Connecting the Dots

In this episode, we’re going on a personal journey through chronic pain, illness, and the revelation that these struggles are more than just physical—they’re neurological. After being diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) at 28, I thought I had the answer, but years of persistent pain led me to a profound realization: the root of my discomfort wasn’t just my body, but my nervous system.

I explore how disconnected, survival-driven societal structures contribute to widespread nervous system dysregulation, leaving many of us stuck in a state of arrested development. I reflect on my own experiences with chronic illness, mental health diagnoses, and trauma, revealing how our nervous systems adapt to unsafe environments, often carrying invisible wounds that we can’t recognize. I’ll dive into the science of epigenetics, the link between trauma and physical health, and how this systemic disconnection can shape our biology in ways we might not expect.

This episode is an invitation to rethink how we view mental and physical health—not as isolated issues, but as interconnected expressions of the trauma and disconnection we’ve inherited. It’s a reminder that healing requires more than just a change in mindset—it calls for a deeper, body-based connection to ourselves and others. Tune in for an exploration of resilience, survival adaptations, and the urgent need for healing that goes beyond symptoms.

Thanks for listening to Rainbow After Dark! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future ones. If something resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts—feel free to leave a comment on YouTube or connect with me on IG @RainbowAfterDark (I don’t use it much, but I exist!).

This podcast is a space for reflection and exploration—it is not a substitute for professional advice. Please take care of yourself and seek support as needed.

More ways to connect coming soon—stay tuned, and thanks for being here.

Transcript

Hello, fellow humans.

Since you’re here, listening to me, I’d like to tell you a story.

For nearly as long as I can remember, I’ve lived with chronic pain and illness. By the time I was a teenager, pain had become a nearly constant companion. I spent years being treated like a medical mystery—like a guinea pig, or a puzzle that no one seemed able to solve.

When I was 28 years old, I was finally diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, also known as EDS, a genetic connective tissue disorder—and I thought: this is it. I finally have the answer.

But that was only the beginning.

Fast forward to 2024, and I was in physical therapy for my shoulder pain. Again. I had spent years working on my body—building strength, stabilizing my joints, doing everything I was supposed to do.

And then I realized something:

The pain I was experiencing wasn’t physiological anymore. It was neurological.

My brain hadn’t updated to recognize that I was safe. My nervous system was still responding as if I was injured—even though, logically, I knew I wasn’t.

And then, something clicked:

This wasn’t just about my shoulder. This was my entire life.

The same way my body had held onto old pain, my nervous system was holding onto old fear. I was responding to connection as if it were still dangerous—even when, logically, I knew it didn’t have to be.

When I realized this, I felt two things:

Frustration, because I had spent years doing all the right things—therapy, strengthening, stress management—and I was still in severe pain that was affecting my mobility.

And I felt Relief, because it confirmed something that I’d been hoping: I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

And then I started to wonder:

What if this isn’t just me? 

What if this is all of us?

We hear a lot about mental health. About trauma. We hear about depression, anxiety, loneliness. 

For years, I was told my struggles were mental illness. Depression. Anxiety. PTSD. At one point, I was taking multiple psychiatric medications. But what if these weren’t just ‘chemical imbalances’ in my brain? What if they were signs that my nervous system had adapted to an unsafe world?

So maybe these aren’t just personal struggles.

What if they’re symptoms of something deeper—something systemic?

We live in a world that expects people to function in ways that don’t match how humans actually develop.

There’s a concept in urban planning called desire paths. If you’ve ever seen a dirt trail cutting diagonally across a manicured lawn—one that people clearly use, even though the “official” sidewalk is somewhere else—you’ve seen a desire path.

Desire paths show us something important: people move in the ways that feel natural to them, not in the ways we design for them.

And our nervous systems are the same way.

They don’t develop according to how we think they should. They develop in response to the conditions we actually experience.

And here’s the problem: Most people never had the conditions they needed to develop a fully mature nervous system.

Western culture is built on disconnection. It values: Self-sufficiency over interdependence.Productivity over well-being. And emotional suppression over attunement.

From childhood, we’re taught to: Override our feelings. To suppress our needs. And to perform independence, even at the cost of our emotional and physical health.

We call this resilience. But really? It’s just disconnection.

When a nervous system doesn’t get what it needs to fully develop—when it never gets to experience consistent safety, attunement, and co-regulation—it adapts for survival.

That means most people are stuck in some stage of arrested development—stuck in a nervous system state that was meant to be temporary, and is now their default.

