It’s Not Just Physical: The Emotional Trauma of a Medical Diagnosis
Episode Notes
Episode Show Notes
When a diagnosis, chronic illness, or unexpected health challenge enters your life, it can divide your story into a before and after. And often, we don’t have language for what’s happening beneath the surface.
In this episode, Dr. Alison and Dr. James C. Jackson explore the concept of medical trauma—and how it impacts not just your body, but your identity, your relationships, and your sense of meaning.
Because medical trauma isn’t just about what happened to you physically.
It’s about what it begins to reshape internally—your sense of safety, control, and who you are.
If you’ve ever felt disoriented, overwhelmed, or like life doesn’t fit the way it used to… this conversation will help you understand why and what healing can look like.
You’ll explore:
- What medical trauma is and why it’s often overlooked
- The psychological impact of diagnosis, chronic illness, and navigating healthcare
- How suffering can reshape your identity—and how to gently reframe it
- The role of community in healing and why support matters
- What it means to live in the “both/and” of grief and hope
This conversation offers a compassionate path forward—helping you learn how to live with what’s hard without letting it define all of who you are.
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Episode 64: Women’s Health—Menopause, Hormones, Depression and How to Advocate for Yourself Through Your Body’s Changes
Episode 19: My Stroke, A Process of Healing, and How I Began to Write The Best of You
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TRANSCRIPT
When people are properly supported When they are steeped in resilience, when they can find a
purpose, they can endure hugely difficult things and they can come out on the other side,
not only surviving, even thriving. We don't get to decide for somebody else what is traumatic.
In the medical arena, those can develop in everything from getting a difficult diagnosis to being
in the ICU to struggling with a chronic illness to other things. I wanted to affirm people and give
a name to what they were feeling and then... for many is medical trauma.
Hey everyone and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of the Best of You podcast. I'm so
glad you're here with me this week for this conversation. Today's episode is for you if you've ever
found yourself facing something you didn't choose, something that changed your life in ways you
didn't expect. It might have been a diagnosis or a long season of unexplained symptoms,
or it might be walking alongside someone you love through illness or recovery.
Whatever it is, there's this moment where the life you had before and the life you have after no
longer feels the same, and it rocks your world. a little bit. It's disorienting. It's confusing.
It's uncertain. We don't always have language for what happens to us psychologically and
emotionally in those moments. We call it stressful, or we call it anxiety,
or sometimes we just try to minimize it or shove it away. But often, the right kind of name for it
is actually trauma. It's something we don't always have the skills to process in the moment.
And I've had moments like these personally, moments where something medical entered into my life
out of the blue, out of nowhere with no explanation. And suddenly there was a before and an after
the event. And this is exactly what today's guest, Dr. James C. Jackson,
is gonna share with us all about today. It's his area of expertise. He calls it medical trauma
because so often when we're dealing with a health issue, whether it's chronic symptoms or something
major that enters in unexpectedly, it creates not only a trauma in the body, it often creates a
trauma in the soul. That phrase alone, medical trauma, was so powerful to me when I first heard it
because it names something so many of us experience but don't always recognize at first. It's not
only going through the illness, it's navigating the medical system, the healthcare system, or even
receiving a minor diagnosis that changes our daily habits that shapes us emotionally,
psychologically. And yet so often we're expected to get through it, to stay positive,
to be resilient, to get back to normal, or to only focus on the physical aspect of healing,
as important as it is. But I want to talk today with our guest about how to move through painful
changes to our health or to the health of loved ones with intention and kindness.
and gentleness, and to ultimately learn how to live with what's hard without letting it define
everything about us. And this is where we're going today. I'm joined today by Dr.
James Jackson. He's a clinical psychologist and researcher, and he serves as the director of long
-term outcomes at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He focuses on helping patients recover,
not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically from critical illness, ICU stays,
and chronic conditions. He's worked extensively with veterans, with ICU survivors, and all kinds of
individuals like you and me navigating these complicated medical challenges.
