Season 1 Episode 5
PART 1 - Women and Medical Gaslighting - When mental and physical health intersect.
This episode is part 1 of a 3 part series. Today we will be going over the topic of women and healthcare, including medical gaslighting that occurs, and the challenges for medical providers when mental and physical health intersect.
In Part 2 - next week’s episode - I’m sharing a personal story about some health issues I had at the beginning of the year, right after I left my 9-5 job… I experienced both an iron deficiency and long covid or post-viral syndrome. Both of which women are more likely to get. Both of which have symptoms that look like anxiety. It’s estimated 20% of women under 50 are iron deficient. And the majority of people who are documented with post viral syndrome after Covid are women. There are also estimates ranging from 10-30% of people who get Covid will experience post viral syndrome (which is something that happens with many different viruses by the way, it’s not totally new).
In Part 3 we will chat about research on Mindfulness and chronic pain or chronic health issues and how it can really benefit people. And I’ll share personally how I used my Mindfulness skills to get through the first 6 months of the year, which were some of the scariest in my life. Let me tell ya, we can really take our health for granted.
So, before I dive in I want to give a little trigger warning, if you are someone who deals with health anxiety the next few episodes may not be the episodes for you. Having unexplained and undiagnosed physical symptoms is really scary, and the mind always wants to jump to the worst case scenario, so if this is something you really struggle with you may want to skip these episodes.
The other sort of disclaimer I want to give is that obviously I’m not a medical doctor, this is not medical advice. I cannot guarantee that everything I share here is 100% accurate. So as I’m sharing about my personal experience, what I learned through self-research and what helped me, that’s all this is. If you ever have concerns about your mental or physical health, always speak to your own healthcare providers. And, part of what I’ll be discussing here is, what happens when the medical field fails you and is not set up to thoroughly explore your concerns and help you figure out what’s going on. It is important for you to do your own research, but …. careful and mindful research. Don’t go down internet rabbit holes. Seek out information that is well established, research based, or at least check multiple sources for yourself.
Something that I did throughout my experience is bring in the research I had found to my doctor. Be an active participant in your care. Bring ideas, solutions and questions to your providers because the truth is that any provider (medical or mental health) is not specialized in everything. That’s impossible, and we’re going to dive into some of that later - how our medical system here in the US really fails to work holistically with people with an integrated care approach even though the system is tryyyying to move in that direction over time.
This is one of the reasons why I am actually really loving to see all the nurses, nutritionists and mental health professionals moving into the coaching field - where people can have access to more personalized forms of holistic care outside of the traditional medical model which so often fails people.
SO I’m sharing my story for a few reasons, which I want to outline today before going into my personal experience in the next episode.
1 - if even one person can find help through me sharing my experiences then it’s worth it.
I’m naturally a very open person to begin with. In fact one of my previous colleagues and dear friends once described me as, ‘what you see is what you get.’ If you’re into astrology, my sun, moon and rising are all in the same sign… which basically means my insides are my outsides. I’m very comfortable being open about who I am and my personal experiences… and if that can benefit or help someone in this case then that’s important. And I truly believe that there are probably MANY people out there struggling with undiagnosed iron deficiency or even post viral syndrome and are too unsure or embarrassed to talk about it, or are hitting walls with their healthcare providers. So, I just want to have some discussion here for people who may be silently suffering.
2 - to continue the theme from last week’s episode on the Mind/Body connection and how that plays out in the medical system with mental & physical health care. Our current medical system separates the two - go to these doctors for physical health, and these doctors for mental health (as I just mentioned there is some movement towards integrated care but it is still majorly lacking). In the past I have worked in healthcare settings, on integrated healthcare teams. I worked with individuals who had serious mental illness as well as chronic physical illnesses, assisting them in managing both sides of their health and helping them navigate the medical system. The Medical System - Both mental and physical - is highly siloed, so if a medical doctor sees something that looks like anxiety symptoms they will just send you over for a mental health referral. AND the medical system is built to treat PROBLEMS or symptoms. It struggles to look at the WHOLE person holistically. It is not specialized in preventative care and functional / holistic / alternative medicine is not covered by insurance. Functional medicine is looking at how nutrients and hormones work in the body which is fucking FOUNDATIONAL, and a part of what I’ll be sharing with my experience.
When we look at mental health treatment… Psychiatry is the only field that doesn’t actually examine the organ being treated. There are rarely brain scans or EEGs to determine whether in fact there may be abnormalities in the structure and electrical functioning of the brain. There are Hormones, Nutrient Deficiencies/Imbalances that can lead to symptoms like anxiety or depression. There is SUCH a delicate physical balance in the body …. and, it’s hard to figure this stuff out sometimes. Doctors are not specialized in understanding everything.
