Recently, I heard the same line I’ve been hearing for years. A prominent pain specialist told me that doctors don’t have the time to help me recover from medical PTSD. The conversation always drops straight into the same rut: “Are you seeing a therapist?” As if therapy is the only place where repair can happen. As if the medical world gets to wash its hands of the harm it caused and send me somewhere else to deal with the fallout.
I’ve graduated from therapy. It did what it needed to do. It helped me understand the terrain of what I’ve lived through and how my body learned to survive it. But therapy cannot repair what was done in white coats and exam rooms. It cannot stand in for the people who caused the injury. Therapy cannot rebuild a sense of safety around medicine. Only clinicians can, because the harm came from them. Yet they most often refuse to see that. They keep handing the responsibility back to me and the therapists I no longer need, as if the violence that happened in their domain is not theirs to address.
Doctors don’t want to be responsible for what doctors do. They want the authority without the accountability. They want the prestige without the relational duty that comes with it. When you bring them the truth that Medical PTSD is rooted in power, dismissal, coercion, and violation at the hands of people who were supposed to protect you, they slip sideways. They say they are not therapists, and they send you elsewhere. They pretend that acknowledgment and attunement are optional extras rather than the ground floor of repair.
What I need is simple. I need every doctor I encounter to say, “I’m sorry that happened to you. It was wrong. You deserved protection. I believe you. I want to help you recover.” I ask for a moment of attunement and a single drop of empathy. I need one sign that the hierarchy can bend toward humanity. But for most of them, that’s too much. They’re so fused to the culture of domination that even a brief acknowledgment feels threatening. They’d rather refer me out than face what their profession has done.
Pain specialists too often circle back to whether I have a therapist. As if the missing ingredient in my recovery is more therapy rather than attuned, accountable medical care. I still need doctors to do what doctors have refused to do. I need them to recognize the harm, stop repeating it, and stay present long enough that my system can recalibrate its expectations around medicine. I don’t expect to ever feel fully safe in this environment again. That’s the reality of what prolonged medical trauma does. But any increase in safety, any softening of the threat matters. It’s imperative for recovery.
The help I need costs them nothing. A brief moment of human connection. A willingness to face the truth. A break in the hierarchy long enough for trust to take root. But instead, they leave me in the lurch, pushing responsibility onto therapists and onto me, dodging what only they can provide. And in doing so, they deliver the standard treatment that keeps the wound open and call it care.
This refusal to engage at the human level means the burden of safety and repair falls squarely back on the survivor. I have been forced to carefully vet practitioners not just for their technical skill, but for their capacity for relational decency. I must also be an educator, patiently teaching the basics of trauma-informed care and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), which should be foundational to their training. Yet, in this demanding work, a new, small hope emerges: the empathetic relationship, when it takes root, is a two-way street. It offers the provider a chance to break free from the dehumanizing confines of the hierarchy, restoring their own sense of relational purpose, and thus benefiting both the practitioner and the patient.