What I appreciate so much about Dr. Jackson's work is that he brings together this deep clinical
expertise with a profound respect for the reality of human suffering. He's not here to offer us
quick fixes or to minimize pain or to rush us past the hard parts. Instead, he's helping us do
something much more meaningful. He's helping us learn how to live fully, alive,
the way God wants us to live, even when. It's hard. Jim is the author of a powerful new book,
Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma, Recognize the Symptoms, Find Treatment That Works, and
Heal Your Brain and Body. He offers a practical, compassionate guide for navigating the emotional
aftermath of illness and finding your way back to a life that holds meaning and purpose and hope.
Today, we're going to get into what medical trauma actually is and the surprising and maybe not so
surprising ways it might be showing up. What happens psychologically when you receive a difficult
diagnosis? How to develop resilience in these unique situations?
And most of all, we're going to get into how to hold on to your identity when life changes in ways
you didn't choose and how faith factors into that, how you can rely on faith without bypassing
pain, but to enrich your experience of life in the way that God wants for us.
There's this phrase Dr. Jackson uses throughout today's episode that I want you to listen for. It's
this idea of both and. You can be facing something incredibly hard and still build a meaningful,
purposeful life. You can feel grief and still experience so much joy in your day-to-day
encounters. You can experience something that feels so unfair and still hold on to a sense of
goodness. and beauty and hope. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation today with Dr.
James C. Jackson.
I am so thrilled to have you today. You've spent over two decades or more walking with people
through really hard diagnoses of all different types.
We can talk about that a little bit more. I'm curious, just as we get started to frame the
conversation what have these experiences of walking with people through these life-altering
situations taught you about how suffering shapes us as people yeah it's a really good question and
you're right it has been two decades it's been almost 25 years of this work and it's taught me a
few things it's taught me certainly that We shouldn't be too casual about throwing around Bible
verses like Romans 8.28, right? It's taught me that, right? It's true that all things work
together for good. It's true. But in the process, people really suffer. And life with a chronic
condition, with a critical condition, it can be hugely difficult. So I've learned not to be casual
or flippant or... unserious or overly optimistic about how easy this journey might be.
I've learned that. I've also learned that when people are properly supported, when they have the
support they need, when they are steeped in resilience, when they can find a purpose,
they can endure hugely difficult things and they can come out on the other side,
not only surviving, but beautifully. even thriving. I've learned that. I witnessed that.
And that doesn't happen by accident. But it's a vision that I cast for my patients.
And it's a vision that many of them realize. And I've learned that people can thrive in the midst
of really difficult things, shockingly hard things. It's amazing. You use the phrase in your book,
medical trauma. And I thought that was a powerful naming. We talk a lot about trauma,
healing from trauma on the podcast, but this is a specific kind. A lot of people don't even realize
that illness of all different kinds of variety in and of itself, right? A diagnosis can become a
trauma. What do you mean by this term and how does it show up in people's lives?
It's a really important term. And I think where I started to think about it really.
was in my work at the Department of Veterans Affairs at the local VA hospital, where often trauma
is framed correctly in the context of combat,
PTSD after service in Iraq, after service in Vietnam, long ago after World War II.
Of course, that's trauma. But as I heard such strong emphases on trauma at the VA,
it occurred to me... that wasn't a term that we were using at all in the medical world writ large.
It was not a term we were using. And as I engaged with patients, I realized that even though they
hadn't been in Vietnam, even though they weren't in a foxhole in World War II, they had a lot of
the same symptoms. They were anxious. They were chronically hypervigilant. They were avoidant.
They were emotionally activated all the time. often by things that were quite profound,
profound birth trauma, major operations, but often by things that were easy to overlook,
often quite traumatized by things that we might not think would be that significant.
And I think that's how trauma works, right? Like we don't get to decide for somebody else what is
traumatic. There are things that are profoundly traumatic to me. that people seem to manage very
effectively and there are things that at a glance don't necessarily seem that traumatic and they're
hugely derailing. And in the medical arena, those can develop in everything from getting a
difficult diagnosis to being in the ICU to struggling with a chronic illness to other things like
being routinely dismissed by a well-meaning provider. I think that can be hugely traumatic.
