Listen to yourself

“What is required is the capacity to recognize the many voices of sickness – in their contradiction, their secrecy, and their exposure of the self.” ~Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine.  

In her book Narrative Medicine, Rita Charon describes how healthcare practitioners need to consider the whole body/mind of the person they are examining, including what is said, but also what is not said. Patients deserve a practitioner’s full attention so that the cues provided by hesitations, body language, and conflicting details are not overlooked.

She presents an example of a truck driver whose sense of self was of a strong man who’d worked hard all his life. As a result, he downplayed his physical difficulties to the doctor and resisted acknowledging his heart troubles because he did not want to be seen as weak.

I had to learn that my mind lies to me.

I immediately recognized myself in this story. I’ve learned to listen to my body but that hasn’t always been the case. I know now that my body doesn’t just tell me when I’m physically sick, it tells me when I’m mentally sick, but before I acquired that recognition, I had to learn that my mind lies to me.

A few years ago, I became physically ill in a significant way. I’d always felt a sense of malaise, but at this time, it really began to increase. I came down with colds constantly. I couldn’t eat during the day without developing severe stomach cramps. I had headaches and sometimes portions of my vision would blank out. I developed insomnia. I visited many doctors and I was diagnosed with many things. I was told I had macular degeneration. Later, it turns out I just had a slight solar burn.

I was told I had IBS. I was told endometriosis, psoriasis, silent migraines, polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was sent to many specialists. I had my brain scanned, my body scanned. I had two laparoscopies and portions of my uterus were cauterized. In all of this, there was little discussion. I’d try to speak but I was frequently cut off, or treated condescendingly. I’m well educated and normally capable of speaking my mind, but our extremely impersonal and overworked healthcare system is a great equalizer, and it quickly silenced me.

My mind was making my body feel bad.

I became tired and lethargic, crawling into bed at 8 p.m. only to wake up with terrible psychotic nightmares at 1 a.m. Then finally, I saw a TV commercial that said depression and anxiety don’t just cause emotional discomfort, they cause physical symptoms too, and suddenly I realized, my body wasn’t making my mind feel bad – my mind was making my body feel bad. My body was trying to tell me what my conscious self didn’t want to face. In my family, there’s lots of mental illness. I’d always been the strong one and I didn’t want to admit that I might also suffer from a mental disorder.

I now realize that if all the doctors I saw had taken the time to listen to more than just the details of the niche symptoms that applied to their specialty, they might have heard me describe the total mind/body pain that I was feeling. Turns out, there was nothing seriously wrong with me physically – I only have mild endometriosis and I don’t have macular degeneration or polycystic ovarian syndrome – I have stress.

I feel much better now.

Once I realized what was really going on, I was able to look back on my history of illness with new eyes. I have an anxiety disorder. I’m lucky though; anxiety medication and a self-guided writing therapy work for me. I feel much better now.

But there’s a tragic side to this story. During that time, I had four miscarriages. Three of them required D&Cs. It’s likely that the medical interventions I had in the search for what was wrong with me caused them. I’ve since had a successful pregnancy and I have a beautiful two-year-old son. I also have two amazing teenage daughters. But I think I’ll always wonder – what if someone in the medical field had heard me tell the entire story of my pain? How might my life have been different, if, as Rita Charon writes, doctors were taught to listen more deeply to the person inside the body they’re trying fix?