The Washington Post has run a fascinating article that confirms an intuition that Bessel VanderKolk articulates in his book, The Body Keeps the Score. His idea was that trauma, especially unprocessed trauma, is the root cause of the vast majority of autoimmune disorders. Since that time, I had come to perceive the relationship as well but found myself reluctant to articulate it because it often implied issues where people preferred to not see them.
Here's the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/01/schizophrenia-autoimmune-lupus-psychiatry/
The article describes a woman who had a healthy life pattern until some private life trauma occurred in college (presumably familial or sexual given the preference for privacy). Following this event, she went into a catatonic state where the mental health professionals determined that she was schizophrenic and sent her off to a mental health facility. For the next 20 years, she was basically unresponsive until a doctor wanted to get to the root of why her condition had not changed. They did a deep dive and discovered that her immune system was in overdrive and seemed to be causing her condition. They followed up with a six month cocktail of steroids and immunosuppressants and - bam! - she awakened back to her self. The article presents another example with a 10 year awakening.
From my view, it appears that when trauma occurs - which is daily for all of us - there are some traumas which are so overwhelming that they are not processed. These memories and feelings are set into their own allocated mental/physical space. This process consumes energy and this segregation is held until the person has adequate internal or external resources to process. (I have earlier posted about tribal rituals that allowed post-battle warriors to be reprocessed into community and within themselves.) If these events are not processed, the energies are allocated to such an extent that some people reach a frozen state - part of the fight, flight, freeze, or f*** system. The immune system seems to play a role in helping with the frozen state.
This pattern is potentially treatable as a cocktail of drugs allows for the ability to then process the trauma event which is triggering to immune system response. As a good friend of mine says, "the body talks, meditation heals." Unprocessed trauma takes a huge toll and medicine allows a healing space for doing the work of processing the meaning of a trauma.
