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Insights
how trauma breaks your heart
Amanda Baudier
15 Apr 25
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Hearing I needed heart surgery at the age of 28 was the definition of a come-to-Jesus moment.
But the thing they don’t always say about come-to-Jesus moments is that — Jesus isn’t the only choice. There’s always at least two choices at any major fork in the road, and usually “Jesus” isn’t the most attractive one.
Mainstream medical doctors don’t give lifestyle advice. They don’t ask about your childhood. They give medication and surgery.
So along with my scheduled catheter ablation, I was also given a prescription for midodrine… which at the time felt like crazy pills.
It was a small white tablet that jolted me into a wired, irritable, almost rage-adjacent state. But the goal was to stimulate my body to keep my heart beating at a “normal” pace. Because at the time, my heart was doing this unnerving mix of slowing down too much… and then suddenly flipping into erratic palpitations. Like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to disappear or explode.
No one even mentioned this to me at the time, but I now understand this wasn’t just a heart problem — it was a nervous system problem.
What I was experiencing was a full-body expression of dysautonomia — a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system.
Through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, my body was swinging between two extremes:
🔺 Fight/Flight (Sympathetic) — a state of overactivation where the body gears up for battle, which can trigger heart racing, anxiety, and erratic rhythms.
🔻 Freeze/Shutdown (Dorsal Vagal) — a state of collapse, often caused by chronic or unresolved stress, where everything slows… including the heart rate.
That swinging back and forth completely disrupted the electrical system of my heart. Over time, that misfiring became so ingrained that it needed intervention (in the form of an ablation) to “reset” the circuit.
The scary thing is that you can oscillate between these two without ever touching the one place where the heart wants to hang: ventral vagal — the state of safety, connection, and regulation.
And when you live in this high-stress, no-exit loop for long enough, your body will find its own way to cope. For me, that coping mechanism was short-circuiting the electrical system of my heart, which had been under extreme pressure — likely since I was in my mother’s very stressed-out belly. More to be said about my childhood at a later time…
What was happening wasn’t just the impact of a high-stress lifestyle. It was the physiology of trauma, working its way literally into my heart.
And what’s wild is — how common this is. Maybe it’s not always as extreme as it was in my case. I call myself the “meth teeth” of nervous system dysregulation… So many of us are walking around with digestive issues, autoimmune flares, or cardiovascular symptoms that are directly tied to a dysregulated nervous system. We treat them with medication — when what our bodies are really screaming for is more peace, safety, and a better rhythm of life.
I didn’t know how to listen then — but my body got louder until it forced me to.
No one advised me to take a sabbatical or change my stress-heavy lifestyle for good. My doctors gave me the basic “six weeks of rest” shtick, a few more prescriptions, and sent me on my way.
I had no “grownups” around me, fretting over my mental state or rushing me off to some tranquil location to heal.
But when my doctor told me, “I was probably going to be taking midodrine for the rest of my life,” something deep inside me screamed NO.
NO!!!!!
I knew there had to be another answer. If returning to my normal life meant I’d have to take crazy pills forever, just to keep my nervous system from fritzing out and killing me — the answer was no.
I had no idea what I was going to do long-term, but in that moment I made the decision that — as soon as I got through surgery — I was going to leave. Leave New York, leave my job, leave my identity… and as long as I did that — I would be okay.
Looking back, I can see that this was the moment that initiated my spiritual awakening.
This one visceral “NO” is what catapulted me into deep study of spirituality, trauma-healing, and the nervous system.
I could have chosen to get my surgery, take my pills, and go back to business as usual. My bosses were encouraging — even incentivizing me to.
But in that moment, at least for that moment, I “chose Jesus.”
And that’s where things really got interesting…
(to be continued)
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