At first, I only saw this in myself—I had this unshakable feeling that something was missing. 

But over time, I started to see it in almost everyone.

Most of us are carrying an invisible weight we don’t have words for.

And the worst part? Most of us don’t even know it.

Mental health is just as much a reflection of our nervous system’s state as our physical health. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder at 15, PTSD at 21, and at one point I was having panic attacks every single day. Most of my life I received messages that my brain was broken. I’d done a long list of therapies including talk therapy, CBT, DBT, EMDR—basically the therapeutic alphabet. But when I realized most of my interventions had been top-down processing, I shifted gears and I started to work with my nervous system through bottom-up, body-based healing, and the more I did this, more things started to change.

Now, I rarely have panic attacks. I no longer take psychiatric medications. And I’ve gone from being housebound and relying on a caregiver to living independently. And it’s not because I ‘fixed’ my brain or my body. It’s because I learned to give myself something it had been searching for: self-connection. But self-connection doesn’t mean isolation—it meant learning to listen to myself so I could begin to build relationships that would support my nervous system.

We already know that trauma can be passed down epigenetically. Epigenetics is about the way our environment and experiences influence the expression of our genes, without altering the genetic code. Factors such as stress and trauma can impact how certain genes are turned on or off, affecting our health and behavior across generations—so generations of stress, survival-based adaptation, and relational neglect leave marks on the body—not just psychologically, but biologically.

So what if conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, ADHD, and autism—just to name a few—aren’t just random genetic mutations?

What if they are biological adaptations to a world that has been relationally unsafe for generations?

I’ve seen this in myself in multiple ways.

For most of my life, I had severe arachnophobia. I knew spiders generally weren’t dangerous, but my body did not care. No matter how much I learned about spiders and logicked my way through it, the moment I saw one? Panic attack. My nervous system overrode everything.

This is what happens when fear becomes automatic.

And isn’t that exactly what happens with connection?

We know we need it. But if our nervous system was shaped in an environment where connection wasn’t safe? It doesn’t matter what we know—our body will still respond as if it is unsafe.

Consider that: Connective tissue is what holds our bodies together. It provides structure, flexibility, and resilience.

In relationships, connection does basically the same thing—it provides emotional stability, safety, and support.

So what happens when connection itself is unstable?

Maybe the body reflects that instability.

Connective tissue disorders affect the body’s structural integrity—its ability to hold itself together.

So how could we not be affected if connection and emotional attunement are missing?

Research and anecdotal evidence both suggest that there’s a strong link between connective tissue disorders like EDS and neurodivergent conditions like ADHD and autism. Many people who have hypermobile connective tissue also have differences in sensory processing, emotional regulation, and cognitive function.

I know this firsthand. 

Before I was diagnosed with EDS, I recognized myself as neurodivergent. Although I was never able to access the kind of assessment that would give me a formal diagnosis, I saw myself in those traits.

Over time, I’ve come to see these not as “disorders,” but as different ways of processing the world—as adaptive responses—patterns that are shaped by the environments that shaped us.

Since the origins of humanity, if people did not receive consistent attunement and connection, their nervous systems had to find ways to survive. 

Some became hyper-aware—constantly scanning for danger, attuning to every shift in energy. 

Others adapted by tuning out—disconnecting from overwhelming experiences and stimuli.

These adaptations eventually became traits. And over time, traits became neurotypes.

We know that there’s a strong link between ADHD and autism—sometimes even called AuDHD. Many people experience a blend of these traits, rather than fitting neatly into one category.

I’ve seen these patterns not just in research, but in myself.

I’ve had moments where I’m hyper-aware and deeply attuned to the smallest shifts in my environment. And I’ve had moments where I completely shut down and withdraw. These adaptations are not fixed categories.

We are not “one way” or “the other.” Our nervous systems are responding in the way that makes the most sense for the conditions they were given.

So what if ADHD’s difficulty with sustained attention is an adaptation to an environment where attunement was unpredictable?

And what if autism’s deep focus and sensory sensitivities are, at least in part, a response to a world where relational safety was never guaranteed?

And what if the fluidity between these states—the shifting between hyper-awareness and shutdown—isn’t dysfunction, but a natural response to an unstable relational blueprint?

This isn’t dysfunction.

This is a nervous system responding to what it was given.

Because here’s something important: our nervous systems don’t just adapt behaviorally—they adapt chemically.

