Want a case study of what C-PTSD looks like? Here you go…
I am in tears of pain. Salt water rolls down my cheeks like a Đà Lạt rainstorm. I am howling in agony.
The reason? Mr Trung is massaging me.
The two kinds of massage in Vietnam
There are two types of massage in Vietnam (well, three if you count the happy endings type, but that third type need not detain us here).
The first type is most often administered by attractive young women in short clothing who give gentle, relaxing massages that soothe the savage beast and leave you far less stressed than you were when you entered the premises. These are the sorts of massages my wife and I get every weekend to soothe the wrinkles that accumulate during the week.
The second type is administered by the likes of Mr Trung (and Mr Thin in Saigon). These therapists do not often advertise their services, simply because their clients refer them to other friends who appreciate what a male massage therapist can do. Things like get into the muscles that female therapists do not have the strength to reach.
My ‘Sparky’ moment on the massage table
And it was half way through yet another massage from Mr Trung that something dawned on me (they do not call me ‘Sparky’ for nothing).
Mr Trung says I am the worst client he has ever had. Truly. I barely have the strength to blow my nose, he says. Everywhere he touches me I am in pain. My whole body reacts to his every touch, my back is covered with the plaster from my ceiling as I involuntarily leap horizontally from the massage bed.
And yet my quarterly blood checks show a body in great shape, apart from a tiny bit of Type 2 Diabetes which is under control via medication.
So, if I am in such great shape according to my doctor and my medical tests, why does my massage therapist insist I am in the worst shape he has ever seen anybody?
The number that explains everything
This was the question that I could not answer until today’s ‘Sparky’ moment. But it is blindingly simple once you see it.
Not 42. 66.
Sixty-six years of being told I am:
- Too lazy
- Too stupid
- Too intense
- Too weak
- Too emotional
- Too funny
- Too sad
- Too bouncy
- Too much
- Too little
- [insert your own ‘Too’ here]
That I was hopeless, incompetent, flaky, an idiot. That I would never amount to anything. That I was a bludger. A drain on society. That I did not belong and did not deserve to belong.
That I was a soggy excuse for a nitrogenous compound (my all-time favourite insult, delivered to me in schoolboy jest by a dear friend who remains a dear friend 50+ years later).
The tyranny of “just”
That I needed to ‘just’:
- Just try harder
- Just do this
- Just do not do that
- Just ‘man up’
- Just buckle up, Princess
- Just harden the fuck up
- [insert your own ‘just’ here]
Sixty-six years of being told I was unworthy of anything good. (That was usually told to me by me, btw).
The question that changed my whole story
And then a dear friend casually, innocently, asked me if I thought I might be neurodivergent.
Gaye is a fellow psychologist with whom I have been having a weekly Zoom chat for years. She has a razor-sharp mind and, like the best courtroom lawyers, never asks a question she does not already know the answer to.
Naturally, I deep-dived the literature and to my surprise I came to the same conclusion she already had: that I am a limited edition collectors item within the neurodiverse community (aka ‘AuDHD’).
When recognition rewrites your body
Knowing that changed everything for me. I thought finding out I was Bipolar II changed things, then finding out I was a ‘creative’ at 62 years of age was a thunderbolt, but they were peanuts compared to recognising that I am neurodiverse, and AuDHD to boot.
And THAT is why I understand why every single bit of me hurts, and hurts in agonising detail.
Because I have been masking and struggling so hard for 66 years and finally my body has said, ‘Enough! The invoice is now due and needs to be paid’.
Healing that hurts
And so Mr Trung comes in twice a week to make me howl in pain (and he says he is only using 2 out of 10 pressure on my body). Because he is healing me. Slowly, deliberately, but definitely healing me. By his estimation, it may be many months before I stop hurting all over.
The body never forgets, and it sends invoices
As we now all know, the body never forgets trauma. In my case, the trauma of 66 years of not fitting in and being told so has wreaked such havoc on my body that I am now paying for it. Bigly.
A gentle question for you
If any of this lands with a thud in your chest, you might ask yourself a quiet question.
Where is your body keeping score, and what has it been trying to tell you for years?
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.).
Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M. C., & Mandy, W. (2017). Putting on my best normal: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), 2519–2534.
Kapp, S. K., Steward, R., Crane, L., Elliott, D., Elphick, C., Pellicano, E., & Russell, G. (2019). ‘People should be allowed to do what they like’: Autistic adults’ views and experiences of stimming. Autism, 23(7), 1782–1792.
Kolb, B. (2014). The brain and behavioural plasticity. Psychology Press.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Wikipedia contributors. (2025). Neurodiversity. Wikipedia.
Wikipedia contributors. (2025). Masking (autism). Wikipedia.
Wikipedia contributors. (2025). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Wikipedia.
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