How Trauma Therapy Helped Me Realize I Was Sexually Abused By My Mother

put a 10 on their head, you will find yourself believing the best about that person. You can imagine how drastically this shifts the interaction. But, again, this doesn’t happen by accident.

Excerpted from by Nataly Kogan, published on Feb. 8, 2022 by Sounds True.

Like many fellow “Zebras” or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) patients, my diagnostic odyssey took around 15 years — from initial physical symptom onset to a formal diagnosis at age 35 last February. In those 15 years, I was repeatedly disbelieved, discredited, belittled, patronized, and gaslighted by the medical professionals who were supposed to be caring for me and helping me. Instead of helping me, they subjected me to unforgivable levels of iatrogenic harm — harm caused by the medical profession. Their lack of clinical knowledge, inability to manage complex patients, and downright ignorance delayed my diagnosis for years on end. By blaming my “mental health” for everything I experienced, they absolved themselves of any responsibility for finding out what was happening with my body.  For years, doctors didn’t believe that anything was actually physically “wrong” with me, and they repeatedly told me, “It’s all in your head.” My doctors told me that what I perceived were “physical” problems were categorically attributed to “psychological causes” as aftereffects of severe childhood abuse and trauma.

It all started when my mother took a piece of loose-leaf paper, held it against my back, and used a fluorescent yellow highlighter to trace my spine. “Your spine is literally curving,” she said to me.

Challenges, both big and small, can affect everyone — no matter what walk of life you come from. As a person with cerebral palsy, even the most basic daily tasks can be a struggle. At 35 years old, I still struggle day-to-day with simple things, like putting on shoes and tying them and making my way up and down any flight of stairs. The majority of individuals with CP often face the harsh reality of chronic pain on a daily basis, and I am no different. Sure, I’ve learned to hide my pain most days, but I can never fully escape it. Some days, it is my legs in pain; other days it’s my back that hurts. I hurt just as much on days when I sit on the couch and do nothing as I do on the days when I’m on my feet for an eight-hour workday. For me, unpredictability is often one of the most frustrating things about living with cerebral palsy.

post-vacation stress and depression are uncontrollable or to be expected. The good news is that with some healthy coping skills these feelings can be managed and we can get ourselves to a more optimistic viewpoint.

When I first arrived in Australia from the UK in early 2012, I witnessed the WEIRDEST thing….I was driving along a country back road ‘out bush’, when I noticed the Department of Parks and Wildlife trucks making a roadblock.  A tunnel of thick black smoke filled the hot summer air just beyond them, billowing and undulating aggressively as if it was sent by the Devil himself to annihilate all life on Earth.I stopped at the roadblock, mesmerized by the ferocity of nature, when I saw the weird thing…Men and women, wearing fluorescent yellow onesies were deliberately setting fire to the bushland. Deliberately!They were holding ignitor devices that looked like flame-throwers, casually walking along the roadside, and pouring flames onto the bushland.I was incredulous.Terrified.Angry.“What HOOLIGANS!” I screamed inside my head, slapping my steering wheel.I sat there with my mouth wide open wondering what I should do about the flame-thrower-wielding nut-bags.I could not believe the destruction that was unfolding in front of me.Black smoke billowed into the air, a swarm of Eagles, Kites, and Kestrels circled above, occasionally diving to the smoldering ashes to pick off the fleeing reptiles and rodents.“OMG the animals!!! The plants!” I wanted to run into the fire and save everything.The searing orange flames incinerated the gum trees, grasses and shrubs with every lick, and made the wind swirl like mini-tornadoes around my car making the heat even more unbearable than it already was in my old banger with dodgy air-con. What on earth was going on?? Should I call the Police? Had these Government workers gone rogue? I was about to rage out of my car and perform a multiple citizens arrest, when one of the male flame-throwers politely

It was 5:15 AM on a Friday morning in 2015. Karissa, my girlfriend, was heading off to the early morning yoga class that she taught. As part of our ritual, half asleep, I muttered “Have fun at yoga”, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

What if stress could be your friend?

For the past while, it has felt a little bit like the world is somehow sliding back into a less tolerant age, even while marginalized people such as the LGBTQIA+ community are publicly accepted more than ever. And perhaps that’s the curse of living in a social media echo chamber, where confirmation bias is king. I certainly know that I surround myself with queer people and fellow allies because I believe in the diversity of gender and sexuality, and quickly prune any such people I find morally repugnant.

