Medical Neglect Update: When Determination Alone Isn't Enough.

Oct 10 / Linda Meredith

I reached a point in my recovery where I was thoroughly fed up. Not with life, not with trying, but with being unable to consistently do something I desperately wanted to do - exercise.

I sat with my specialist and said, "This is NOT me. I want my life back."

In September, we trialled another approach, but it didn't work. Fortunately, I've spent decades learning how my brain responds, and I tend to recognise changes very quickly. So, armed with that knowledge, we went back to the drawing board.

Next, we trialled a tiny dose of an SSRI, just 5 mg. That's a quarter of a 20 mg tablet.

And the results?

I've exercised on 8 out of the past 9 days! 🎉

I started with 300 repetitions in the pool and have gradually worked my way up to 1,000. And yes, the pool pump is finally working again! 😂💦

Now, for someone who hasn't experienced what I have, that might not sound particularly extraordinary. But when you've spent years trying to rebuild physical capacity, only to have your brain and body repeatedly refuse to cooperate, eight days out of nine is an enormous achievement.

And here's why I'm sharing this.

I cannot emphasise enough how profoundly childhood developmental trauma can affect neurological development and our capacity to function decades later.

We're not simply talking about difficult emotions, unpleasant memories or negative thinking. We're talking about neurobiological adaptations established during critical developmental periods, some of which can continue influencing cognitive access, threat processing, memory, emotional responses and everyday functioning well into adulthood.

And while neuroscience has established important connections between developmental adversity and later brain function, there is still an enormous amount we don't understand. Some of the functional difficulties people experience are barely being discussed outside specialist and research settings.

I've spent countless hours researching, studying and trying to understand what was happening in my own brain. But knowledge alone wasn't enough. I needed an exceptional specialist. Someone qualified in both psychiatry and pharmacy, who was willing to listen when I walked into his office and explained what I believed was happening.

Someone who understood that I'd already spent decades doing personal development work, working through trauma, developing professionally, growing spiritually and walking faithfully with God.

And that none of those things automatically reverses every neurological adaptation established in a brain that developed during childhood trauma.

Faith matters enormously to me. Personal responsibility matters. Doing the work matters. But we need to stop pretending that determination, prayer, positive thinking or trying harder can independently resolve every neurological difficulty.

They can't.

And just as importantly, I had to listen to my specialist. I had to be willing to consider approaches I hadn't previously considered, trust his professional knowledge, and work collaboratively with him to evaluate what was happening. We didn't always get it right. We tried things that didn't work. We observed, discussed, reconsidered and tried again.

That is what evidence-based practice looks like in real life: research evidence, clinical expertise and the lived experience and preferences of the person receiving care, working together. I'm still learning how to organise my days so that exercise, work, rest and everyday life can happen in a manageable sequence. But something important has changed.

For the first time in a long time, I'm beginning to experience the consistency I've been working towards. I have evidence that my capacity can improve, even though there's still more to understand. And after everything that happened during those years of medical neglect and mismanagement, that means more than I can adequately put into words. We live in a world that places far too much emphasis on personal responsibility for difficulties that are not always within a person's immediate control.

If someone cannot function consistently, we assume they're not trying hard enough. If they struggle to exercise, we assume they lack discipline. If they cannot maintain routines, we question their motivation. And when recovery takes years, we sometimes assume they simply haven't done enough work on themselves.

But what if the person has been doing everything they reasonably can, and the missing piece has never been a lack of effort?

What if the difficulty involves neurological mechanisms that have never been adequately investigated or understood? What if the person doesn't need another lecture about discipline, motivation or resilience, but a clinician willing to investigate why their brain and body aren't responding as expected?


That's why being listened to matters. That's why competent medical care matters. And that's why I will never stop advocating for a deeper understanding of developmental trauma and its long-term neurological consequences. I'm not claiming we've solved everything. One medication response doesn't explain every mechanism involved, and there's still plenty to learn.

But after years of trying to regain something that once seemed so far out of reach, I'm finally seeing meaningful progress.

Sometimes the next step in recovery isn't trying harder. It's finally receiving the right help.

And goodness me, am I grateful for that. 💜🥰

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