My health history
- At age 4: First sleep disturbances with hallucinations, as well as a constant urge to urinate.
- Between ages 6 and 8: Sleep disturbances and episodes of panic or anxiety.
- At age 9: First severe migraine attack.
- Between ages 12 and 20: Frequent infections, particularly around Christmas, as well as severe headaches.
- From age 19: Frequent infections in the genital area, as well as chronic inflammation and pain in that area without an identifiable cause.
- From age 20: Sleep disturbances and panic attacks.
- Since age 20: Irritable bowel symptoms with severe abdominal cramps. Initially, the symptoms were so severe that I could barely leave the house or go out to eat. Simply entering a restaurant would bring on intense abdominal cramps. The symptoms continue to this day, although they have improved significantly since October 2025.
- At age 20, in 2003: First visit to a psychiatrist because of sleep disturbances and first use of antidepressants.
- Between ages 20 and 24: Severe migraine episodes.
- Between 2003 and 2011: Repeated visits to a psychiatrist because of migraines and sleep disturbances.
- For around 20 years: Periods of depressed mood.
- Between ages 22 and 25: Anxiety and mental health difficulties.
- At age 25: Further panic attacks and another prescription for antidepressants.
- Over the past 15 years: Severe depressive episodes that repeatedly led to months of sick leave from work. Various medications were used to try to bring the depression under control.
- From 2011: Psychotherapy twice a week for six years, involving depth psychology and psychoanalysis.
- In 2013, around the birth of my first daughter: Severe depression and anxiety, as well as a visit to a psychiatric emergency department.
- From 2013 to 2025: Chronic sinusitis, meaning chronic inflammation of the sinuses.
- For around 13 years: Extreme susceptibility to infections.
- For around 13 years: Use of antidepressants, with sleeping medication and sedatives at times.
- For around 12 years, since my daughter was little: Ongoing panic attacks, at times occurring daily for years. They continue to this day but have become significantly milder and less intense.
- Since 2017: Regular psychiatric treatment for depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances.
- In late 2018: First diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), before my flashbacks began.
- Since October 2025: A significant improvement in my health. Many symptoms have partly or almost completely subsided. The depression has eased, and my ability to function has improved. The irritable bowel symptoms remain, but the cramps are significantly less severe. The sleep disturbances are also decreasing. Panic attacks or physical trauma responses still occur during periods of rest, but they are much milder.
- For around 8 months: Trauma therapy.
- In 2026: Diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).
- Currently, at age 43: Still taking strong antidepressants.
What seemed unconnected for so long
Looking back over more than 40 years of my life, I can say that I have suffered from many different psychological and physical symptoms, some of which I still experience. Taken individually, each was regarded as something normal or common. The symptoms were often linked to stress and feeling overwhelmed at work or, later, with the children. I made those connections myself, too, because I did not know my own history.
It was only last year, when I began remembering the earliest moments of my childhood, that I could start to connect everything for myself. I found an explanation for many of my symptoms in what I experience as physical memories of trauma — as something stored in my nervous system.
Many of the physical memories I experience today during trauma therapy or quiet moments in the evening feel directly connected to my tightly contracted torso and my tense nervous system. Making those connections, which for me at least offers an explanation for all of this, helps my body and mind relax. My condition has improved so significantly within a year that I have no doubt about my personal interpretation of where these symptoms come from.
“You don’t need a psychologist”
Throughout all of this, my parents and my whole family saw and observed my symptoms for decades — from early childhood — and commented on them in adulthood. My years of visits to a psychologist were dismissed with remarks such as:
“Are you bad-mouthing your mother again?”
Or:
“You don’t need a psychologist. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Or:
“What’s wrong with you, then? You always had a good life with us.”
Those words repeatedly belittled my visible symptoms. Going to a psychologist was met only with incomprehension and shaking heads, so that seeking help, too, became tied to a guilty conscience and feelings of guilt.
Alongside all the symptoms I have already listed, there are, of course, the many smaller things: grinding my teeth, inner restlessness, the symptoms accompanying panic attacks, such as shortness of breath and heart rhythm disturbances, compulsive nail-biting or picking at wounds on my skin.
Between 2023 and 2025, I drank so much alcohol that I often had to vomit at night. At some point, I noticed how much I already needed alcohol again the following evening.
As usual, my family asked about all these symptoms and facts, commented on them and occasionally expressed enormous concern. Looking back, that concern now seems nothing but dishonest and ridiculous to me. Because I am convinced they knew what had happened to me.
Today, I am feeling better
Today, I am glad that I feel better. Glad about how much I manage to do on some days. And glad that I can get ill sometimes without the world falling apart and without feeling that I will never get back on my feet.
I get ill much less often, and the infections are becoming less frequent, too. I have not needed antibiotics for a sinus infection in a year. I am stable on my antidepressant medication, and I am sleeping better.
These are changes I can truly feel in my everyday life. After all those years, it means a great deal to be able to get ill and still trust that I will recover. Or to reach the evening and notice everything that was possible that day.
I wish someone had seen how much I was struggling without my having to explain it over and over again.
I cannot change that part of the past. And it makes me sad to think how long I questioned whether my symptoms were even serious enough. How often I felt guilty because I needed help.
Today, I no longer want to deny myself that help. I am allowed to be glad that things are getting better. And on the days when things are still difficult, I am allowed to take myself just as seriously.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” When I read this list, I realise how little that sentence had to do with my life.
I lived through all of this. I needed help, and in some ways I still do. And today, I am simply glad that I am slowly beginning to feel what it is like when life gets easier.