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Sparkle (1)
If you’re a patient who has incorporated complementary and alternative medicine into your health care regimen, you may have bumped up against some resistance on both sides of the healing fence. Your doctor may think your homeopath is a total quack selling snake oil, and your homeopath may think your doctor is a big thug, thwacking his pharmaceutical hammer at anything that moves.
Your doctor may insist that you stop all of your herbs, cancel your acupuncture appointment, and ditch the flower essences that were lovingly prepared for you.
On the flip side, your complementary and alternative medicine providers may poo poo traditional Western treatments that you choose to pursue.
In fact, I knew a brother and sister - he was a gastroenterologist MD and she was a naturopathic doctor. Both went to medical school for four years to learn their craft, and both specialized in gastrointestinal disorders. And yet, they couldn’t discuss medicine without knock-down, drag out, screaming hissy fit fights. He thought she was delusional. She thought he was a closed-minded snob who was merely frightened of what he didn’t understand.
It made Thanksgivings very awkward.
The God Complex
I believe that much of this awkwardness between various types of health care professionals stems from wounds we’ve suffered at each other’s hands. Many doctors lord themselves over other health care providers as if they’re the gods and everyone else should bow at their golden feet, (which is why I offered this global apology to nurses, techs, and complementary and alternative health care providers here).
In fact, when I was invited by a group of acupuncturists, therapists, massage therapists, and nutritionists to come join their integrative medicine practice, they confessed that they had never invited a physician before because they didn’t want someone getting all God-Complex on them, treating them as underlings down the totem pole. They said they knew I wasn’t one of those physicians, and they invited me to come be an equal partner at the healing round table, where all health care providers were on equal footing, not only with each other, but with the patient. I was genuinely touched and honored. It was exactly in line with my own philosophy of how health care should be delivered, as I spelled out here.
And it’s not just doctor-patient relationships or doctor-alternative health care provider relationships that are suffering.
I once heard a respected physician (albeit a tired one) say to a brilliant nurse, “Let’s play a little game. I’ll play doctor. You play nurse. I’ll give the orders, and you FOLLOW THEM.”
What is happening to us?
These kinds of stories trouble me deeply, because they speak to a much greater dysfunction within our broken, outdated patriarchal system of The Old Medicine. This dictatorial, condescending, hierarchical mindset more closely resembles the way our military is structured than the way I believe healing systems should operate. And while doctors in the trenches may feel they are at war against disease, replicating war-like methods of communication within hospitals and patient exam rooms serves no one and doesn’t lend itself to healing.
When you practice love, with a little medicine on the side (as I described here), there’s no place for war.
Yet, as health care practitioners, many of us have been hurt within the health care system. Like abused children who go on to become abusers, we are tempted to perpetuate the cycle. And in the face of numerous stressors, we often fail to heal the wounds that have been inflicted upon us. When we suppress, rather than heal, these wounds, we lash out. We hurt others. And in the process, we dim our lights and reduce our healing superpowers.
Patients, nurses, alternative health providers, hospital workers, and doctors have all been severely wounded by the current health care system. We feel battle-scarred and disoriented, traumatized and diminished. We’ve been criticized, ostracized, demoralized, and trivialized. We feel overworked, underpaid, unappreciated, and attacked. Those of us who have recognized the power we have to heal ourselves may have been flicked off like annoying little bugs.
It’s no wonder we feel hurt. (This is why I apologized to all the wounded doctors out there and all the patients and other health care providers.)
Instead of having our healing gifts cherished and nurtured by the system, they have been bashed and bruised, chopped off and belittled. It’s easy to forget why we were called to practice our healing arts to begin with. We might feel so wounded that we choose to throw in the towel and escape a system that just hurts too much. But as tempting as
