Category Archives: Healthcare
What Happened to Empathy in medicine?
Empathy in healthcare is strongly shaped by the conditions practitioners work under and the training culture that forms their habits of attention. Most medical education emphasizes hierarchy, speed, and diagnostic authority. Students learn early that their role is to control … Continue reading
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Medical Metrics: Numbers that Mask Suffering and Protect Power
When the Social Security Disability judge made the final decision about my case, she noted that “there is nothing in the record that shows all that trauma affects your ability to work.” She insisted that I could work full-time in … Continue reading
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Tagged cholesterol, health, hierarchy, measurements, medical records, Medicine, metrics, pathocracy, records, Trauma, trauma denial, weight
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Why I Don’t Go to Hospitals Anymore
I’m done with hospitals. I value care, but these environments reliably cause harm. I know this from numerous experiences that involve virtually every department. Hospitals are built around speed, liability management, billing codes, and rigid hierarchies. Human regulation is not … Continue reading
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Tagged abuse, accountability, assault, doctors, exploitation, harm, hospitals, para-police, predatory doctor, Stress, trust
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Trust as Medicine: A Six-Year Journey in Craniosacral Therapy
After six years of working together, my craniosacral practitioner finally felt my cranial rhythmic impulse. That moment is huge. It’s not just a technical milestone, but proof of how much my nervous system has had to work to regulate, reorganize, … Continue reading
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Tagged care, chronic pain, craniosacral, craniosacral practitioner, pain, PTSD, reliability, trauma recovery, trust
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Putting Our Lived Experience on the Record Can Help Build a Sense of Safety
I started bringing a printed page to my pain specialist appointments because I needed a way to communicate that worked for my nervous system and his. Each page bears the date and his name, plus brief status updates on regional … Continue reading
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Tagged continuity, Doctor, IPNB, notes, pain specialist, records, Regulation, safety
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Accumulated Harm: The Hidden Toll of Healthcare Encounters
Every time we turn to a practitioner for help, we engage in a deeply vulnerable act. We reach out not just for solutions, but for connection, support, and some kind of shared human understanding. From a Relational Neuroscience perspective, the … Continue reading
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Tagged allostatic load, attunement, betrayal, doctors, harm, health, healthcare, medical stress, Stress
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“The God Shot”: Magical Thinking for a Culture That Refuses to Change
Dr. Eugene Lipov, who helped develop the use of Stellate Ganglion Blocks (SGB) for PTSD, announced the release of his new book, “The God Shot.” The title refers to a medical procedure he also calls a “Dual Sympathetic Reset (DSR).” … Continue reading
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Tagged #TheGodShot, Dr. Eugene Lipov, Lipov, PTSD, SGB, Stella, Stellate Ganglion Block, The God Shot, Trauma
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Stuck on Red Alert: The Hidden Harm of Seeking Help
For most of the last seven years, I haven’t been able to feel the normal range of human emotions. Joy, peace, gratitude, awe, and beauty have been mostly absent. Most of the time, I can only think about these things. … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Healthcare
Tagged abuse, awe, emotions, healthcare, hypervigilance, joy, Medicine, peace, recovery, Red Alert, wonder
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My Best Ever Hospital Experience
In the past few years, I had too many awful hospital experiences here in Delaware. They are a stark contrast to those I previously had in Virginia. Twenty years ago I had a severe gallbladder attack. The pain was intense. … Continue reading
I Can’t Trust a Doctor Who Doesn’t Trust Me
I Can’t Trust a Doctor Who Doesn’t Trust Me The biggest barrier to my health has been the practitioner’s refusal to trust me. They don’t believe what I say about my body, experience, or reality. They can’t take in what … Continue reading