So I really cast a broad net.
Everything difficult in the medical arena that happens, of course, is not traumatic. But many,
many things are. One of the reasons for the book was I wanted to affirm people and give a name to
what they were feeling. And that name for many is medical trauma. Gosh, just as you were going
through that list, I thought even in this day and age, working with health insurance companies can
become traumatic. Yes. Deeply, creating financial trauma and stress. And ironically,
the trauma then, especially, I mean, whether it's psychological or medical, it's all intertwined,
right? Because all of that cortisol and anxiety can also then interact with what's going on
medically. Yeah, absolutely.
so many contexts. But where I see it a lot is in avoidance. What I see is someone has had a bout
with cancer or perhaps they had a parent who had a bout with cancer and so they decide not to get a
skin check because they're afraid that that mole might be melanoma because their mother or father
had melanoma. So the painful irony is that by the time they've waited five years to get that skin
check, it's very likely that that actually might be the melanoma. And now they've got a brand new
challenge that they didn't have before. And then that makes them even more avoidance.
So that'd just be one example, that avoidance that has real world implications,
it can really derail people. That is such an interesting, right, that byproduct of a familial
situation. It makes a lot of sense. And we see this. Talk to us a little bit about...
When someone does find their way to you and they've received a serious diagnosis,
right, or they're facing a major health crisis, what do you typically see? So this is a person who
has faced, you know, for whatever reason, they've had to come face to face with this really hard
news. What typically happens psychologically in those first moments, those first weeks,
those first months? What's the trajectory to kind of normalize? Because oftentimes I think some of
this just isn't normalized, right? It's not normalized. And often what happens is people feel
incredibly out of control. I think that's the first thing. They feel incredibly out of control. So
there's a lot of value in simply saying, we've seen this before.
You know, people have had this experience before. And there are predictable, there are thoughtful.
There are data-centered ways to help you. And we're going to engage those, right?
We're going to engage those. We're going to help you regulate your emotions. We're going to help
you lean into social support. We're going to help you realize that there are ways to accept this
uncertainty that can be really empowering and beautiful. And there are ways to find meaning in
this. You certainly don't want to lead with, let's find some meaning in this, right? Like this is
hugely difficult. Let's find some meaning. I think that would be a very cruel thing to do.
And yet, down the road over time, people who tend to do well in the context of medical trauma,
they find a way to make some sense of it. They find a way to make some meaning of it. And people
who do well find a way to realize.
that that there is a I'm going to call it there is a both andness to things and that is people
begin to realize I can both have a chronic illness and I can live a really fulfilling life I can be
grappling with a frightening diagnosis and I can learn to be present with my family both and and I
think that piece is particularly important because on the heels of a trauma It's very easy to move
into this place of my identity shattered. My life is over. You know,
my future has been blown up. And those things might feel true. They aren't necessarily true.
And it's important to say to people, let's take a step back. Let's take a few deep breaths.
Let's reflect on what's about to happen. And let's find a way to embrace the both andness of
things. Yeah, I love that. I think you're saying something so important there. Maybe it's not the
first meeting. There's a lot of kind of normalizing and containing very real emotions initially.
Yes. But it's not where you have to stay. You got to feel that. You got to go through that. I'm
sure there's a lot of grief. There's a lot of processing. But eventually that process,
when you do it and you don't bypass it, we talk a lot on the podcast of what I think of as.
spiritual bypassing, right? And sometimes as believers, as folks who are people of faith,
we can too quickly get to the good news without first walking through,
this is hard. And that makes a lot of sense. So just to normalize, this is hard stage before we get
to the meaning and hope and future. Yeah, I think that's right. I love the poet Robert Frost among
all poets. I love poetry. And Robert Frost had a lot of quotes.
but to me, the quote that has landed most powerfully over the years has been, the only way around
is through. The only way around is through. No shortcuts, there's no magic elixir, the only way
around is through. And that process, that process of finding meaning in suffering,
that can take years, and often it does. For me, in my own life,
and I talk about this in my book quite a bit. I was diagnosed with OCD as a 50-year-old, late in
my life, 50 years old. And when I went to see my psychologist, I had one goal in mind.