Recently, our youngest baby girl turned one. It also marked the one-year anniversary of my COVID-19 diagnosis. Yes, one of the best days of my life was clouded by the virus that has plagued our lives for nearly two years now.

I found myself completely flat on a beer-stained floor with the weight of a foreign body pinning me to the ground.

These Animal Farm quotes will remind you to always check your privilege and to think of what can happen when you use power to harm others.

When you live with a health condition, hygiene can become an uphill battle. Teeth go unbrushed, showers may be forsaken, and for a lot of people, hair becomes a challenge. Sure, to some people, hair is just hair. For others, it’s not that simple.

How to renew yourself All of life’s challenges are opportunities in disguise. When you feel , it is actually the perfect opportunity to renew yourself. It’s your chance to realize that, as Tony says, we grow so that we can give. Self-renewal is an essential part of our .

Creating a passionate work culture Modern workers want . They often look to their jobs to provide them with purpose and meaning. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll move on.

Soar, a summer camp that works with kids with learning disabilities and attention issues. She was searching for ADHD camps for her nine-year-old son, Wilson.“He’s never been successful in day camps,” she says. “We tried them all — academic, enrichment, and sports-related camps.

With our ongoing “What Helps Me” series, The Mighty is leaning into what sets us apart from other health sites: We aim to provide real health advice from real people who live it.

When we talk about trauma, we may tend to think of it as being caused by a single terrible event, such as an accident or an incident in which we felt we were in danger. However, this way of thinking may make it easy for us to forget about the other things in our lives that cause us distress and can leave us dealing with the emotional aftermath of our trauma for years to come. These other events include losing a loved one, losing a home or belongings, and of course, becoming ill with a chronic illness.

by Jennie Shulkin, J.D. and Heather Martarella, Psy.D.

toxic attachment patterns, your love life will always be lacking. You risk seeing yourself in a bad light, which in turn makes you have low self-worth. Because of this, you might cling to any person that shows you even the tiniest drop of attention.

I’m sure, by now, most of you have heard of ACEs, otherwise known as adverse childhood experiences. The term was first coined by the Kaiser Permanente health care organization in Southern California and referred to any incidents in childhood that may result in trauma or any other type of difficulty. To us, with our 2022 sensibilities, this seems obvious. But into the mid-1980s, the connection between emotional experiences and health was seen as unscientific. It was downright pseudoscience. This means there were so many generations before our own that believed their emotional experiences had no impact on their health. That makes all the holiday arguments make a little more sense, right? However, now we have an almost universal understanding that our experiences can shape our emotions which can create real change in our biology. And that experiencing adversity at any point in life, particularly in childhood, can impact health outcomes long-term. 

With our ongoing “What Helps Me” series, The Mighty is leaning into what sets us apart from other health sites: We aim to provide real health advice from real people who live it.

Art is more than meets the eye.

This collection of quotes about helping others will inspire you to lend a helping hand for nothing in return.

My mom called me into her bedroom. She held up my English notebook. I was in ninth grade. I knew in that instance what her snooping had discovered. I had been very depressed over the course of my time in high school. I had a lot to be depressed about. I was being sexually abused in my home.

fabkin that enhances metabolic health. This hormone may contribute to both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, according to research led by the Sabri Ülker Center for Metabolic Research at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.The study found that mice and human patients with either type 1 or 2 diabetes had abnormally high blood levels of fabkin.

ADDitude readers shared their answers to the question, “What is your most satisfying or unbreakable daily routine?” Subscribing to a meal kit service, setting eight alarms, or practicing yoga every morning are just several of the daily routine examples cited by adults with ADHD — share yours in the Comments section below.I’m slow to wake, so my morning routine is designed to get me fully alert. I take my meds and, as I sip my coffee, I do a mental ‘check-in’ on every part of my body.

My panic attacks only popped up about two years ago, but it’s difficult to imagine life without them. Activities I used to enjoy now generate a sense of doom and fear. I can’t get my nails done because there isn’t an easy escape. I barely made it through my hair appointment a few weeks ago, which I’d been avoiding for over a year.

Growing up, I was always told I was bright – I just needed to apply myself. 

what is the definition of success?” Everitt says. For years, Everitt says he was largely . But then something his father, who died of brain cancer at 64, said on his deathbed changed him. “He had a moment right near the end where he sat up in bed, and very clearly asked, ‘Is this it?’” Everitt says. “Those were the last words he ever said to me.

