A mother recently reached out to me about her daughter, who had been fainting since early adolescence. Not occasionally. Not during moments of stress. Some days it happened so often she lost count.
For seven years, this family lived inside that uncertainty. Seven years of hospital visits and referrals, but no real progress. Seven years of a child trying to grow up while never knowing when her body would give out. Seven years of parents waking up each morning hoping today would be different, and going to bed each night with no answers.
The mother asked the right questions after one hospital admission, like whether a thorough cardiac workup might help, but she was reassured that it wasn’t needed. So, she trusted the guidance she was given, as most people would. The focus then shifted to stress, anxiety, and emotional triggers. A psychiatrist tried medication, but nothing changed. Psychologists explored deeper causes, and she could not relate. Afterall, she wasn’t really experiencing any distress that preceded the spells. A neurologist said she was “attention seeking” and psyched her into getting a hold of herself otherwise he would need to do a surgery. Meanwhile, the fainting episodes were disrupting her schooling and leading to bullying. The symptoms came first, yet somehow she still became the one held responsible for them.
This is what happens once the system decides a symptom “must be psychological.” Everyone follows that path. New questions stop. Curiosity fades. The harder-to-consider explanations fall away.
When her mother called me for an appointment, we talked through everything carefully. A few details stood out right away: the sheer number of episodes, how long this had gone on, the total lack of response to psychiatric medication, and the absence of any emotional trigger. All of it pointed to one clear need before anything else: a full cardiac evaluation.
It took two simple tests.
Two.
And just like that, she finally had the answer: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS): a physical condition. Treatable. Manageable. Real.
When I checked in with the mother afterward, she sent me a message I haven’t been able to forget:
“Think we are still processing things… I am so relieved and so happy I can’t tell you. She’s trying to come to terms with it. A lot of relief, some anger, and some fear all mixed in. It’s been 7 years of absolute misery for all of us. Just happy that you heard what I had been saying for so many years and which no one else could.”
Relief. Anger. Fear. All tangled together, because finally having an answer doesn’t erase the years spent without one. It doesn’t erase the times this girl fainted at home and at school. It doesn’t erase the bullying. It doesn’t erase the doubt she absorbed when people hinted her symptoms weren’t real. It doesn’t erase the emotional load her family carried while trying to hold everything together.
And it doesn’t erase the grief that a few simple tests could have changed the entire trajectory much earlier.
Her mother wants me to see her daughter now, not to solve the medical piece, but to help her make sense of the emotional aftermath. The diagnosis explains the fainting, but it doesn’t explain the years of being misunderstood.
I’m sharing this for psychologists, doctors, teachers, school staff, and anyone who works with young people who have unexplained symptoms:
Please rule out physical causes thoroughly before deciding they are psychological. Psychological explanations matter, but using them too soon can send a child down the wrong road for years.
“Nothing found” doesn’t mean “nothing there.”
And the cost of getting it wrong isn’t abstract. It shapes a young person’s confidence. It shapes how safe they feel in school. It shapes their relationships, their development, and their belief that adults will take them seriously.
If there’s one reminder I take from this, it’s this:
Stay curious. Slow down. Ask again. Make sure all the right doors have been opened.
Sometimes the difference between seven years of confusion and a clear path forward is one test no one thought was necessary.
(PS: There’s no identifying information in this story, but I still asked the family for permission to share it. They wanted others to hear what they went through, in the hope that fewer young people will face the same delays and misunderstandings.)