Tag Archives: healthcare
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
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged allostatic load, attunement, betrayal, doctors, harm, health, healthcare, medical stress, Stress
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Announcing My First Book!
Of all the things I could have predicted for my life, becoming a watercolor graphic medicine artist who uses cartoon ladybugs to teach Relational Neuroscience was not one of them. But here I am. My “Della the IPNB Ladybug™” books … Continue reading
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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When Healthcare Feels Dangerous: How Practitioners Shape Our Capacity to Heal
When I tell a practitioner that I’m not doing well, and they dismiss or minimize what I say–what I share of my lived experience–it makes everything worse. It increases my sense of unsafety. It pushes me even further onto Red … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged attune, attunement, compassion, doctors, healthcare, healthcare practitioners, IPNB, relationship, witnessing
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The Most Dangerous Part of Being a Healthcare Practitioner
Working in healthcare can be meaningful and even life-affirming, but it also carries a kind of stress that is often invisible and unspoken. From an interpersonal neurobiology perspective, the danger isn’t just in burnout or long hours. It’s in what … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged care, connection, danger, healthcare, Medicine, practitioner, safety, suffering, support
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Dear Doctor, Please Pause and Take a Breath Outside the Door
Dear Doctor, please pause and take a breath outside the door. It’s good for both of us. I know the system you work in demands too much, too fast, for too little. It rewards efficiency over empathy, billing codes over … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged breathe, connection, disconnection, Doctor, dysregulated, healthcare, IPNB, Medicine, mindful breath, pause, presence, safety, stress reduction
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How Repeated Medical Abuse Conditions the Nervous System
Fabrizio Benedetti’s insights into conditioning in his book, “The Patient’s Brain: The neuroscience behind the doctor-patient relationship,” are highly relevant for understanding how repeated medical abuse can shape a person’s nervous system. Conditioning—where the nervous system learns through repeated experiences—plays … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare, PTSD
Tagged doctor-patient relationship, health, healthcare, Medical PTSD, Medicine, pain, PTSD, trust
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ChristianaCare: Fortress of Wealth, Desert of Care
ChristianaCare is sitting on rising profits while the amount of free care it provides to the poor hasn’t budged in years. Spotlight Delaware reports that in 2023, the hospital system spent less than one percent of its budget on charity … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged accountability, budget, ChristianaCare, Community, corporate medicine, healthcare, hospital, IPNB, profits, rupture
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7 Years of Disbelief
For over seven years, I’ve been forced into the role of “my own best advocate.” This is because the people I turned to for care refused to understand what I need for recovery from severe Complex PTSD and quadrilateral Complex … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged chronic disease, connection, CRPS, doctors, healthcare, Mental Health, PTSD, safety, treatment
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