Category Archives: Healthcare
Trust as Medicine: A Six-Year Journey in Craniosacral Therapy
After six years of working together, my craniosacral practitioner finally felt my cranial rhythmic impulse. That moment is huge. It’s not just a technical milestone, but proof of how much my nervous system has had to work to regulate, reorganize, … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged care, chronic pain, craniosacral, craniosacral practitioner, pain, PTSD, reliability, trauma recovery, trust
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Putting Our Lived Experience on the Record Can Help Build a Sense of Safety
I started bringing a printed page to my pain specialist appointments because I needed a way to communicate that worked for my nervous system and his. Each page bears the date and his name, plus brief status updates on regional … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged continuity, Doctor, IPNB, notes, pain specialist, records, Regulation, safety
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Accumulated Harm: The Hidden Toll of Healthcare Encounters
Every time we turn to a practitioner for help, we engage in a deeply vulnerable act. We reach out not just for solutions, but for connection, support, and some kind of shared human understanding. From a Relational Neuroscience perspective, the … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged allostatic load, attunement, betrayal, doctors, harm, health, healthcare, medical stress, Stress
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“The God Shot”: Magical Thinking for a Culture That Refuses to Change
Dr. Eugene Lipov, who helped develop the use of Stellate Ganglion Blocks (SGB) for PTSD, announced the release of his new book, “The God Shot.” The title refers to a medical procedure he also calls a “Dual Sympathetic Reset (DSR).” … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged #TheGodShot, Dr. Eugene Lipov, Lipov, PTSD, SGB, Stella, Stellate Ganglion Block, The God Shot, Trauma
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Stuck on Red Alert: The Hidden Harm of Seeking Help
For most of the last seven years, I haven’t been able to feel the normal range of human emotions. Joy, peace, gratitude, awe, and beauty have been mostly absent. Most of the time, I can only think about these things. … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Healthcare
Tagged abuse, awe, emotions, healthcare, hypervigilance, joy, Medicine, peace, recovery, Red Alert, wonder
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My Best Ever Hospital Experience
In the past few years, I had too many awful hospital experiences here in Delaware. They are a stark contrast to those I previously had in Virginia. Twenty years ago I had a severe gallbladder attack. The pain was intense. … Continue reading
I Can’t Trust a Doctor Who Doesn’t Trust Me
I Can’t Trust a Doctor Who Doesn’t Trust Me The biggest barrier to my health has been the practitioner’s refusal to trust me. They don’t believe what I say about my body, experience, or reality. They can’t take in what … Continue reading
When Healthcare Feels Dangerous: How Practitioners Shape Our Capacity to Heal
When I tell a practitioner that I’m not doing well, and they dismiss or minimize what I say–what I share of my lived experience–it makes everything worse. It increases my sense of unsafety. It pushes me even further onto Red … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged attune, attunement, compassion, doctors, healthcare, healthcare practitioners, IPNB, relationship, witnessing
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Survivors in the Lurch: How Doctors Disregard Their Role in Resolving Medical Trauma
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Healthcare
Tagged attunement, Doctor, doctor-patient relationship, doctors, Empathy, IPNB, Medical PTSD, MPTSD, pain, pain specialist, relationship, therapy
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My Survival Is the Punchline: Cartooning the Awful Truth
I make cartoon watercolors because my system won’t let me keep it all inside. When something is too much, too absurd, too violating, or too flat-out dismissive, I feel compelled to get it out on paper. It’s not an intellectual … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Healthcare
Tagged accountability, art, cartoons, creativity, expression, integration, medical abuse, Medicine, psychiatry, watercolors
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