What’s Love Got To Do With It?
The Diagnosis Disaster
Meet Marilyn – labeled bipolar, depressed, and borderline by different doctors. None of these diagnoses capture her real issue: childhood trauma. Psychiatry loves its labels like Tony Soprano loved gabagool, but slapping “PTSD” on abuse survivors is like diagnosing a bullet wound as “excessive bleeding.”
The DSM manual made mental health a billion-dollar industry while leaving patients like Marilyn stuck in diagnostic limbo. We’ve got precise labels for strep throat but can’t properly categorize the fallout of childhood terror? Cool system.
Taking a Trauma History Without Retraumatizing
When we started asking trauma survivors the right questions, the floodgates opened:
- 1 in 4 couldn’t name a single safe person from childhood
- Many described steering drunk parents’ cars at age 9
- Sexual abuse often began before first grade
Our Traumatic Antecedents Questionnaire worked because we didn’t lead with “So, who molested you?” We asked who did the cooking. Who made them feel special. The heartbreaking answers came naturally.
Self-Harm as Survival Strategy
That woman who slashed her neck at 3am? She wasn’t “attention-seeking”, cutting literally regulated her nervous system. Childhood abuse survivors often develop what looks like madness but is actually brilliant adaptation:
- Dissociation protects from unbearable pain
- Obesity becomes armor against sexual attention
- Addiction numbs the constant alarm bells
When your coping mechanisms get diagnosed as disorders, no wonder treatment fails.
The ACE Study Bombshell
That CDC study revealed what trauma survivors already knew:
| ACE Score | Increased Risk Of… |
|---|---|
| 4+ | 5000% higher suicide attempts |
| 6+ | 4600% higher IV drug use |
| Any | 66% depression rate in women |
Yet we still treat the symptoms (antidepressants, weight loss programs) while ignoring the root cause. Because nothing says “healing” like blaming the victim, right?
When Protection Becomes Pathology
That 400lb woman who regained weight after attracting male attention? She wasn’t “non-compliant”, her body was protecting her. Trauma responses aren’t problems to eliminate but survival strategies to honor before gently rewriting.
The mental health industrial complex keeps prescribing pills when what survivors really need is:
- Safety
- Agency
- Community
- Someone who actually listens
But hey, at least Big Pharma’s shareholders are thriving.
Final Thought:
We’ve medicalized trauma responses while ignoring trauma itself. Until we start treating causes rather than symptoms, we’ll keep creating lifelong patients instead of healing survivors. The body keeps the score – when will psychiatry start reading it?
