internet is still the internet. There are still some awful comment sections. We are doing our best. But within that there are also spaces of genuine care where people share resources recommend therapists, explain concepts like medical gaslighting or trauma responses and perhaps most importantly believe each other. That belief matters because when you've had experiences of not being believed in medical settings, you can find that the trust in your own perception is disrupted. Research into online health communities, including studies published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, which is an excellent name, shows that these spaces can provide emotional support, information sharing, and a sense of belonging for people managing long-term conditions. And yes, whilst meeting other people who've been through the same thing is not a replacement for systemic change, does give you a bit of a boost, right? It doesn't undo the trauma, but it does change how alone you feel with it. And I think that's where something like hope starts to come in.

[00:34:35]Not in a dramatic everything is fixed kind of way, but definitely in a quieter sense. The sense that understanding is growing. That people are finding language. Conversations like this one are happening more openly and that maybe one voice wasn't loud enough to be heard, but together we can be. And hopefully that increased awareness can lead to something better. Better recognition, better care, and better support. Because healing doesn't just happen in hospitals. Sometimes it starts with someone saying, "That happened to me, too." Now, this video is already pretty long, but I want to make sure I include why I've only been speaking about the medical trauma that disabled and chronically ill people experience rather than the medical related trauma that those closest to them experience.

[00:35:23]Oh, there's lots of trauma to go around.

[00:35:25]Don't worry. Prepare for the hot take. I don't know. So, here's the thing. I've been through some really awful medical stuff that has affected me mentally. One of my earliest memories um is kicking and screaming whilst I was being held down so they could put a mask on my face, knock me out for an operation on my ears. I've had needles in my spine. I spent months begging someone to take my weight loss seriously and instead at a point where I was too unwell to really understand what was being said to me, consented to being admitted to a part of the hospital I did not want to be in because I'm freaking deaf and I wasn't well enough to lipre. And giving that consent is something that I still struggle to forgive myself for. Even though I know it's not my fault, I've been through many strokes and pained so bad I would have found a way to stop it if I had been physically capable. But nothing nothing spiked my medical trauma like the moment my baby was born and she didn't cry because she wasn't breathing and I had to smile for my wife because she was still in the middle of a C-section cuz there were two babies and let her think that everything was fine.

[00:36:33]Family partners and carers can pick up medical trauma too. I do not want to diminish their role here at all or how deeply affecting it can be to witness your loved one in pain to feel that you are about to lose them or have your own voice spoken over as you try to advocate for them. I still get a lump in my throat just thinking about the girls being in those incubators and the wires and their tiny nappies. I can't even take them to get vaccinated now. I have to get my wife to do it. I struggle to even give them medicine if they don't want it. But I get to look at them every day and see how well they are doing, how big they have grown and know that there's healing. So the medical trauma I have surrounding their birth and pregnancy complications is healed by their smiles and their joy and their strength. And yes, I know that will not be the same for every person with trauma related to another person's health condition. But for me, there is an end point and an ability to naturally heal with time from the complex and awful feelings related to that situation. Yet, I don't have a healing point for the trauma caused by my own medical problems and healthcare experiences. I'm not going to get better. So, I can't talk about those two things on the same level or to the same degree, even if they're pretty intertwined. And that's just me.

[00:37:59]And secondly, and you are welcome to disagree with this hot take. I understand that it is controversial in parent of disabled child circles, but do get to step away. Carers and family members are absolutely in the trenches doing incredible work, but by nature of what we are discussing, the person living with a disability or illness does not get to leave their body. They are always dealing with it and other people's reactions to it. And the people around them can be deeply affected. But they do get to step away from the core cause even if only for a minute. And we don't. I'm in this body. I'm living this. And it won't go away. Section six.

[00:38:44]What trauma informed healthcare looks like. After all of this, I think there's a very understandable question which is now what? Because when we talk about medical trauma, it can sometimes feel like the conclusion is simply healthcare is frightening and systems are flawed and good luck to everyone involved, which while occasionally emotionally accurate, is perhaps not the most constructive public health strategy. I want to talk about something called traumainformed care. Because despite the fact that medical trauma is still underrecognized in many places, there are researchers, clinicians, and advocates actively working to change that. At its core, traumainformed care is actually it's a very simple idea. It means recognizing that patients may have experienced trauma and understanding that those experiences affect how they interact with healthcare and professionals like me. Sounds obvious when you say it out loud. And yet, historically, medicine has not always been especially enthusiastic about the emotional experiences of patients. Well, yes, I I suppose historically, the vibe has always been more good news, we kept you alive. Please stop crying. It's quite alarming actually when they cry that much. So, trauma-informed care asks a different question. It's not what's wrong with this patient, but what happened to this patient? Do you see what I did there? The physician and researcher, Gabbor, and yes, I know he does have some controversial podcasts and says some stuff that we should question, but he does also frame things well sometimes. He wrote, "Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you." Whether or not you agree with every aspect of his work, that framing is useful here because trauma-informed care recognizes that healthc care experiences don't happen in a vacuum. People bring history into the room with them. Previous pain, previous fear, previous dismissal.