And that was, let's get rid of every single OCD symptom that I have.
Let's just burn it down. Let's heal it. Get it done. And she said,
I'm not so sure about that. Jim, you're normally, I think, pretty thoughtful. You're a
sophisticated guy. You should know. can't just pull this out, you know, like a weed. And I said,
other people maybe can't, but I want to, right? I will.
And the way I was framing this, Allison, was that I needed to get rid of it because until I got rid
of it, I couldn't be okay. Nothing would be okay. That's the way that I framed it. And either or,
right? Exactly. Either is gone or I'm, yeah. Exactly. So I leaned into this therapy really hard.
And we talked about acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. We talked about living with it, all of
that. And I've got, you know, a lot of tools, I think, internally at my disposal. And it took me
about two years, two solid years, to even get to the place where I was willing to consider the idea
that I could have OCD and I could be fine. I could be okay, right?
And so sometimes I think... In the Christian arena, we're in a little bit too much of a hurry to
convince people that the Holy Spirit is about to make them a little more accepting or transform
their attitude or whatever. I think that's really naive. I think it can be cruel. I think this
process takes as long as it takes. And sometimes it takes a long time. And the beauty,
as Michael Card sang years ago, the beauty is that... joy is really in the journey. You know,
there's a beauty in this difficult journey. And the goal isn't just getting to the end.
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It's such a paradox. It really is. And it really is. I appreciate you sharing your personal story
because it does shape how we understand suffering. And when you've been through it, this idea of
suffering, you know, it's not the most popular trending term that we want to. But the paradox,
I'm thinking of my own life in the last few years, just. And I love how you're, as you were
describing trauma, it's big T or little T. I know for me, some of it has had to do as a woman with
coming to the terms with, I got caught in sort of this trap that's all over the headlines with
menopause, like how that affected me and how it affected my body. And it wasn't a major thing,
but I got trapped in some of the current conversations that.
negatively affected me, right? That have lasting effects, right? And so even at smaller scale or
larger scale, I hear your point and I felt it too, where it takes a while to wrap your mind around
the implications, what it means, who I'm becoming. And at first that can feel like a loss,
but it really is the path. to that freedom. The truth will set us free.
And I want to move into that a little bit, both from your own journey and from your patients,
because you talk about how the difference between people who somehow find the resilience,
find the meaning, find the health. And I've tasted that these last few years. You know,
I've tasted the front end of going, oh, my gosh, I was failed by a medical system. In my case,
this is really painful because it had real implications for me. Right. To a couple of years later,
making peace with it, not in a passive way, but in a very proactive way. Sounds like you've also
gone through that. So what what is the difference for those folks who are able to do that versus
those who really, to your point, you use the word identity and that kind of it steals their sense
of identity? Yeah, it's a great it's a great question. And I'll make a comment before I lean into
that. And that is that I think. the mental health system, psychology and psychiatry.
I think we have failed some patients, frankly, by communicating, and I don't think we've done this
deliberately, but by communicating that every problem can be nicely solved,
right? Like we'll improve your depression and we'll improve your anxiety, we'll improve your PTSD.
I think that's a lovely aspiration. And there are many people for whom that's not their story,
right? Like their mental health symptoms, they don't get better as thoroughly as they might like.
And for those folks, I think it's a little bit of setup sometimes because it's easy to think,
as I noted, that the only way things will be okay is if all of your symptoms go away.
So I think a better approach is to say, you can be okay if your symptoms go away.
You can be okay if your symptoms don't go away. And of course, that takes a long time. This issue
of resilience, how people get it, who gets it. It's a complicated question.
You know, I think that's probably the holy grail, which is how do we turn people into resilient
folks, right, who can walk through a fire, right? They can survive difficult things.
How do we turn people into resilient people? And I don't think we know the answer to that exactly.
