Professionals can be idiots, too
Imaginary Living Room
Imagine a living room. There's a couch and a TV on the wall. On the coffee table is whatever book(s) I've been reading recently. There's whatever cold or hot beverage you want on a coaster on the table because in this imaginary living room we use coasters. It's good to see you, friend.
The last several weeks have been revelatory in many ways. I am over halfway done with my intensive outpatient therapy program and one thing I can say with confidence is that I am a deeply judgemental person. I won’t go into details in writing on an email newsletter of the kinds of things people reveal in this therapy group but god I have the most insufferable real housewives type color commentator in my brain that constantly is prodding me to blurt out some out-of-pocket reaction to what people say.
Without an example that just makes me sound like an unrepentant bitch. But the truth is that in a long-term group therapy setting, you end up meeting people who are dealing with lots of mental health problems from many different backgrounds and with wildly distinct temperments. The part of me that wants to argue, debate, and judge is constantly screaming internally when someone starts talking about COVID safety (or really, their lack of COVID safety) and another person starts talking about electoral politics and another person starts talking about living off of nature and pure wilderness on tropical islands that definitely have always had people living there. Every other day I have to sit with this internal monologue that’s like, “you’re wrong about this, that’s a fucked up thing to say, why would you tell yourself that” and do breathing exercises and various mental reframes to approach therapy with a perspective of empathy and acceptance for others that is not normally tested in this way in my life. Having compassion and patience and care for total strangers is really hard for me, as it turns out.
But one thing I am not trying to squash is my growing distrust and distaste for most professionals. That is to say, if you are an adult and it’s your job to do something, that doesn’t make you immune to being stupid. I’m saying this because I’m a professional, I’m an adult who has a job and I’m supposedly really qualified for it, and I am stupid. All I’m saying is no one in my life was talking to me about the “Law of Attraction” until I started this therapy program, and the fact that it’s coming from the person who is supposed to be instructing us in these therapy techniques is really unsettling to me. Like, how many other therapists and psychology majors are walking through life parroting their favorite self-help books at people like it’s real advice? I don’t need to pay all this money and take leave from work to get quotes thrown at me from bestselling books, I have had white women coworkers before. (If you don’t know what the Law of Attraction is, might I recommend the If Books Could Kill episode on The Secret. It’s this regressive and stupid idea that ultimately your attitude causes you to attract the things that happen in your life. If you’re poor or sick, guess what, you just aren’t wanting to be rich and healthy enough.)
Then, I had a doctor’s appointment the other day. I had some number in my blood work that was too high and instead of helping me with any care or empathy or patience, my doctor just jumped into a thinly veiled diet rant and told me I need to work my way up to 200g of protein a day (do I look like a fucking bodybuilder to you, my guy), I need to minimize carbohydrates as much as possible (but still eat fruits and veggies which are like, mostly carbs??), and I shouldn’t eat any more seed oils because my body isn’t “designed to process those”. (How did you test this? Did you find two representative samples of equivalent human bodies, one eating seed oils and one eating beef tallow and compare the two health outcomes in a vacuum? Or did you just read some hackjob book and pass it off to me as medical advice?)
So anyway he recommended me some hackjob book and passed it off as medical advice (he actually recommended me two books, one of them being Atomic Habits which I have already foregone the need to read by listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast episode about it, and the other being Always Hungry which I might just read out of spite). When I pressed him on his confidence, when I pointed out that 30 years ago people were 100% certain about the food pyramid, about fats being bad for you, and now he’s telling me everything is the opposite of what I thought it was, he just said, “well I don’t expect the science to change in my lifetime and I plan to live to 90 years old”. (Damn, I should have pointed out to him in the appointment that the science has already changed multiple times in his lifetime, but then again, I’m not a professional doctor teacher.)
See what I mean? This bozo over here is a professional. One of the most prestigious and burnt out professionals: a doctor. And he’s stupid.
In actuality I obviously haven’t totally discarded the idea of qualifications, I don’t reject the premise of knowledge or learning or experience. I don’t hate my IOP therapist or even my stupid doctor (but Dr. Deadname (he has my deadname), you’re on thin ice, buddy). But as a kid I thought when you grow up and become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a cop, that means you are really good at being a doctor or a lawyer or a cop. On some level, you just knew everything as an adult that you don’t know as a kid. And now as a three-dimensional adult woman with so many lingering threads back to my childhood that trip me up and strangle me and bother me in so many ways, the reality I am continuously re-learning is that there is nothing about adulthood that precludes you from the same insecurities and insufficiencies you were afraid of and afflicted by in your childhood. Arrogance doesn’t go away with age, same with ignorance, same with fear. (And there are no good cops.)
Anyway, I’m in the market for a new primary care physician. Don’t send me recommendations, the moment someone recommends me something is the moment I lose all interest in following up with it. I’m stupid, remember?
May your doctors appointments be stress-free and your self-help books read from cover-to-cover, friends. With big colorful highlighter, too.
June