The Attribution Effect

Your Symptoms Might Be From Your Trauma, Not Solely Your Medical Diagnosis

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash...

Recently, I was visiting a friend who is in recovery from a challenging and rare medical issue. She was talking about one of the most troubling lingering symptoms from her condition - memory loss. She described her frustration after recently running into an old friend and struggling to remember how she knew her. As my friend continued to unpack her experience with me, it became clear that she had another reason for her memory loss - trauma.

Years prior, as she struggled to figure out why she was experiencing mental fog, skin rashes, frequent sinus infections, and extreme fatigue, she encountered many doctors. In so many of her interactions, she felt disbelieved, not listened to, and that her pain and suffering were minimized. When she finally received a diagnosis and was able to talk about treatment options (which were few and not well studied), she was completely exhausted and felt deflated.

Simply stated by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies,

“Medical trauma is a psychological and emotional response to serious illness, injury, pain, or medical treatment that feels overwhelming, frightening, or out of the patient’s control.”

Unlike other forms of trauma, it is quite common for people to suffer from medical trauma without fully understanding it.

With trauma of any kind, you can expect difficulty with intrusive thoughts, negative emotions, and hypervigilant behaviors. The lack of understanding that occurs with medical trauma often amplifies the already troublesome and typical responses to trauma.

With my friend, as she talked about her memory difficulties from her condition, I couldn’t help but point out that memory changes are a common manifestation of medical trauma. I discussed with her something I see commonly in my clients: “the attribution effect.” When people have a medical issue, they rightfully become familiar with all the effects and symptoms of the condition. But commonly they attribute everything they are experiencing to the diagnosis, completely ignoring that the trauma that they have endured may be causing or contributing to those very same symptoms.

While her medical issue certainly affected her cognitive abilities, numerous studies on PTSD have revealed that trauma can impair the brain’s ability to recover memories. When I suggested to my friend that some of her challenges may be due to trauma and that, with mental health treatment, she can recover, she let out a huge sigh of relief and wept with a kind of knowing. Somewhere deep inside, she knew that the difficult experiences with understanding her symptoms and getting a diagnosis affected her more deeply than just feelings of frustration.

It is so easy to ignore the burden that experiencing trauma has on you because you rightfully become afraid: afraid that your symptoms will all be chalked up to your mental health or that you will just be known as an “anxious patient.” In my experience with treating medical trauma, when folks begin to acknowledge their trauma, they are able to recover in incredible ways. They may still need to deal with pain and medical issues, but they gain so much in their sense of self and their ability to see what is happening to them with clarity.

When you are going through a challenging medical situation, or you have had difficulty getting a diagnosis for your pain or symptoms, distress from the experience itself can mimic or enhance some of the pain or symptoms. These symptoms can resolve with trauma treatment! Educating yourself on medical trauma, believing in yourself, and finding mental health resources (e.g., therapy, support groups, books) to recover from the trauma works wonders. As you heal, watch for the attribution effect, and assume you may heal more expansively than you can imagine.