I don't think we know how. But I do know that this quality of resilience...
happens, I think, much more effectively when people are surrounded by other people,
when they are in communities of people that are holding them up, that are challenging them,
that are bolstering them, boosting them. This is hard work we're talking about,
living with or recovering from trauma. And there aren't many rules, there aren't many axioms in my
work that I think are always true. But one of them that I see in this medical trauma space is that
when people are walking this medical trauma journey alone, they do less well.
And when they're walking it with others, they do better. And so one of the first things I think
that we want to do when we're helping support people in the context of medical trauma is we want to
try to move them from isolation to engagement. And it's not always so easy.
Sometimes it's more aspirational than something that can be realized. But I'm a big believer in the
idea that healing really occurs in the context of community.
We were made for community. And I think it's a little bit of a fool's errand when people believe
that they can manage these difficult things on their own. It's too much.
And so that's why at Vanderbilt, one of the things that we... really emphasized over the last five
or six years is support groups. We have a medical trauma support group. We have a long COVID
support group. We have a family members of ICU survivors support group that is meeting right after
this podcast. And it's because there is healing in community. And in this moment that we're living
in, people are pretty isolated. There's a great book that I love called Bowling Alone by Robert
Putnam, sociologist. And he says in that book, More people are bowling. That's great.
I grew up in Michigan, love bowling. But tragically, more people are bowling alone. And our goal
with these patients is let's stop bowling alone. Let's join arms and let's learn resilience by
watching, listening, seeing the stories of other people who are engaging in hard things and
believing that we can too. Yeah. That's powerful. I think that's such a word. I love that that's
the one axiom that kind of holds across. Here's a related question,
and I'm curious even how this has played out in your own journey,
if that's a fair question. There's the resilience question,
and then there is this identity question. um of figuring out who am i now and i think that does
happen a lot in community as you're kind of wrestling with um how did that play out for you that
that sense of what does it mean that this is now part of who i am versus i'm i've got to get rid of
this to be who i am yeah it's it's a really interesting question and i do think identity um is so
important it might be the single most important thing in the context of these issues, because often
these illnesses come on very suddenly. And for people, there's a,
there's a huge before and after dynamic where they look wistfully on their old life.
Right. And sometimes they frame it as more perfect than it was in contrast to this,
this, this field of destruction, which is my new life. And then they see this Delta.
And they feel like a failure. They feel broken as a result. So for me, when I was diagnosed with
OCD and began to battle OCD, I had a hard time integrating the pre-OCD Jim Jackson with the post
-diagnosis Jim Jackson. I moved quickly from I'm a person that I like. I'm a person that I respect.
I'm a person that I think can thrive in the world. To feeling like I was being knocked around by a
mental illness. And that was what defined me. I took on that mantle. Oh, wow. And it was really
hard for me. In time, I began to realize that two things were true. That I had OCD.
And that the things that always had been true of me were still true of me. I managed to find a way
to hold those together. And I think one of the really important things.
that I do with my patients in support groups or individually is to say, you know,
there's one John Jackson, there's one Bob Nelson,
there's one Beth Swanson, it's one person, right? Like let's push back against the strict
conceptualization of, hey, this is you before, this is you after. It's all you,
you know, it's you. So let's integrate this. And let's embrace this development that you have
cancer now, that you have Parkinson's disease now, that you have dementia, that you have a brain
injury, whatever. Let's embrace it as part of your story because it is part of your story. Let's
honor it. But let's really resist the tendency to make it all of your story.
Because it's not all of your story. Let's vigorously push back against the idea that it's all of
your story. Because I think if you... if you embrace it as all of your story, all of the
limitations that you associate with that are limitations that you begin to wear like a suit of
clothes. And that's really problematic because, in my opinion at least,
you're likely not as limited as you think you are. So let's integrate these identities and let's
resist believing that this is all of your story because you're more than your...
my case, OCD. That's really powerful. You don't want it to become your new identity.
