One Size Fits All with your Doctor? Really?
This is another post that HuffPo turned down. I think the editorial staff are all lawyers.
“Where did this One Size Fits All mentality come from? asks Barbara Winter in her delicious newsletter for self-bossers, Winning Ways. She goes on to cite Faith Popcorn, “When the first Ford automobiles came rolling off the assembly line—shiny, smooth, and above all, all the same—the world came to see uniformity as the mark of excellence for the modern age.”
This is true for a lot of things, but not the things that require what I call “chemistry.”
It doesn’t matter if you have chemistry with your plumber. The sink is clogged, she unclogs it, you write a check, you’re done—even if you don’t like the plumber.
It matters, however, and matters a lot, whether you have chemistry with your doctor. Doctors aren’t interchangeable. I’d go so far as to say that no kind of doctor is interchangeable with another.
If you like your doctor, you’ll listen better. You’ll trust more. You’re even likely to get better faster if you like your doctor! I don’t know if there are proper studies for this, but in my work at Visions Healthcare going on three years, I’ve seen it time and again. Please consider this a claim based on anecdotal evidence.
The reason this is so, despite the patent wisdom of Henry Ford, is that uniformity is the very last quality that can accurately be applied to humanity. None of us is uniform in any way except in the template sense and then only if we are blessed with what is considered normal: two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears, one mouth, et al. In fact, once we escape from the template mentality, uniformity is done for. Think, for example, of the ears you have seen in your lifetime. Even on the opposing sides of one head, they’re not uniform.
A patient I’ll call Jane told me a fascinating story this week. She originally came to Visions to see Doctor A. Jane liked Doctor A plenty but she wasn’t “serious enough.”
I know Doctor A—she’s serious, but she’s also gentle. Patient Jane is a Type A personality.
She went on, “So I switched to Doctor B. She’s perfect for me.”
I know Doctor B. She’s much more a Type A and can meet the intensity of Patient Jane far better than Doctor A.
Both docs would probably have prescribed the same treatment for Jane. It’s just that Jane had chemistry with Doc B and not with Doc A.
She’ll get better faster working with Doc B, and she told me that since she’d switched, she was rapidly on the mend.
It seems so strange to me that we have learned to expect uniformity of ourselves. Why would anyone want to be uniform with anyone else? Our country motto even states this: E Pluribus Unum: Out of plurality, one.
That one isn’t uniform, dear one, it’s as diverse as it is possible to be diverse.
The next time you feel like you need chemistry with any kind of provider in your life and you’re not getting it? Keep looking till you feel that old-fashioned inner click that says, “I see you. You’re uniquely you, and somehow we fit together.”
For spiritual nourishment, please visit www.susancorso.com
