UNWIRING THE SILENCE:

Traumatic Origins, Physical Crashes, and the FND Glitch.

For the past year, I’ve been trying to solve a massive puzzle with my health, trying to figure out exactly why my body is glitching with FND (Functional Neurological Disorder).

Left to my own devices, my own research focused entirely on a massive motorbike accident I had when I was 18, crashing at 80mph. To me, that was the obvious answer. It was a massive physical impact—a clear-cut “hardware” situation. It made sense that a smash like that would mess up the system, and it was easy to blame because I had hidden my true trauma completely out of sight.

But Michelle has done massive, relentless research into FND over the last year, digging into how the condition actually works. Thanks to her looking at the science, we have been researching this together, and it completely blew the doors off what I thought I knew.

What the research shows is that FND is a perfect storm, and the roots go back much further than I wanted to admit.

When I was just 13 years old, I went through severe, heavy trauma. Back then, you just do what you have to do to survive and keep your head from going insane. You lock it away in a dark corner, run on pure adrenaline, and carry on. But the reality I’ve had to face now is that the trauma had already set the stage.

By the time I had that 80mph bike crash at 18, my nervous system was already carrying five years of buried, massive background stress. It was already running on overdrive. The physical crash wasn’t the start of it; it was the massive physical factor thrown on top of a system that was already compromised.

Did the severe historic trauma from when I was 13 cause the FND on its own? Was the bike crash at 18 the primary trigger? Is it a toxic mix of both?

Right now, fuck knows. I don’t know the exact percentages, but looking at the research we’ve done, it makes complete sense. The system simply got overloaded from decades of carrying both, and the wires finally short-circuited.

Admitting all of this to myself was hard enough, but taking action was a whole different beast. It took a massive amount of raw courage to finally pick up the phone, open up, and speak to my GP about the heavy, deep-rooted stuff I’ve been carrying since I was a kid. But I did it. And through that, I’ve been referred onwards and am taking the huge step of starting with a specialist trauma counselor next week.

I don’t need to have all the answers or prove the exact cause before I walk through the door. All I know is it’s time to start clearing the wreckage out of my head to give my nervous system a chance to calm down.

If you’re out there trying to piece your own puzzle together, don’t do it alone. It takes guts to ask for help, but your body and your health are worth it. We’re figuring it out one step at a time.