Right. You have to integrate it with. You have to integrate who you thought you took yourself to be
and who. And at some level, that is the journey of life because we're all going to bump into some
of these things. But at that really heightened level of a tough diagnosis, you're figuring out how
to. Honor it. I love how you said that. Honor it while still honoring the person you still are.
Exactly. And that's what takes some time. Yeah, it takes time. And often what I've noted is on the
heels of a new diagnosis, in my case, OCD, but again, we can come up with 101 examples.
On the heels of a new diagnosis, often that new diagnosis and that identity is pretty thoroughly
embraced. And often that's a function of... Simple things. Now I'm spending all my time at the
cancer center. Right now I'm surrounded by cancer patients. Now I'm getting chemotherapy. It's easy
for that to become a huge part of my identity. But typically the process we would want is let's
shift you from making this 99.9% of who you are in the direction of something a little more full
-orbed. And most people can do that. But some people get stuck. Some people get stuck in this place
of this is the beginning and end of me. This is who I am when I wake up. This is who I am when I go
to bed. And I think it's incumbent on us as mental health providers or for that matter as pastors
to invite people, and this is important, invite, to invite people to think about it a different
way. It's not helpful to insist that they think about it another way. It's not helpful to try to
pull their jaws open. force feed them with these insights, but to gently invite them to even
consider the idea that this isn't entirely who they are. willing to even consider it,
I think we can work with that. So it almost sounds like there's some real practical ways in the
sense of almost what you're saying is when you're dealing with, you know, my own experience with
different things, if you're dealing with a diagnosis or an illness. Even just for the sheer fact of
you've got to be at the doctors a lot or you've got to, it's part of your weekly rhythms. It's kind
of a path of least resistance to build your life around it. And it almost sounds like you have to
work to an impractical level or it would be wise or invite yourself to the extent that you can to
continue to do some of the things that you used to do and not let it completely.
Maybe have conversations. And this is the thing about support groups, right? You want to find
people who can. identify with what you've been through, understand it in a way that nobody else
does. And I could imagine it might also be wise and in many instances to have a couple of people
who aren't part of that world. I mean, that's just one example. But I've kind of noticed that even
like sometimes you want folks who aren't talking about it or who are doing something completely
different because it kind of reminds you of the other side of yourself. Yeah, no, it's a really
that's a really astute point. And there's some research, by the way. that shows that the
underbelly, if you will, of support groups is that if not done properly,
they can reinforce some things that are unhelpful, which are,
this is where I start. This is where I stop. They can become an echo chamber.
And to the extent that they do that, I think it's really unhelpful. So it is about keeping that
tether to who you've always been. and recognizing that that's still true and i'm not a i'm not a
cognitive behavior behaviorist per se but but it it is recognizing you know what this is still true
you have a tether to who you were yeah even if it doesn't feel true right like even on the days
that you don't feel like you're the same person let's embrace the idea that in so many respects you
are and also i i think this is important sometimes when people have had a hard trauma they um they
look wistfully back on the good old days and sometimes they can inadvertently make the good old
days a little more perfect than they were yeah and that can kind of deepen the rift between who i
was and who i am and and certainly with trauma that can introduce brand new challenges and it's
true that there was never probably a time in your life when things were totally perfect. So this is
a new challenge, but it's not necessarily the case that it's the only new challenge.
Yeah, we can romanticize the past. Yeah, I love the both and, right? There's such a both and that
we're balancing here of acceptance, grieving and accepting. And let's talk a little bit here about
the spiritual component. of healing and doing this integrative work.
And I think it's such a resource, you know, to folks. We've talked about how we can spiritually
bypass, how it can be misused, but it is also such a resource. What kinds of spiritual questions do
you hear from people facing just really hard diagnoses or ongoing illnesses or,
you know, what kind of spiritual questions come up and how can our faith become that?
that scaffolding that resource for us it's a great question i mean the first thing i would say is
that many people and this is this is regrettable i think um many people in the throes of medical
trauma will tell me that nobody has really engaged spiritual questions with them at all right and i
think um i think it's unfortunate because uh that's a bit of a swing and a miss right like when
when people encounter trauma, certainly people in the South where I live, but in the Midwest,
really all over the United States, all over the world. It intersects with spiritual beliefs.
