There’s a sentence I hear in my work more than almost any other: “I feel like something is wrong with my brain, and nobody can tell me what.”
It usually comes from someone who has already done the work. They’ve learned their attachment patterns. They’ve named the trauma. They’ve practiced the breathing, and maybe finally received an ADHD or autism diagnosis in their 30s or 40s that explained a lifetime of feeling out of step.
And still, something doesn’t add up. The brain fog is thicker than it used to be. The anxiety has a physical edge that no reframe reaches. The burnout doesn’t lift with rest. “I know what burnout feels like,” people tell me. “Something else is going on too.”
My instinct in those moments has always been to look for the psychological thread: a new stressor, trauma, an old pattern resurfacing, grief about a late diagnosis. Those threads are almost always there. But at some point I caught myself in an uncomfortable thought: what if I’m explaining this because explaining is what I know how to do?
I haven’t been able to stop asking the question underneath:
What if some of the experiences we interpret as psychological can’t be fully understood without examining the biology of the person having them, and the environment they live in?
I’m a therapist, with no training in toxicology or endocrinology. I work with neurocomplex adults, many of whom spent decades being told their struggles came down to effort, attitude or anxiety. So I’m wary of any framework that tells people the problem is “all in their head,” including my own field’s.
This essay is me asking questions out loud. I don’t have the answers yet, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims to.
The plastic in our brains
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