Echo

The Healer Relationship

One of the things I’m always talking about, is the difference between a healer and a doctor. There are plenty of doctors out there, and they’ve studied the mental/analytical side of healing and hold their textbooks and expert studies supreme. Healers are those who were inherently born into this world with a gift and a purpose, and have strong instincts about how to heal a person holistically, even if it’s not explained in a textbook or seems to contradict accepted knowledge. Healers are few, and just because you’re a doctor, doesn’t mean you’re a healer, though the best doctors are also healers.

There’s something I’ve noticed about the health profession that’s been bothering me for a while and I want to talk about it. There’s a conflict of interest between the doctor as a healer, and the doctor as a businessperson. If a person’s livelihood and wealth depend on the number of patients and the number of treatments, then there’s an inherent conflict of interest in healing their patients quickly and successfully. Yes, I know that doctors take oaths. But how many other professionals also take oaths but are led astray by the need or desire for money? No matter your profession, you’re still human, and human beings have flaws and self-centered desires. So if a doctor prolongs your treatment or doesn’t successfully heal you, either consciously or unconsciously, you’ll keep coming in and spending your money on trying to get well. Even if a doctor doesn’t consciously impede a patient’s healing or give unsuccessful treatment, I wonder if the pressure to have a financially successful practice is a burden on their subconscious that makes them create certain situations without realizing it, like viewing a patient’s malady as mysterious and not being able to figure out a fast and efficient treatment, thus prolonging treatment even though they don’t realize how they are actually contributing to the situation.

Another thing that I’ve noticed in my personal relationships with caregivers, is their reluctance to let go once treatment is ended or no longer pertinent. Sometimes on a personal level, they have trouble letting go. I once bought a therapist in my building coffee because I wanted to talk about his field. Since we were just hanging out and I wasn’t a prospective patient, he gave me the behind the curtain look. First, he told me that new patients were always good because the cost of living is so high now so it’s good news to have more paying patients. He’s a nice guy who seems to have gotten into the field for the right reasons, but he made it sound like new patients didn’t present new professional challenges as much as new “customers.” Then he went into a thing about how if he did it all over, he would go into real estate and make a shitload of money. This made me think about what I had just talked about…how if money weighs so heavily on his head, then if it affects therapy and how often he wants (needs) the patient to come in. They’re basically cash cows…as long as they have something to talk about and work through, then he gets paid consistently. But there’s also another issue–what if you like the patient, come to care for the patient’s drama and become intoxicated by the experience of sharing their discoveries and growth? Even if you know that their major issues are resolved, at what point do you tell a patient that you think they’re ready to end treatment or therapy? Or do you let the relationship drag on until the patient realizes that there’s nothing left here to discover or have fixed? Out of all the therapists and chiropractors I’ve known, only one person has told me that I was done which I really appreciated. Everyone else tells me I have to keep coming in, and it’s indefinite, and sometimes what happens is mostly hanging out and chatting, because there isn’t anything more to be done in terms of healing. So I asked this therapist if it was hard to let go of patients. He got really intense and said, yeah when patients leave, it’s tough. It’s like a break up. And just like a romantic breakup, sometimes people don’t do it the right way. Like they make up a reason to create conflict and then they leave on bad terms. I think maybe a professional caregiver needs to be aware that at the end of the day, no matter how well they connect to a particular patient or how much they like this person, theirs is still a professional relationship and when the work is done, it is their duty to stop the treatment or therapy and let the patient go. I suspect many people don’t do this. I’ve experienced it over and over.

I’ve had this experience with caregivers who get attached to me. They come to really like me, they ask me a lot of personal questions about my life, they tell me about theirs. Sometimes they straight up become romantically interested, and I’ll sidestep that aspect and pretend I don’t realize it; it doesn’t bother me as long as it doesnt’ affect my treatment. But sometimes it does. It’s like all of a sudden, my healing process plateaus or starts going backwards, and they don’t understand it. So we try to work on the issues or the pain more aggressively, but it’s so mysterious, why I’m not getting better. And it always seemed like the doctors involved in these instances, were the doctors who enjoyed my company and felt they had a warm connection with me, or the ones who were romantically interested. Maybe in their not wanting to let go of me, they subconsciously kept me from getting better. I always suspected this, but I never wanted to confront this thought, because it’s a pretty disturbing thought. I have no doubt that it happens and in my life, it did happen with several doctors. I don’t think they were bad people and I don’t think they did it consciously, but it did happen. And when I left them, I quickly and seemingly miraculously got better.

I believe that for you to really get good service in most facets of life,if the service provider respects you and likes you, you will get more. The same as in the health care industry. If a doctor likes you or enjoys having you as a patient, they’ll work harder for you, pay closer attention and take extra time and care to focus on how to make you better. Basically, they’ll give you more healing energy by caring and focusing and really figuring out your individual problem, rather than going through the motions of the textbook and hoping for the best. But there’s such a fine line between them liking you enough to pay special attention to your progress, to them not wanting to let you go and wanting to see you every week. Once that becomes a seed inside them, you’ll see your condition and care deteriorate, though the doctors will become completely baffled by why standard care is no longer working. And they’ll work extra hard to try to help you and tell you that it just takes more time, but at some point, you’ll start to suspect that maybe deep down, the doctor is afraid that if you get better, he’ll have to let you go.

I know that there are a lot of doctors out there who are very good doctors and are consummate professionals. But they’re still humans and I think if you think about your history with doctors and healthcare providers, you’ll remember examples of not getting good treatment because your doctor simply didn’t care, or doctors who were so nice and affable, that even though you sometimes suspected that they were missing things or not doing a good job on you, you would keep going back, almost because you felt bad or didn’t want to believe they weren’t 100% trying to make you better. Maybe they’re completely competent, but something about you or something about themselves is making them unable to heal you. But you have to not just assume that doctors are these professional robots who know everything, and look at them as human beings, and at your relationship as a human relationship. You’ll want to know what the doctors intentions are, and you’ll want to be very cold and practical about analyzing if this person is capable and clearheaded enough to provide you with good care, and if you
r connection can help or hinder the quality and focus of that care.

Visit doctors with your eyes open. Not all doctors are equal, but all doctors are human and are susceptible to human vulnerabilities. Beware if they seem very focused on money, and also beware if you think a warm, personal bond is interfering with the professional care. These are things that can present major conflicts of interest to your getting better.