I sat in my GP’s windowless office, wracked with sobs, gripping the denim of my pants and bracing myself against the truth. “Either you call an ambulance to lock me away in a ward or you call the cops and take me to prison before I murder my mother.” 

download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.“Many problems observed in today’s society can be linked, directly or indirectly, to human behavior,” including debilitating illnesses and chronic conditions, such as obesity, cancer, sexually transmitted infections, and cardiovascular disease (Hagger et al., 2020, p.

I have Crohn’s disease. I was diagnosed in February of 2021, so I am coming up on a year of clarity about my health.

As I was turning 18, I’d spent the past two years bouncing between psychiatric hospitalizations and ultimately spending six months in residential treatment, getting discharged about two months before my 18th birthday. What I quickly discovered, though, was that the ground I had regained in residential was immediately lost when I was thrown back into the same abusive environment that led me to develop those maladaptive coping mechanisms in the first place.

I had a “Woo-hoo” moment yesterday when opening an email that stated I no longer had to obtain a medical provider certification to renew my medication card. I thought “Yes! I don’t have to have this hassle (and expense) every couple of years.”

With our ongoing “What Helps Me” series, The Mighty is leaning into what sets us apart from other health sites: We aim to provide real health advice from real people who live it.

With our ongoing “What Helps Me” series, The Mighty is leaning into what sets us apart from other health sites: We aim to provide real health advice from real people who live it.

“If you don’t use it, you’re going to lose it.”

With our ongoing “What Helps Me” series, The Mighty is leaning into what sets us apart from other health sites: We aim to provide real health advice from real people who live it.

With our ongoing “What Helps Me” series, The Mighty is leaning into what sets us apart from other health sites: We aim to provide real health advice from real people who live it.

Pelvic floor therapy is a type of physical therapy that works on the low back, abdomen, pelvis, and muscles of the pelvic floor. Each patient receives pelvic floor therapy in a one-on-one, customized, and private treatment setting. Pelvic health physical therapists will focus on enhancing awareness of the pelvic floor. Certain treatment programs can significantly help you in relieving your symptoms by relaxing and lengthening the muscles, while others will assist you in strengthening the muscles. Westlake Pelvic Floor Therapy is a first-line, low-risk, and minimally invasive therapeutic option for a variety of illnesses.

When I was just 13 years old, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder and entered an outpatient program for children and adolescents with eating disorders. What should have been my last year of middle school before entering high school that following year signaled the beginning of a string of long-term institutionalization.

I am one of the luckiest of the chronically ill cardholders, in my opinion; because throughout my time dealing with chronic illness, I haven’t faced it on my own.  Prior to getting sick and for the whole time since I have had the amazing fortune of being in a loving partnership.  For almost 26 years now I have had the same, steadfast, and supportive woman by my side.  She has loved and cared for me as a person with and without disabling conditions and I could spend the remainder of my days writing about how these illnesses impact our relationship, life together, communication, our sex life, the future we had planned, how we deal individually and as a couple, and still not run out of material.

I have been in many forms of treatment, on and off, over the last decade. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is the only therapy I am aware of that offers the unique component referred to as “skills coaching.” To my surprise, “skills coaching” is a missing ingredient in my recovery, one I wish I had access to years before I knew what DBT was or I even had a diagnosis. Coaching would have helped me prevent suicide attempts, impulsive actions, and self-harm. Coaching would have also helped me to not make a bad situation worse and could have empowered me to create a focused plan to skillfully manage many hard days. While I cannot go back, I can share part of my story and encourage others to consider DBT skills coaching as part of their recovery plan — especially if they’ve already discussed it with a professional.

narcissistic personality disorder. Many people exhibit a narcissistic trait on occasion, but that’s not enough for a diagnosis. Clinical assessment is needed to accurately diagnose and identify narcissistic personality disorder.It’s also important to note that narcissistic personality disorder is relatively rare.

download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free. These science-based, comprehensive exercises will help you cultivate a sense of inner peace throughout your daily life and give you the tools to enhance the mindfulness of your clients, students, or employees.Many people with anxiety live happy and fulfilling lives.

“I would never do what you do,” is a phrase I often hear when I tell people I’m a trauma therapist. I get it. Who would choose to be constantly exposed to the consequences of malicious child abuse, immeasurable loss, vicious violence and other traumatic experiences? My colleagues and I make this choice every day, and we do so with resilience, compassion, courage and tenacity. Here are some insights into this unique group of clinicians.