A Difficult Topic

Sunshine to you on this glorious day!

A very difficult topic:  I'm writing today on behalf of those whose hearts, minds, and bodies were insulted by physical and/or psychological trauma prior to falling prey to toxic injury.

This is a difficult topic, firstly, because it is both highly sensitive and highly personal -- not easily discussed in any venue.  Secondly, it is a difficult topic because the thought process of unaffected onlookers can quickly veer in the direction of:  "So perhaps your toxic injury is all in your head, after all."

For a person who has been both traumatized and toxically injured, this judgment would be a devastating and unjust ramification.

Trauma, it is now known, can disrupt and alter neurological pathways in the brain.  The body under physical and/or psychological siege must contend with skyrocketing "fight-or-flight" adrenalin surges; subsequent hormonal interference and/or frank hormonal imbalance; resultant metabolic and circulatory changes due to the impact of severe stress on cortisol levels; sleep disruption or sleep deprivation; and the crushing weight of overwhelming emotional pain through it all.

If non-traumatized widowers in bereavement can succumb to heart attack and early death, just imagine how vulnerable can be the bodies of those already ravaged by physical and/or emotional pain inflicted by others or by catastrophic events.

Add a few pervasive chemicals to the mix, and such already-afflicted physical systems can, in effect, "tip right over."  With all systems overloaded to begin with, toxins can then become just "one too many" insults. 

And if that weren't enough, yet more aversive ingredients are added when others rush to judgment about such suffering and add "insults to injury."

For those of you have have, in fact, suffered debilitating emotional pain and trauma, please know that my heart goes out to you.

With this brief commentary, I've only just begun to dip my little toe in the water of a very complex topic.  I've caught wind of cognitive treatments for toxic injury which, it is claimed, have successfully enabled some toxically injured people to retrain the part (or parts) of the brain which are thought to be operative in neurologically sensitized reactions to chemicals.  As I understand it, this type of treatment specifically rejects the philosophy that toxic injury/chemical sensitivity is "all in the head."  The brain "retraining," therefore, does not imply that the cause of chemical sensitivity is embedded in psychological factors -- but merely that this physical malady lodged its effects in the neurologically reactive part of the brain.

Moreover, there are surely many toxically injured people who were never previously traumatized -- so that this suspected effect of the chemical reactivity lodging in the brain would hold true for both traumatized and non-traumatized sufferers.  May we respectfully acknowledge that trauma of any sort can render the body vulnerable to subsequent injury; and may we recognize that, once toxic injury actually does occur, it is firmly rooted in the body.

The true implication of such reports is that, if we (the toxically injured with or without previous trauma) can manage to access that physically sensitive part of the brain through the circuit of our own thought processes, we may have more power than we think to assist our bodies in at least some degree of healing.

While I'm always especially careful to reserve judgment about the emotional and spiritual safety of cognitive treatment endeavors with which I'm personally unfamiliar, I do grant myself the freedom to research them liberally and, in the meantime, to hope.

I hope I've spread a little sunshine to you today.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn