The Biology of Trauma® With Dr. Aimie

Your labs confirmed the autoimmune diagnosis. The hardest symptom turned out to be the one nobody prepared you for.

Dr. Aimie goes solo on depression and autoimmunity, and which one actually comes first. The answer is less orderly than the one most people are given, and it changes what to do about it.

➡️ Full show notes and research: CLICK HERE

Most people are told depression is a reasonable response to being ill. Dr. Aimie interrupts that conclusion with what the research shows: each condition carries close to double the risk of the other, depression turns up in the two years before a diagnosis is made, and roughly a quarter of the link between early adversity and autoimmune disease appears to travel through mental health on the way.

She also walks through why this depression rarely feels like sadness, and why the medication may have underperformed. She was on two of them herself, and the hardest part was not the depression.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

0:00 The hardest symptom of an autoimmune diagnosis

02:41 — Why is depression treated as the reasonable response to a diagnosis?

04:49 — What does double the risk actually mean for you?

07:58 — What is a dose-response pattern and why does it matter?

09:45 — Where does the childhood adversity evidence stop?

12:19 — What does it mean that depression mediates part of the link?

13:54 — What happens when your cells stop responding to cortisol?

15:55 — Why does this feel like the flu rather than sadness?

20:48 — Why has working on your thoughts not moved it?

22:55 — Why do antidepressants underperform here?

24:54 — What does the infliximab trial actually prove?

28:48 — Where do you start when both are running?

"Depression is part of the road from I was healthy to I now have an autoimmune diagnosis." — Dr. Aimie Apigian

If the antidepressant did not do much and you quietly concluded something was wrong with you, this episode is for you.

RESOURCES:

Take the FREE 2-Minute Assessment for Discovering Your Pattern of Stored Trauma: You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up.

Get The Biology of Trauma: Disease is one of the five patterns of stored trauma.

Nothing in this episode is a recommendation to change or stop a medication. Talk to the prescriber who knows your history.

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

You have been doing the work. The therapy, the somatic practices, the self-care. And your body still will not come online.

You have also been doing the gut protocol. Months of it. And the exhaustion has not lifted.

Here is what almost nobody tells you. The thyroid governs gut motility. When it runs low and slow, the bloating and the constipation you have been treating from the gut end may have been downstream of the thyroid the whole time. So you can do everything right, in the right order, and still be working the wrong end of the problem.

This is Part 2 with Dr. Amie Hornaman, known as the Thyroid Fixer. She was misdiagnosed six different times in her twenties before anyone found it.

In this episode she gets practical about selenium, about which system to start with, and about why she thinks adrenal fatigue is overdiagnosed. She also gives a number for how long before your energy and stress resilience actually shift, with the caveat that belongs beside it.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

Which to treat first when your gut and thyroid are both struggling

How a slow thyroid produces constipation, bloating and SIBO

The foundational nutrients she starts everyone on, and why selenium leads

Why one morning cortisol reading cannot tell you what you think it does

How long before energy, mood and stress resilience begin to move

The full show notes have the research behind the SIBO connection, every quote from the episode, the chapter list, and the optimal lab ranges to ask about.

Read the full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/gut-or-thyroid-first-when-you-are-in-chronic-freeze

RESOURCES:
Get the Stress or Trauma Guide
Part 1 of this conversation

By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use it as medical, psychological, or mental health advice to treat any condition in yourself or others. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Always consult your own qualified health provider.

You have been doing the work. You understand your patterns. And you are still waking up unable to face the day.

When the body decides survival is the priority, it stops converting thyroid hormone into the form your cells can use. It produces an inactive version instead, called reverse T3, and that version blocks the active hormone at the cell door. The result is a body running low and slow. It is the same physiology I call chronic functional freeze.

Dr. Amie Hornaman ranks reverse T3 as the single most important thyroid marker, ahead of free T3, and it is a marker almost nobody orders. She also holds that stress and trauma on their own can raise it.

This is Part 1 of a two part conversation.

➡️ Full show notes, research and timestamps: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/can-a-thyroid-problem-keep-me-in-chronic-freeze

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

Why a normal TSH does not settle the question of whether your thyroid is involved

What reverse T3 is, and why Dr. Hornaman ranks it above free T3

How stress and trauma can shift thyroid function directly

Why the hibernation state and chronic functional freeze are the same physiology

What happens to the thyroid in the year after an injury or accident

Why you cannot think your way out of a decision the body made below thought

RESOURCES:

Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma: https://biologyoftrauma.com/quiz

Stress or Trauma Guide

The Biology of Trauma: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/book

The Thyroid Fix by Dr. Amie Hornaman

Part 2 releases August 20, 2026.

Most trauma has a place you can avoid. Medical trauma lives inside your body, so there is nowhere to go.

Dr. Aimie sits down with Dr. James Jackson for the second half of their conversation on medical trauma. What will surprise you is how much recovery is available while the symptoms are still present.

This is Part 2 of a two part conversation. Part 1 is here.

➡ Full show notes + resources: https://bit.ly/BOT190

Dr. Jackson works with people recovering after critical illness, and he is direct about something most clinicians avoid saying. Patients have been taught that recovery means every symptom is erased. That standard fails most bodies. He offers a different measure, along with the markers that actually move.

Dr. Aimie also shares why she left general surgery residency after four years, and the one question she started asking her patients that changed everything about how she practiced.

 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

02:55 — Why do you carry the source of a medical trauma with you?

05:35 — What is acceptance and commitment therapy?

06:37 — How can you be fine right now?

07:09 — Why did Dr. Aimie leave general surgery residency?

08:17 — What happens when you ask a patient what their diagnosis means to them?

11:40 — Why should no one else decide what counts as a big trauma?

13:33 — Why is overselling recovery a problem?

14:46 — What does a rich recovery actually look like?

15:32 — What are the objective markers that recovery is happening?

17:02 — How should we talk about post-traumatic growth?

20:22 — Why can no one recover from medical trauma alone?

 

"If the trauma happened in your body, you're carrying that around. You're carrying it around, and you can't avoid it. It's always there." — Dr. James Jackson

 

If you have quietly decided you are not recovering because something still hurts, this episode is for you.

 

RESOURCES:

Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Discovering Your Pattern of Stored Trauma. You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up.

Get The Biology of Trauma. Avoidance and the pattern of disconnection are on page 117, chapter nine, The Patterns of Pain: Recognizing Stored Trauma in the Body.

Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma by Dr. James C. Jackson, PsyD.

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

A hospital saved your life, and now you plan your route so you do not drive past it. That has a name, and the name is medical trauma. 

Medical trauma is a trauma response that comes from a medical experience. It can follow an ICU stay, a hard surgery, or an emergency C-section. Post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, describes new or worsened problems in thinking, mood, and physical function after critical illness. 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks

Dr. James Jackson of Vanderbilt co-founded one of the first clinics in the country for survivors of critical illness. He sat on front porches across the South asking people what their life was like after the ICU, and he heard the same story hundreds of times. In this Part 1 conversation with Dr. Aimie, he names the one sign he watches for above all others, why so many doctors have never heard of PICS, and how long recovery actually takes. 

This is Part 1 of two. Part 2 is here: 

Take the free 2-minute assessment for stored trauma at biologyoftrauma.com/quiz. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much. You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. 

The Biology of Trauma book: biologyoftrauma.com/book 

Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma, by Dr. James C. Jackson, PsyD. 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks

This content is educational and is not medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Always consult your own qualified health provider.