From birth, the way we connect with others literally shapes our brain chemistry.

When we experience consistent, attuned connection, our brains release: Dopamine, which tells us, this is good, seek more of this. And Oxytocin which tells us, this is safe, you can relax.

But if connection is inconsistent or absent, our nervous systems adjust—they have to.

Instead of dopamine reinforcing connection, we may seek it in things like hypervigilance, achievement, or external validation.

Instead of oxytocin signaling safety, our bodies stay in a heightened state of alertness or withdrawal.

So whether we develop patterns of avoidance or anxiety, or both, it isn’t just psychological—it is a neurobiological imprint of what our nervous system has learned about connection.

And the nervous system doesn’t function in isolation. It’s connected to the endocrine system through what’s called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis. I think I said that right.

The HPA axis is a body system that controls our stress response. When we experience stress, the brain tells the adrenal glands to release hormones which help us to react to challenges. This is the system that regulates stress hormones like cortisol, which affect everything from blood sugar to immune function. Chronic stress can cause the HPA axis to become dysregulated, leading to long-term health issues.

Cortisol is our body’s primary stress hormone. It’s meant to rise in moments of danger and fall when the threat is gone. In a world without consistent connection, cortisol can stay chronically high leading to anxiety, insomnia, gut issues, chronic inflammation, and immune dysfunction.

Again, I know these effects from my own experiences. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes—suddenly, and without warning, like, any warning—when I was 23 years old. I wasn’t prediabetic. There was no gradual increase in blood sugar levels. At an appointment to discuss the side effects of a new antidepressant, my doctor took my blood sugar levels, and it was over 400. My A1C was above 10%. For those of you who don’t know, normal blood sugar levels are usually less than 140, and normal A1C is less than 5.7%. The strangest part? No one even told me I had diabetes. I found out when a random scheduler called to sign me up for a diabetes education class. That was how I learned my body crossed a threshold it could no longer compensate for.

We tend to think of diabetes as just a metabolic disorder—something that happens in isolation. But research shows us that chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation, and HPA axis dysfunction can directly contribute to insulin resistance. Long-term nervous system dysregulation can throw off the delicate balance of cortisol, blood sugar, and metabolism. The body stays in survival mode for so long that eventually, it starts to break down.

This is why disconnection doesn’t just affect mental health—it manifests in digestive issues, skin issues, autoimmune conditions, and chronic pain—it affects our entire body.

When connection is missing, the body knows.

If our struggles are adaptations to generations of disconnection, then healing isn’t just about managing symptoms.

It’s about creating the conditions our bodies and nervous systems have been searching for.

Because healing isn’t just about thinking differently—it’s about experiencing something different on a nervous system level.

If early connection shaped our brain chemistry, then new kinds of connection have the power to reshape it.

Co-regulation—being in the presence of someone who is attuned to us—can restore the oxytocin pathways that tell us that we’re safe.

Intentional connection can help rewire dopamine circuits that were hijacked by survival-based adaptations.

Repatterning our nervous system through relationship allows us to create new blueprints for connection that no longer revolve around fear.

It’s not about “fixing” ourselves.

It’s about giving ourselves access to the kind of attunement, connection, and stability that we were always meant to have.

For some, that could mean intentional enmeshment: a consensual process of deep mutual attunement—usually temporary—designed to provide a missing imprint of safety. It’s not about losing yourself in another person; it’s about experiencing the kind of secure connection our nervous system needs.

For others, it could mean:

They prioritize relationships that offer real co-regulation.

We could shift how we build communities, friendships, families.

And we could create a culture that values connection over performance.

We don’t just need more self-care. We need better ways of being together.

Because the truth is that we were never meant to do this alone. 

So, what if we chose connection?

And this isn’t just about people with formal diagnoses. This is all of us.

In a disconnected world, everyone’s nervous system is affected to some degree.

But if disconnection is learned, then connection can be re-learned.

How would your life change if you felt deeply connected—to yourself, to others, to life itself? 

What small changes could help you feel a little more connected right now?

Imagine a world where we don’t dismiss our longing for connection.

Imagine if we didn’t expect people to override their own biology just to “fit in” or to survive.

Imagine if we designed a world not around productivity, but around how humans actually function.

A world that supports the most sensitive, most disconnected, and most overlooked—that would be a world where we all could thrive.

We heal when we finally receive the connection we were always supposed to have.

Maybe—just maybe—connection was never the problem.

Maybe it was always the answer.