Medical Trauma Therapy
The body is the healthy person’s faithful ally…the healthy person is allowed to be their body and they make use of this right eagerly: they are their body. Illness disturbs this assimilation.
Our body becomes foreign to us. J.H. van den Berg, The Psychology of the Sickbed, 1968
“Trauma is an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual well-being.”
Medical trauma can also be enacted or re-enacted within the system of care itself.
This is often intertwined with -isms ( racism, ableism, sexism) and discrimination ( fat phobia, moralizing of health)
Perpetuation of power differentials in the health care system that leave patients and families feeling disempowered and marginalized.
Common Sources of Stress are:
- Hospitization
- Adjustment to illness or injury
- Surgery, medication
- Anticipatory Anxiety-getting a diagnosis, prognosis
- Interactions with medical providers, blunt communication, worst case scenarios, invalidation
- Medical devices, demeaning experiences
- System Navigation, client portals, technology,
- Health Care costs, finances, follow up care, insurance lingo, Pre authorizations, jumping through hoops
- Discrimination, wait times, continuity of care, medications no longer being approved.
- Lack of communication
Therapeutic interventions for Medical Trauma can include:
- Strategies to cope with somatic symptoms
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Chronic Pain
- Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Chronic Pain
- CBT for Insomnia
- Adjustment to illness or injury
- Expectation management
- Cognitive Rehabilitation -Problem Solving Therapy
- Solution Focused Therapy
- Strategies to support medical advocacy or health literacy
- Seeking representation across ability status and social support (e.g. connect with organizations)
Connect with resources that the client determines needs.
Encouraging reconnection of established strong support of the past and present.
Psychoeducation, gradual exposure therapy, communication skills on advocacy, boundaries, honoring your needs, increasing confidence.