It intersects with their religious faith. I wish my colleagues would be a little more willing to
jump in the deep end of the pool with people, even if they don't know the answer and recognize
there's a spiritual dimension to this. And I think the spiritual dynamics in the lives of patients
can unfold. a few different ways obviously some people can be angry with god about such things as
timing and intensity and i didn't deserve this and all of that and i think um that's really
appropriate to affirm i think um i have grown in the context of this medical trauma work i have
grown in being very comfortable with um with mystery with with the idea that There aren't
necessarily any good answers to be had, right? That, again,
both and. It feels unfair. And at the end of the day, I believe God is good.
You know, it feels really strange. It feels horrible. It is really hard.
And I believe God is good. So helping people hold those things together and creating the space for
people to struggle. as much as they want and again um not trying to force feed them um this notion
that hey we're going to redeem this by making some meaning but trusting trusting that the holy
spirit has a plan and that he's going to get you to that place where you're going to find a way to
find some meaning when you need to you know in the in the religious tradition that i grew up in uh
went to a little kind of a fundamentalist Bible church in the upper Midwest.
And in that tradition, there was never much willingness for things to take some time.
You know, the idea was you better get saved today before you walk out of the building,
because if you don't, you might get hit by a car in the parking lot. And we know how that's going
to go, right? There was a lot of pressure on us. To do God's work is the way I would put it.
And in the more reformed tradition that I have been in in a while or for a while,
there's this idea that that God's sovereignty is at work. Right. And things will unfold as they're
going to unfold. And I don't have to drag a person along to get them to where I think they should
be. Instead. I can trust that the Holy Spirit is going to nudge them and help them get there.
It takes a lot of pressure off of us, I think, whether we're psychologists or pastors,
whatever role we're in. And so I try not to get ahead of my patients,
and I try to acknowledge, sometimes I'm pretty vulnerable about it related to my own story,
that these traumatic experiences, they don't just shake your faith.
your physician or your nurse practitioner or your insurance company, they often shake your faith in
God, right? They shake your faith in God. And giving people the space to struggle with that,
I think is so important. And in particular, avoiding sanitized,
easy answers that I think are not satisfying to anyone,
right? And doing what Job's friends... were willing to do with him, right? which is I'm going to
sit next to you in this ash heap, and I'm not going to say anything, and I'm just going to practice
the gift of presence with you, and we're going to walk down a winding path together,
and sometimes we're both going to shrug our shoulders and say, what on earth is going on? Do you
know? I don't know. Do you know? No, I don't know. But just being willing to sit in it, I think
that's quite a gift. i love that it it working at the pace of the spirit because we don't know and
that i love that both and of i think that's worth really double clicking on that both and of um i i
don't like this this feels unfair this does feel like more than i can handle this isn't okay and
god is good which is such a job that that is sort of the template we see in joe where it wasn't
that he didn't suffer. He, he was really not okay. And he was honest about that.
And I, I, God, you are God, you know, and, and somewhere in that the spirit finds its way and it's
such a paradox. Um, but it is, and I would, I would say this if I can,
you know, very often, well, for example, in the past five years or so,
a lot of my work has been in the long COVID space and in that space, There are huge numbers of
people that don't look that sick, but they really are that sick, right? They're hugely sick. And so
their family members, well-meaning, will say, I think you need to work a little bit harder,
right? Like, I think you need to eat a little healthier. Maybe you should exercise more. They're
very oriented, in a way, to what in the church we would call works righteousness,
right? Like, you've got to pray a little bit more, right? got to lean in a little more and so so
it's easy for that message you've got to do more to translate into people feeling like you know if
i just prayed a little more if i just went to confession a little bit more if i was just a little
better maybe god would hear my prayers a little bit more and i would stop struggling with fill in
the blank right this illness that won't go away and and um the truth is it's just not that simple
right it's not that simple And sometimes we don't have answers. And instead of throwing our hands
up and running away from the fact that we don't have answers, I think a better approach is to lean
into the fact that we don't have answers and find a way to make peace with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a delicate. It is. Again, even that's the both end of doing what is within my control.
