When Healthcare Hurts: Strategies for Coping with Medical Trauma
Medical care is supposed to help us feel better. But for some people, the healthcare system itself can become a source of fear, frustration, loss of control, or trauma.
Medical trauma can develop after a frightening procedure, a serious diagnosis, a prolonged hospitalization, repeated medical interventions, or experiences of feeling dismissed or unheard. It can also accumulate over time. Especially for people living with complex, rare, chronic, or poorly understood illnesses, years of appointments, tests, uncertainty, and interactions with multiple providers can take an emotional and physical toll.
It is important to remember that the same medical experience will not affect everyone in the same way. An event may be stressful for one person and traumatic for another. Trauma is about the person's experience—not simply what happened or what someone intended.
Agency Over Control: Choosing Your Response When Life Chooses the Circumstances
“You can’t control what anyone else does. What you can do is decide how to use your own agency to move forward.” What’s the difference between agency and control? Making this distinction now might be more important than it's ever been for preserving our mental health when so much feels out of our control. Read to learn more about how when recognize agency when our choices are limited.
Advance Care Planning: Know Your Options
During a period of critical illness many patients are unable to speak for themselves, and their next-of-kin is often called upon to help make decisions about the best care for them. In such cases, patient’s families often find it helpful when a patient has made an advance directive detailing what kind of treatment they would want if they were unlikely to recover certain levels of mental or physical functioning. You can take steps today to start (or continue!) this important conversation.
IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU! And other stuff sick people wish they could say.
When a person in your life is going through a hard time such as an illness, divorce, or bereavement and your question is “how can I not say the wrong thing to them?” Dr. Susan Silk’s Ring Theory provides a simple answer: comfort in, dump out.
Hospice & Palliative Care: Know Your Options
If you’re caring for an aging relative or coping with a serious illness, a healthcare provider might one day ask you to consider palliative care or hospice services. This can be confusing as many patients and families aren’t aware that there are palliative care options that aren’t hospice. It also can be scary to hear these words, as they often are associated with end-of-life care. However, connecting with the right services at the right time is key for patient quality of life and caregiver support.