Medical gaslighting is when providers blame a person’s symptoms on psychological problems or deny them entirely. This tells the patient that they’re the problem, not their symptoms. Medical gaslighting mostly happens to marginalized people—women, LGBTQIA folks, and people of color.

This is a matter of social justice. We know that marginalized folks are already at increased risk for a whole variety of health issues because of the impacts of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and racism. Medical gaslighting not only dismisses our medical needs but also causes additional harm to our health.

Your health is continuing to decline. You keep being told to give it some more time, to just get some rest.

Another warning sign: You’re not feeling heard by your doctor, but if you talk about your symptoms with someone else, they’re like, “Wow, that doesn’t sound good.”

If your doctor isn’t taking steps to dig in more on the symptoms you’re struggling with, it might be time to consider getting another care provider.

Keep it simple and direct: “I think it’s time for me to find a new provider. Thank you for your care.”

1. Resonance. Do you trust this doctor? Do they make you feel safe?

2. Referrals. Ask friends, family, your social media network, and a trusted doctor for referrals.

3. Reputation. Does this doctor’s reputation line up with what you want and value?

4. Research. Even if a doctor comes recommended, do your research. This groundwork ultimately builds trust in the doctor you choose.

To build a medical system that works for everybody, we need to move quickly and strategically toward a human-centered medical model. If we’re really thinking about patients as whole humans, we’re not thinking about just the disease or the symptoms they have. We’re thinking about everything else that influences health, including nutrition, mental health, and trauma history.

We also need more open and available conversations between patients and providers, where they can connect with each other outside the urgency of curing a disease or fixing a problem.

We are still learning so much about trauma within the medical community. There isn’t a consensus on what exactly trauma is. Within strict medical environments, we don’t see much desire to draw correlations between trauma and physical symptoms, despite growing evidence around that link.

It’s one of the reasons I felt strongly about correlating stress and trauma with symptoms. For myself, I know that my childhood trauma has impacted how I experience my body now as an adult. You can’t tell me that my anxiety is not impacting my menstrual cycle or my period experience. For women, it’s important to acknowledge that if you’re really stressed out, it’s not just going to give you acne. Let’s go a couple of layers deeper: What else do we think stress is doing to the body?

We want to invite folks to think about chronic stress and trauma as a source of dialogue with their care provider. Try to see what treatment options are available to them, whether that’s mental health care or something else. When we can acknowledge that stress and trauma can affect how an individual is feeling—and that it’s all research-backed—then the conversation can move forward to “Okay, what else can we do to support you?”

The reason I cofounded LOOM has so much to do with the fact that most women are struggling with a lack of understanding about what’s going on in their own bodies—and they don’t know how to talk with doctors. We’re building our platform to meet women’s educational needs when it comes to sexual and reproductive health. We want to help them feel confident talking about their bodies so that they can be well. We want to be a companion for women in all stages of their lives.

During the pandemic, we launched a pregnancy and postpartum class that focuses on the whole person. It gives women regulation tools for mental health and stress management during pregnancy, but it also teaches them the skills they need to talk with their doctor, get their needs met, and be able to take care of themselves during the pregnancy and the postpartum experience. And most recently, we launched Symptom Checker to help others do the same for a whole range of medical situations.

Symptom Checker is like WebMD but trauma-informed and feelings-centered. It can push back on medical gaslighting by giving people the language to talk about how their symptoms may be connected to their emotions. Here’s our thought process: When you’re about to look up “missed period” or “abnormal bleeding” or “cramps” or “lump in breast,” you are coming from a stressed place. It always struck me that you would go to these diagnostic websites and they’d just be like, “Here’s the information, have a good day,” or whatever. With Symptom Checker, we’re building in notes about the impact of chronic stress and trauma on every single one of the 34 symptoms we’re starting with.

Health education is an underutilized form of health care for women. When you can educate women about what to expect with their bodies and talk about their health, they’re going to be way better off. We haven’t done that at a cultural level, and it’s the driving force behind what we’re doing at LOOM.