It always goes back to that serenity prayer, like what is within my control? Of course,
I'm going to try to do what is within my control to the best of my ability and release a lot that
is not within my control. And it's a balancing act,
I think, of figuring that out. As we close here, Dr. Jackson, I'm thinking of the listener who's
really feeling this. Maybe they've been in a long journey of holding something that's really hard,
whether it's physical or mental. What is one small step they could take just today,
that next step to move toward that reclaiming of life,
reclaiming of goodness, reclaiming of identity in what's true and good and not only in what's hard?
What would you say to that person? It's a great question. I think the one small step,
therapeutically at least, the one small step that I think for most people could be achieved and
could be helpful is to begin to even be open to the possibility that you can live a full and
meaningful life with fill in the blank, right? With ongoing birth trauma,
with... challenges related to cancer,
with challenges related to ALS, post-intensive care syndrome, whatever it is,
that with that, you can live a meaningful life. And I don't think people can get there overnight,
but it starts with being open. As you're aware, there's this approach called stages of change
theory, right? And in that theory, you go from pre-contemplation to contemplation to action to
maintenance. So you start thinking, I'm not ready to give up cigarettes.
I'm not even ready to think about it, but I'm ready to think about thinking about it, right? That's
pre-contemplation followed by now I'm thinking about it. I'm still not ready, but I'm thinking. So
what I would say is let's start with, I'm not ready to accept this.
I'm not ready to even think of accepting it. But I'm ready to think about the idea that one day I
want to think about it. Right. Because then I'm on the path. I'm not ready to consider that I can
live a meaningful life with long COVID. But you know what? I'm going to begin to think about the
possibility that maybe I could consider that. Yeah. That's a starting point for me, because if you
start there, then the dominoes start to fall and you move in a beautiful direction where eventually
you can see. Hopefully you can see the beauty in some things that you didn't ask for and you don't
want. And that doesn't make your life perfect or easy, but it does make your life meaningful.
And if you can find a way to make your life meaningful, Katie, bar the door.
All bets are off. You can find a way to really thrive. I love it. Wow, that's a great note to end
on. I love that. Just opening to the possibility. And I love the emphasis on meaning. Maybe it
won't be easy, maybe it won't be perfect, but I can find meaning. Tell my listeners about your book
and about where they can find it and any other resources that you have. Sure. It has quite a long
title. I'll just call it Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma. It is in bookstores on April
28th.
In Barnes and Nobles, it's on Amazon currently. It can be pre-ordered. We talked about the word
practical earlier. And I think one of the really nice compliments that has happened as I've written
this book, as you know, you send a book to people and they provide you blurbs. You hope they'll
provide you blurbs, right? Some do, some don't. But the blurbs about my book that were really
meaningful to me were, Hey, this is accessible. This is practical, right? It's a practical guide
for people who are struggling with medical trauma. And I think it will take people in the direction
they need to go. I think it will be compassionate and hopeful without being all about rainbows and
unicorns, right? Like this is really hard stuff. And there are reasons to be hopeful. We have a...
have a research center at Vanderbilt. They can contact me there. I have a website,
jamescjackson.com. They can contact me there. They can send me an email. If you send me an email,
if I get 1,000 emails, it might take a while. But if someone sends me an email, I'll respond, and
it will be a privilege to do that. And if your listeners need a referral, if they need some
guidance, and I can, I'm happy to provide it. That's amazing. Thank you so much. We'll link to all
that in the show notes. I continually hear stories of folks who listen to an episode and it just is
exactly what they needed. And it's all over the country. And I just love that you're willing to
come on here and share these resources with us. And for someone out there, I know it's going to be
for many people out there. it's going to be a huge help. So we really appreciate your time and just
thank you for your work and blessings to you and all that you're doing. You're very kind and thanks
for the good work you're doing. You're thoughtful and delightful and people benefit because of the
work you do. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best
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