And…This Episode is not to hate on the medical profession… I am so grateful for the medical advances we have, our life spans are increasing and I have a lot of respect for providers. AND the system is what the system is, there are good and bad apples everywhere. The truth is, pharmaceutical companies and insurance providers rule all here in the USA - so many healthcare providers literally have their hands tied behind their back to give the kind of care they actually want to give to their patients. This is one of the reasons I’m moving out of the traditional mental health treatment model - but that’s another episode.
So, We as utilizers of the healthcare system have to be informed and use it intentionally. Like I said earlier, Be an active participant.
And… REALLY, what I learned and applied during the first part of this year is to Focus on the foundational building blocks of health: Nutrition, Sleep, Anti-Inflammation, Slowing Down and Natural Supplements. It’s amazing what the body can do when we give it the tools it needs. Pharmaceutical and Insurance companies do not want you to know that.
3 - Long history of Medical Gaslighting for women in particular, when genuine physical symptoms are written off as ‘mental health’ or somatic complaints. ‘Somatic symptom disorder is diagnosed when a person has a significant focus on physical symptoms, such as pain, weakness or shortness of breath, to a level that results in major distress and/or problems functioning. The individual has excessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors relating to the physical symptoms.’ It’s easier to write off a person’s distress as ‘Somatic’ rather than take the time to actually figure out what is going on. It’s not trusting women’s ability to feel what is actually going on in their mind/body. This is the patriarchy power structure hard at work. ‘She’s just being emotional. She’s just exaggerating. Don’t listen to the woman’s complaints.’ right?
So to be clear, there ARE situations where symptoms are primarily mental health related… for example:
> Munchausen Syndrome: a mental condition in which a person repeatedly seeks medical attention for falsified, exaggerated, or self-inflicted physical symptoms. This is a VERY SMALL segment of people who truly fit this criteria.. Just like Narcissistic personality disorder is sort of ‘trending’ and greatly overestimated in the population.
> There are also individuals with more severe mental health challenges including personality disorders which can be difficult to interact with AND on top of that have medical concerns, and THESE people struggle GREATLY to get needs met, and medical providers don’t usually have the training, patience, time or resources to work with these more complex situations - unless it’s a specialized program with that specific focus.
So, in this episode I am not talking about those subsets of challenges.
And, when we’re talking about whether or not to believe a person’s reported experiences, let me give an example in the mental health field when it comes to Treating psychosis - that is visual/auditory hallucinations, or delusions which are false beliefs - you don’t counter that person’s experience or tell them it’s ‘NOT REAL’, because it IS what they are experiencing or perceiving. So the neurons firing in their brain are the same neurons that would fire if that experience were actually happening. So again, disbelieving a person’s experience or writing it off as invalid is never helpful.
I just want to add, when it comes to ignoring or disbelieving medical or mental health concerns in women, this is magnified even more if you’re a member of any other marginalized group including Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQ population). I’ve linked some articles in the show notes with some of the data, and this is easily searchable and well documented.
I could do a whole other episode on this, but there is something called Social Determinants of Health, you can look it up and probably find the data for your own local town or region. There are things like what neighborhood you live in, what your income is, your race/ethnicity and more, which are associated with poorer health outcomes - that is, more chronic health conditions and even shorter lifespans. It’s very interesting stuff you can read about it, again I’ve linked some articles in the show notes.
I’m just mentioning this again, to highlight the very real indiscrepancies that exist in our healthcare system when it comes to trying to get the help you need.
SO ..In terms of women, I’m going to read a portion of a research article from Harvard just to give some examples:
‘women in pain are much more likely than men to receive prescriptions for sedatives, rather than pain medication, for their ailments. One study even showed women who received coronary bypass surgery were only half as likely to be prescribed painkillers, as compared to men who had undergone the same procedure. Women wait an average of 65 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain in the ER in the United States, while men wait only 49 minutes.’ - End quote.
So, this is speaking to the fact that people have these implicit biases around whether or not to believe women… and they usually opt not to. ‘She’s not in that much pain, or she’s just being hysterical. Let's sedate her.’ And, Implicit bias is a belief that is held subconsciously and it’s developed by soaking in any given culture from the time we’re born. It’s not our ‘FAULT’ that we ALL have implicit biases, but it is our responsibility to become aware of our implicit biases so that we can do the never ending work of unraveling them.
Here’s more from the Harvard article, it says ‘For instance, a 2000 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that women are seven times more likely than men to be misdiagnosed and discharged in the middle of having a heart attack. Why? Because the medical concepts of most diseases are based on understandings of male physiology, and women have altogether different symptoms than men when having a heart attack’. - End quote.
So, not only are women less likely to be taken seriously… most medical research leaves out women to begin with.
It’s a lot…. This stuff fires me up! We’ve a lot of work to do.
So… these are the reasons why I wanted to share my story in next week’s episode, and also why I’m so passionate about supporting women in both learning to connect to their body and listen to it, as well as navigate the medical system in a way that can increase getting their needs met.
That’s it for today! I would love to hear your personal thoughts or experiences in the comment section. Talk to you later!
