MusicMusic Therapy: Regarding Ren How Misdiagnosis, Isolation, and Invisibility Shape Life with Chronic Illness
- Kayla Concheri
- Dec 9, 2025
- 5 min read
I want to start with a personal moment of gratitude for Ren, a musical artist whose work resonates with me deeply because of our shared experiences. His music has pulled me out of darkness on multiple occasions.
Ren’s lyrics are always beautifully crafted to resonate with human experience, but for me the connection runs much deeper. We share similar experiences living with chronic illness that, when improperly diagnosed or medicated, gets mistaken for or causes mental illness. The devastation that causes. The loss of the life you imagined, the grief of watching your body fail while no one can explain why, is overwhelming. What makes it worse is navigating a medical system that too often stops investigating, labels physical symptoms as psychological, and leaves you to carry the weight of it alone.
I spent a huge portion of my life improperly medicated for both physical and mental health issues—issues that were actually symptoms of larger conditions, including Chiari malformation, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and others. I have had two brain surgeries to release pressure from my brainstem after my cerebellum herniated. And yet, even with such significant diagnoses, I still struggle to find physicians who will truly listen. Symptoms are often dismissed as “unrelated,” even though many disappeared the moment the pressure was relieved. Specialists work in silos. No one connects the dots or knows/ cares enough to properly investigate.
I was placed on psychotropic medications for severe depression and PTSD. I experienced those symptoms, but their root cause was not psychological. It was the compression of my brainstem, which trapped my body in constant fight-or-flight. My nervous system could not regulate. I was losing everything I had built previously, and the people in my life pressured me to comply with medical advice. Instead of asking why or coordinating care, providers brushed off every attempt I made to explain the physical sensations and patterns I noticed. When I described how certain symptoms felt undeniably physical, I was told I was misinterpreting my own body or, worse, that I was delusional, dramatic, or attention-seeking. Instead of considering that I knew my body, they medicated me repeatedly for conditions that were secondary to an undiagnosed structural problem.
My most recent procedure was in February of this year, about ten months ago. One of the most painful parts of healing has been realizing how much unnecessary suffering happened because my care team did not work together, did not investigate further, and did not believe the person living in the body they were treating. I received fragmented care, medication after medication, and constant dismissal of symptoms that should have raised red flags. While all this was happening, I also lost people in my personal life because they did not understand the medical complexity, and it was easier for them to assume I was simply failing at life rather than acknowledge how deeply the system had failed me. It took me figuring out the problem myself through research, learning which physician might actually listen, changing insurance, and advocating up the ladder at a new medical facility until about two years later I finally got in with the doctor I knew would have answers. After all that effort, in just five minutes in his office—discussing my symptoms and reviewing my imaging he came to the same conclusion I had reached through my own research, and we scheduled my second brain surgery that day.
Rewinding back, I had gone through a divorce, was raising three daughters alone, returned to school, started a new career, and was building a business. My life was thriving, and I was held in high esteem by those around me, until everything collapsed under the weight of conditions no one had correctly diagnosed. Every year since 2018, I have been forced out of work for weeks at a time due to medical issues or surgeries completely outside my control: ruptured discs, emergency gallbladder removal, craniotomy/brainstem decompression, and more. Each time, the lack of coordinated care meant starting from scratch, repeating my entire history to providers who did not care to hear about symptoms outside their specialty or communicate across departments.
This is one of the deepest truths reflected in Ren’s music: the loneliness of being sick in a world that does not understand you, and the emotional injury of being dismissed by the systems meant to help. The wound is not just from the illness; it is from misdiagnosis, invalidation, and mental health labels used as explanations when no one looks deeper. Once you have lived that, you carry a truth you cannot unlearn: how easily a patient can lose years of their life because the healthcare system failed to listen. And all without facing any consequences, because it has become so normalized it feels like part of the process. We do not get those years back, that money back, or those relationships back.
And that is when the world stops feeling safe. Not because your symptoms are frightening, but because you finally see how quickly people turn their backs when you are no longer “useful.” Illness reveals a harsh truth: in this society, your worth is tied to your productivity. The moment your output drops, the moment you need help instead of providing it, you become invisible. Disposable. People are conditioned to believe that value equals contribution, and when your body simply cannot keep up, they interpret it as a flaw in character rather than a medical reality. They believe the doctors over you, assume laziness over illness, and blame financial hardship on poor choices or habits rather than acknowledging that you are fighting conditions that would level most others. Once you have seen that, once you have lived in that silence where support should have been, you cannot un-know how fragile your place in the world really is.
I am constantly told how remarkable it was that I went back to work just three weeks after brain surgery. And yet, I cannot celebrate it because I knew it was a betrayal to myself. Every day I live with the consequences, fully aware of my body’s limitations, but I have no choice but to push through them because bills do not wait and I am the sole provider for my household. As a former friend once told me coldly, no one is coming to save me. The tension between what the world expects and what my body needs is a constant companion.
This is why Ren’s music resonates so profoundly with me. Every lyric, every note, reminds me that while I may feel profoundly alone in my day-to-day life, I am not truly alone. There are others who have endured similar struggles, navigated the same medical systems, faced disbelief, abandonment, and invisibility, and survived. Music becomes a kind of therapy, a mirror for experiences too often unseen, a space where pain is acknowledged and resilience is celebrated. Listening, I feel a connection to something larger, a reminder that even when the world feels unsafe, there are threads of understanding and empathy that exist beyond these walls, beyond the misdiagnoses and isolation.
Through it all, I have built a modest practice as a massage therapist and holistic practitioner. Helping others reconnect with their bodies has been one of the ways I reclaim control, rebuild trust in my own body, and create spaces of safety for those navigating their own challenges. In those small moments, with music, with safe touch, with presence, I find the threads of life I can hold onto. And while nothing can fully erase the harsh truths this journey has revealed, these threads remind me that survival is not just enduring; it is choosing connection, healing, and the spaces where safety and care are possible, even if I have to build them myself. Even if you're experience is different but these themes resonate, I highly suggest giving him a listen, his collab songs with the artist Chinchilla are so haunting and beautiful and so deeply human. Here are a few suggested songs to start you off on the therapeutic musical journey and genius that is Ren Gill. Thank you sir for your contribution to my healing.
Chalk Outlines: Featuring Chinchilla
Hi Ren:
How to Be Me: Featuring Chinchilla
Seven Sins:
Sick Boi:
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