I have heard a million reasons about why we are suffering this way. The book the body keeps the score is one of the few that links the affects of trauma on the brain and health. So I wonder what is your point of trauma? Do you have one? What age did symptoms begin? I’ll go first.

I suffered years of childhood sexual abuse to the hands of a pedophile who kept me locked up at times. Then in my late twenties my bf and then fiancé of 7 years abandoned me, literally got on a plane and started a new life (he had his own mental health problems). The relationships that followed the abandonment have been torturous and hurtful. One even lead to DV violence and serious financial abuse.

On paper I am highly accomplished. At some point in life the only way to move forward was to prove the world wrong about me, but since getting hit with CFS and discovering post pandemic that I’ve had ADHD this whole time and have dealt with other autoimmune disorders, my world has been flipped upside down. I am a shell of my former self most days. No one knows how much I am suffering, no one understands what is means to be stuck with no energy for anything.

At the rare moments when my energy is balanced I think, I can do this, I can finish that Harvard grad degree. Maybe I will be the Ceo everyone once expected me to be. I scribble on walls with ideas that for those rare moments are clear and illuminated. I have files of business plans, inventions and ideas that come when the clarity returns, but then the gears stop and I sleep for days. Those moments of energy and clarity happen less and less. When I “work” I produce beyond my own imagination and everyone’s expectations. People think I am just burnt out. This is not burnout, this is the years of trauma manifested into my body.

My ex’s have been doctors (mostly) and they tell me about how their medical world views people like us. We are misunderstood, we “make it up”, we are lazy, we are just all undiagnosed MDD and anxiety, hypochondriacs,… etc. But no one can explain it. I cannot explain it. Not my sister who is a psychologist. Not my ex’s who have seen my suffering. So maybe this thread here can serve as a teachable moment for someone who wants to understand us better. Do you have trauma in your past? When did this start for you?