FM Weekly 4.41

16 January 2024

content notice for this issue: Israeli genocide against Palestine, Pope’s language against surrogacy, Brittany Watts criminalized for a miscarriage, systemic reproductive coercion

It seems that a popular phrase to throw around right now is claiming that something “altered my brain chemistry.” This is often assigned to groundbreaking books people are reading, or how they might listen to a certain song in a certain way, or how a piece of art shatters the mold, or how hearing a lecturer explain something can help it finally click. In essence, the person making the claim finds themselves different on the other side of an experience.

I find the idea of recognizing a shift in our bodies and brains at the experience of something to be beautiful, powerful, and important. Something I love about myself is how moved I am to learn something new, to hear something for the first time, to see someone else altered alongside me. I’ve often jokingly called this “things I didn’t know that I didn’t know,” exclaiming my joy and thrill at the shift in learning. How incredible, to have a popular phrase connecting this thought project to recognize the when and the how and the what that changes us forever. It’s not often that memes or trends or jargon invites us to recognize the ways our bodies and minds are responding to something, or to be moved so greatly by how an event affected someone we love or respect to engage with it ourselves. When I hear someone say that they’ve encountered something that altered their brain chemistry, I’m immediately interested and want to know more. (Would love to know what fits this category for you.)

Before this phrase was in circulation, I remember patients expressing shock, appreciation, and a permanent switch in how they would respond in healthcare environments when I explained the true enactment of consent, the respect of “No.”, and the welcoming of boundaries. I remember students who would unlearn - recently learned or personally experienced - rough or forced examination techniques while learning trauma-informed care by my side, and debriefing about how that would affect both them and everyone they might take care of. I think often of the physician groups who will listen to me give a 45-minute talk on trauma-informed pelvic examinations only to realize when presented with familiar case studies that when challenged, their standard approach is actually quite violent, unethical, and nonconsensual. “Altered brain chemistry” is an apt phrase for how I witnessed that information being received by folks I am honored to care for, to teach, and to welcome in.