[00:40:48]Sorry about that. And their bodies remember. There's also significant research supporting trauma-informed approaches in healthcare settings. Yes.

[00:40:57]The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA, we love our acronyms, outlines key principles including safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural sensitivity. We're looking at the whole person. We're working in partnership with them. We are aiming for safety, choice, consent, collaboration, trust.

[00:41:23]And when you actually look at those principles, what's striking is um you should probably have been doing that all along, >> right? I It's just that, you know, all professions build. You know, nothing starts out perfect. Each generation improves. I know now to uh explain procedures clearly. Ask for consent repeatedly, not just once. uh give patient choices where possible and allow people to uh to pause procedures or conversations. Believe them when they describe pain and um not not treat anxiety as an inconvenience.

[00:42:04]Sounds like a low bar. And yet and importantly, trauma-informed care is not about making healthcare emotionally perfect. That is possible. Some medical experiences are inherently frightening or painful. But there's a huge difference between this was difficult but I felt safe and respected and this was difficult and I felt powerless. And that distinction autonomy comes up repeatedly in trauma research. So Judith Herman argues that trauma fundamentally involves an experience of helplessness and disconnection from power which means that restoring agency is incredibly important in recovery. Particularly relevant for disabled, chronically ill, queer, and trans patients because so many healthcare experiences involve having autonomy reduced and being spoken over, having your identity questioned, having your symptoms minimized, having your very complex medical history gone over and over again by medical professionals who just make assumptions.

[00:43:04]Look, it's fine, okay? It's fine. I'm just here for my broken toe. Could you look at that? I know I take lots of medication. We don't need to talk about it. just the toe. This is where trauma-informed care overlaps with disability justice in really important ways. So the disability activist and scholar Mia Mingus talks about the importance of access, interdependence and bodily autonomy within care systems.

[00:43:26]Disability justice movements have long argued that health care should not just focus on survival but dignity. It not just keeping people alive but you know treating them as fully human whilst they are alive. Care without dignity is just it's not really care. I think social media has actually played a fascinating role in pushing these conversations forward because over the past few years, platforms like Tik Tok have seen a huge increase in discussions around things like medical gaslighting, doctor patient communication, trauma responses, and self- advocacy. And yes, online health content absolutely has problems. From misinformation and wellness grifters to people diagnosing themselves with 17 rare conditions because an algorithm suggested it at 1:00 a.m. There has also been a genuine increase in public awareness around patient experience. I think that reflects a broader cultural shift. People are increasingly questioning the idea that patients should simply endure healthcare silently and gratefully no matter how they're treated. which does not mean that we should be acting entitled to healthcare workers of any kind. And it definitely does not mean that you should just be rejecting medicine. Oh, for God's sake.

[00:44:36]No, not going to prescribe that. It's for a horse. I'm not here to say doctor's bad. Just that many chronically ill and disabled people rely on healthcare profoundly, and it works better for all when we feel safe.

[00:44:48]Studies suggest that trauma-informed approaches can improve treatment adherence, patient communication, and even long-term health outcomes. That's what this conversation comes down to.

[00:44:58]Not fear, not hopelessness, but recognition that medical trauma exists, that some people are disproportionately affected by it, and that when we face it head on, we can actually do something about it to the benefit of us all.

[00:45:11]Healthcare shouldn't just be about keeping people alive. It should be about keeping them safe. And I think the more honestly we talk about medical trauma, the more possible compassionate healthcare becomes. Medical trauma is real, but so is resilience. Systems are made by people, and people can change, but this isn't just on us. Thank you so much for watching. What do you think is the way forward for sources and further research, please take a look down in the description. If you would like to watch more of my videos discussing disability and chronic illness topics, then click the card in the corner up here. Highly recommend my video trying five-star products for chronic pain. That's a fun one. I'm very impressed you've made it all the way to the end of this video.

[00:45:51]So, leave a bandaged heart in the comments so I know who made it. Remember to subscribe if you haven't already, and I will see you in my next video.

[00:46:00]Bye-bye.