When I was 11 I sprained my ankle being thrown from a horse. It didn’t heal, and continued to hurt, sending paralysing pains shooting up my leg. I was told it was psychosomatic, that the pain was all in my head. How could a sprained ankle be psychosomatic? The doctor took one look at me, saw that my parents were in the middle of a brutal divorce, and saw only a troubled young girl. And everyone knows troubled girls aren’t really sick, except in the head.
I make no secret that I’ve battled severe mental illness during my life. I’ve racked up as many psychiatric diagnoses as physical ones, but over the years I’ve educated myself (completing a postgraduate degree on the relationship between gender and mental illness) and have learned more about the link between body and mind, the impact trauma has on the body, and the history of medical misogyny.
