This is a pep talk inspired by an interesting and recent experience.
A couple weeks ago, I corralled myself with hundreds of my ND colleagues so we could all keep our pharmacology prescribing licenses up to date.
The location of the class was in a building in the middle of a city block. There were two entrances, one on one street, and one on the next, parallel street. Both entrances were bordered by other other businesses on either side.
The four adjacent doors were easy to miss with out hearty vigilance. On the second day I approached one set of doors.
There was a colleague standing there. She was texting. I hadn’t met her but I recognized her from class the day before.
Because of where she was standing I skipped the first and second doors and pulled on the handle of the third. It was locked.
I felt my stress level rise slightly. Good thing I had three more options…
I tried the fourth door. Success!
The woman stopped texting and said, “Oh! I thought they were all locked!”
“Did you try all the doors?” I questioned. (There might have been a smidge of judginess but I mostly asked out of curiosity.)
She looked at me with a smidge of shame, but I could see the AHA in her eyebrows.
She tried one door. Possibly two. She might have even made it to the third (the first one I tried).
But at some point she gave up. She probably felt that mild panic that I had noticed when the third door didn’t open. Her sympathetic nervous system kicked in and she froze.
She felt she had exhausted all her options. No hope. She was going to be stuck outside, scrambling to text somebody, anybody to come to her rescue and let her in.
This often happens to patients. They give up. They’ve had every medical test known to contemporary, conventional science and no one – not even the best specialists in the country – can find a lick of anything wrong with them. And these healthcare(?) professionals give up. They release these poor folks who feel terrible with no definable answers and the disappointing claim that they are perfectly healthy. But then why do they feel like crap?
The doctors leave them with no hope.
It might be anxiety, diarrhea or period pain. But when doctors can’t put a name or disease label to what is happening they give up. They don’t try that fourth door.
Some patients give up too. All though these are not the ones I typically see.
I see (what I’m coming to recognize is sadly a small percentage of the population) the ones who don’t give up.
My patients tend to explore all their options.
“I’ll try anything!” They say.
Even this disgusting tasting herbal tincture?
Even acupuncture?
Even eliminating dairy and gluten?
Even decreasing your caffeine intake?
“Yes. I’ll try anything. I’ll take what’s behind door number four.”
And more times than not we CAN find a sustainable solution that makes them feel like a million bucks. (Tweet it!)
I’m not saying I have all the answers. But I do have more options that you probably haven’t tried. So if you’re at your wits end and feel like you’ve tried everything, don’t give up.
Are you sure you’ve tried all the doors? Even if you think you have, just try another door – like Brain-Based Transformational Coaching. It may be the one that changes your world.
Don’t give up on yourself, your health or the possibility of living a life that lights you up.
To your door-opening, delightful life,
Dr. Tonia
