There are two categories of trauma. One may seem obvious and one less obvious. Both can affect your health.
There is Shock Trauma (PTSD) and Developmental/Complex Trauma (C-PTSD). Shock trauma has a distinct beginning and end. Examples would be a car accident or a bear attack. Complex trauma results from chronic, long-term exposure to relational and emotional trauma where your stability, security and safety are threatened on an ongoing basis. Examples of this would be ongoing physical, sexual or verbal abuse, or growing up in a household with an alcoholic or mentally ill caretaker. Chronic illness can also pose an ongoing threat. What’s important to know is that ANY trauma can deeply affect your health and your ability to heal.
Don’t Wait to be Asked about Trauma
Now more than ever, providers are tuning into mental health issues that present as physical illness. We’ve all completed paperwork reporting our health history including what illnesses, injuries, or familial histories might affect our health. Be sure to include any traumatic experiences in your history.
Don’t be afraid to share trauma history with your physician, even if they don’t include it on their intake. Knowing about traumatic experiences you’ve dealt with can help them offer you preventative care as well as make better decisions about current treatments.
Some key trauma’s worth reporting include-
- Accidents or acute illnesses
- Abuse or neglect
- Domestic violence
- Victimization
- Significant losses
- Familial histories of alcohol, drug abuse or mental illness
Any of these or other traumas can help your physician better understand what influences could be affecting your overall health.
Discuss Coping Skills with Your Physician Too
Everyone deals with stress in their own way. Coping skills are conscious and subconscious strategies people use to manage difficult things. What causes trauma for one person may not affect another in the same way. Similarly, what one person does to cope, may look nothing like what someone else does. Reporting your typical coping skills to your physician can help them identify dangerous coping skills or connect the dots between your health and the coping skills you may engage in. For instance, drug, alcohol, or food are often used as coping skills for trauma. That means addictions and obesity may be connected to trauma and require a specific type of support.
Take a Team Approach to Your Health Care
Having a primary care physician is common, but you may need more providers on your team. If you’ve experienced trauma of any kind, singularly or repeated, you may benefit from including a psychologist or psychiatrist on your care team. Asking your primary care doc for a referral can actually increase the quality of your care and oftentimes prevent manifestations of physical illness in your body.
Therapies and Modalities That Help with Trauma
- Somatic Experiencing: https://traumahealing.org/
- EMDR: https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
- NARM: https://narmtraining.com/
- EFT: https://www.thetappingsolution.com/
- DNRS: https://www.dnrsonline.com/
- Gupta Program: https://www.guptaprogram.com/
Your history greatly impacts today and tomorrow. Be confident in sharing the past with your primary care provider, even if you see yourself as a survivor and moved on. The truth is, what happened may affect your health and you deserve to be the healthiest version of yourself as possible. Help your health care provider connect the dots by giving them a full account of your physical and mental health history.
