Dr. Hanscom's Blog David Hanscom MD - His Story & Mission

Today's newsletter from Dr. Hanscom is a link to this post: David Hanscom’s Mission and Resources - Back in Control which is a short but comprehensive look at his story and his goals. He briefly addresses anxiety, OCD, and the current mental health crisis.

 

This is so important! I have too wondered about this as it pertains to mental health.

I didn’t have the worst childhood by any means, but I grew up around anxious adults and was emotionally crushed by secondhand uncertainty. Even if I was perfectly safe, neither my siblings nor I felt that way. This constant state of fight or flight led to diagnoses of OCD, generalized anxiety, and major depressive disorder. These conditions were initially recognized by my pediatrician when I was around 9 (!!!) years old. He incorrectly said I’d simply grow out of everything as I got older and had more balanced hormones, absolving the parental figures in my life of all responsibility, not offering any coping tools in the interim, making me feel like a clueless failure, and leaving me to totally start from scratch as an adult. (My mom confirmed this when I was 27 and was re-diagnosed at Mayo Clinic. Nobody even talked to me about this directly as a child.) As I got older, it was easy for other people to write me off as “just being born that way” or dealing with illnesses that could only be managed but never cured. I adore my parents and we are best friends today, and I understand they were misinformed by the medical system too, but it was so freeing and empowering when I realized this as an adult.

I have long suspected that my childhood stress modified neural pathways and established behavioral patterns that could largely be overcome. I cannot speak for everyone, nor do I claim to have the answers for anybody else, but I’ve never felt like treating my particular situation like a structural disease was correct. Had someone helped me calm my fight or flight response as a child, I think things would’ve been so much better for me.

I can understand taking a more traditional approach in situations where someone is completely overstimulated, disempowered, suicidal, very disconnected from reality, etc. That said, I remember learning in college about improved outcomes in countries that take a different approach to mental health, and I think that would’ve great benefitted me.

I identify so much with this!