If you've ever heard that childhood trauma and chronic illness are connected — and immediately thought "but was mine actually bad enough to count?" — this episode is for you.
Dr. Monica Fitzgerald is a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma researcher, and director of the Center for Resilience and Well-being at the University of Colorado Boulder. And she breaks something open in this conversation that I think a lot of people need to hear: the big T and little T framework? It's outdated. What we now know is that the small, ongoing, repeated things — the criticism, the dismissal, the not-quite-feeling-safe — can wire your nervous system just as powerfully as a single event. Sometimes more.
She walks me through the three E's of trauma: the Event, the Experience, and the Effects. That second E is the one that changes everything. Two siblings can grow up in the same house and have completely different nervous system responses. Because trauma isn't just what happened — it's the meaning your system made of it, in the body of the person you were at that age, with the resources you had.
We also talk about the backpack most people are carrying. Full of moments that made them question themselves, doubt their own experience, feel like they needed to be more or better to deserve love or safety. That backpack doesn't stay in the past. It shows up in chronic pain, in not trusting your body, in handing your healing over to every provider and hoping they fix it. And it starts to get lighter when you stop going at it alone.
Monica's closing thought is something I'll be sitting with: we're not built to do this alone. None of us. And if a therapist you've seen has seemed overwhelmed by your story — that wasn't a sign your story was too much. It was a sign that wasn't the right fit.
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Grace Secker. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Grace Secker och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
