Daphne Spyropoulos - Brain’s Got the Sh*ts Again

A few years ago, on a gloomy New York morning, I was sitting in my tiny dorm room on East 35th street, skimming through Ted Talks. Twenty minutes in, a graceful, Finnish doctor appeared on the screen, tall and well-groomed, to explain her fascination with the human anus. She then went on to describe how there is an innate intelligence in our bodies last bastion, dictating the progression of events in a way that may even be socially acceptable.

To put it in simpler words: your butt knows when you cant go, so it holds tight until its time.

At least sometimes.

Little did I know at the time, as a Psych PhD student, that the butt-brain, sorry, the gut-brain axis would become my own source of fascination during the next few years. Now, Ive always been averse to intense psychoanalytic theories, but when I told one of my professors about my research, they said, I always knew you had an anal personality! It was kismet. I am not sure how you got a hold of this book. Perhaps you got it as a birthday gift from your friend who thought the title matched your energy (oops) or your aunt who tried to crack you up after a bad breakup. Glad, youre here and glad, they bought it anyway!

To officially introduce myself, I am Daphne, a Greek-American Psych(o) PhD student living in New York, and I, too, am fascinated by the human anus. Just kidding! Wanted to make a grand entrance. Lets try this again. I am Daphne, a Psych PhD student whose brain had the shits for years and years until a vastly uneventful Euro trip on a winter break, some smokes in Amsterdam, and a bunch of hurting bones.

Yes, joint pain was, in fact, the leeway to the long, slimy, disgusting beauty that is the human gut. Pre-Amsterdam, I had experienced years of intense fatigue that made me cancel most of my social plans (all my friends can attest to that, and they know my car tires couldnt have been that fragile). The chronic fatigue also made me develop compensatory strategies such as mind games and tricks that would convince me to get up and stay up for longer amounts of time.

Two years in the tiredness, my mom took us on a road trip across Spain that helped me realise what I was giving up through surrendering to the exhaustion. Slowly after that, I introduced more travel, internships abroad, and even some fashion modelling into my schedule. I had realised that I would have a tired life, but I was adamant that it would be a full and exciting one. During my Masters studies, I presented my work at conferences in Mexico City, London, Lisbon, Turkey. I worked at a Psychiatric Hospital in South Africa. I visited Vietnam and Cambodia, all while being a professional clothes hanger (a hangry one too).

The fatigue was unyielding, and during my first year as a PhD student in New York, I decided to write a fiction book that was actually very autobiographical, about how I was experiencing life and how I thought it was or wasnt affecting my work as a therapist in training. The book was published, I lost some friends and made some new ones, and then I visited my twin brother who was living in Rotterdam.

Tired or not, it is a family rule that when we travel, we walk like savages, and so we did, every day around the Netherlands. A couple of days later, we were on a train to Belgium (got to love Europe!), and I began experiencing intense joint pain across my body. The pain persisted, I flew back to New York, booked an appointment with a rheumatologist at NYU Langone, Covid happened, I flew to Greece and missed the appointment.

A few months after quarantine, when we were allowed to make doctors appointments, I went to some Greek doctors who eventually diagnosed me with Celiac disease along with a heavy dairy intolerance and a soy throat-closing allergy. This is silly, I thought, but I decided to give up on my favourite ice cream, chocolate, and snacks that once brightened up my days, just to see if the joint pain would subside.

I promise to anyone whos listening that two days in, my pain had vanished, and so had my fatigue. I AM NOT KIDDING. This was a ten-year companion who had suddenly left the building. Gone. So had my brain-fog. I thought this must have been a coincidence, that the cloud would return the next morning, but it didnt, and it hasnt ever since. Not only that, but my thoughts began being happier, and so did my memories.

As a tired person, my mind would ruminate on negative events, critical comments, and fret about the future. As a celiac, life-averse, tastebuds-doomed person, though, I kept getting these flashbacks of being a happy, young child in our beach house, having enjoyed a good hide-and-seek game with friends, ready to sleep. As I was describing this to my brother, asking him if thats how his own mind worked naturally, he took my face in his palms, starred me in the eye, and said, What did you take? I wont tell Mom.

I was sure that getting three gut-related diagnoses may not resolve ones physical and mental health problems in a day, as was my case, but I was also curious about what on earth the connection between gut and brain health was, and I knew that it would be my next passion project. As I was describing this to one of my mentors, they warned me that I was wasting my time, but as you may have grasped, Ive wasted so much time already, and I am not afraid to do it again.

Before I move on to explain how this book is structured, I must say that I am an avid reader and admirer of Elizabeth Gilberts stance on creativity. She says that creativity taps you on the shoulder in the form of a psssst, you, and that ideas float in the universe, asking different people, Will you be my mother, will you be my father?

Hell yeah, Liz! When this shitster tapped me on the shoulder, I was ready to dive right in (okay, I hear it now). I spent my summer getting a Nutritional Psychology certification, and then, when it was time to find a clinical placement, I decided to google the most esteemed neuropsychiatric teaching hospital in Greece. The only email address I was able to find was that of the neuropsychology lab director to who I wrote and who invited me in for an interview.