A Sound Mind in a Sound Body
I first learned the term somatopsychic when I wrote a "college level" paper in one of my advanced high school classes. I chose to write about Functional Hypoglycemia in hopes of helping myself cope with some of my mysterious health issues -- I didn't get a diagnosis of atypical CF until my mid-thirties -- and that's when I learned that you can have physical health issues that have known psychological side effects.
This is very, very different from the term psychosomatic which means "There's nothing physically wrong with you. It's all in your head." In other words, you are basically imagining it.
One of the somatopsychic side effects of functional hypoglycemia -- aka low blood sugar with no known cause -- is social anxiety. Your blood sugar drops, your body releases adrenaline to try to access stored sugar in the liver and if you have chronic low blood sugar those stores are probably depleted. So your heart races for no known reason and you begin looking around for a cause and most likely you blame it on someone nearby and get suspicious of their behavior.
I recently added the tag somatopsychic to this blog and hopefully over time I will go back and tag older posts with it. Other than this post, there is only one other that currently has that tag.
I will note here that I was molested as a child for something like 2 to 2.5 years from age 11 to age 13.5 roughly. I was also raped the summer I turned 12.
Starting at the age of twelve, I was suicidal. That resolved when I was 55 years old and a cyst I had on my back for a decade resolved with incredible amounts of blood and pus and drama over the course of a week or so.
Once that cyst drained, I was substantially more functional generally, which was shocking. Even more shocking, I was no longer suicidal.
I've done plenty of therapy and blah blah blah, but this experience has convinced me that I was suicidal specifically because I was raped and it somehow introduced something into my system biologically. In other words, it wasn't an emotional reaction to being molested or sexually assaulted. I believe it was a somatopsychic side effect of something awful that was introduced to my system by the rape per se.
Now why would rape be different from being molested? Rest assured, some asshole therapist did ask me that once -- why did I make the distinction between "I was molested" and ALSO "I was raped."
He thought it was a trivial distinction. It's not, for a long list of reasons, but in this case I'm certain being raped is why I was suicidal for decades and it was a serious physical health issue.
Contrary to toxic crap I have heard from religious folks that frames virginity and the existence of the hymen as some kind of punishment of women for original sin and blah blah blah -- like you are SUPPOSED to hurt when you "stupidly" choose to become sexually active, you unforgivable hussy, you -- I have come to believe the hymen is not some punishment from some asshole God for being born a woman.
I have come to believe it exists to try to keep microbes out of a warm, moist space in an immature body with a not-yet-fully-developed immune system.
So I think actually being raped at the age of twelve introduced something to my system in a way that is especially problematic for some reason. The female body is designed to try to keep microbes out of that area prior to sexual maturity and I was not yet sexually mature. I didn't begin menstruating until I was nearly 17. (Like 16 years and 9 months, I think.)
This is very, very different from the term psychosomatic which means "There's nothing physically wrong with you. It's all in your head." In other words, you are basically imagining it.
One of the somatopsychic side effects of functional hypoglycemia -- aka low blood sugar with no known cause -- is social anxiety. Your blood sugar drops, your body releases adrenaline to try to access stored sugar in the liver and if you have chronic low blood sugar those stores are probably depleted. So your heart races for no known reason and you begin looking around for a cause and most likely you blame it on someone nearby and get suspicious of their behavior.
I recently added the tag somatopsychic to this blog and hopefully over time I will go back and tag older posts with it. Other than this post, there is only one other that currently has that tag.
I will note here that I was molested as a child for something like 2 to 2.5 years from age 11 to age 13.5 roughly. I was also raped the summer I turned 12.
Starting at the age of twelve, I was suicidal. That resolved when I was 55 years old and a cyst I had on my back for a decade resolved with incredible amounts of blood and pus and drama over the course of a week or so.
Once that cyst drained, I was substantially more functional generally, which was shocking. Even more shocking, I was no longer suicidal.
I've done plenty of therapy and blah blah blah, but this experience has convinced me that I was suicidal specifically because I was raped and it somehow introduced something into my system biologically. In other words, it wasn't an emotional reaction to being molested or sexually assaulted. I believe it was a somatopsychic side effect of something awful that was introduced to my system by the rape per se.
Now why would rape be different from being molested? Rest assured, some asshole therapist did ask me that once -- why did I make the distinction between "I was molested" and ALSO "I was raped."
He thought it was a trivial distinction. It's not, for a long list of reasons, but in this case I'm certain being raped is why I was suicidal for decades and it was a serious physical health issue.
Contrary to toxic crap I have heard from religious folks that frames virginity and the existence of the hymen as some kind of punishment of women for original sin and blah blah blah -- like you are SUPPOSED to hurt when you "stupidly" choose to become sexually active, you unforgivable hussy, you -- I have come to believe the hymen is not some punishment from some asshole God for being born a woman.
I have come to believe it exists to try to keep microbes out of a warm, moist space in an immature body with a not-yet-fully-developed immune system.
So I think actually being raped at the age of twelve introduced something to my system in a way that is especially problematic for some reason. The female body is designed to try to keep microbes out of that area prior to sexual maturity and I was not yet sexually mature. I didn't begin menstruating until I was nearly 17. (Like 16 years and 9 months, I think.)
