An excellent article on medical gaslighting, e.g. having your doctor tell you your gene therapy side effects aren’t real and psychological, then wanting to give you yet another toxic medication. But a great take away is to realize the limitations in medicine and switch from the paternalistic model to a collaborative model, and a doctor that respects collaboration and is willing to work with you understanding the flawed medical system in place today.
In modern times, this is accomplished by having medical providers all echo the same message that a patient’s injury has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical (or other medical procedure in question). Most commonly, it instead is argued that the symptoms they are experiencing are due to pre-existing psychiatric issues the patient has (e.g., anxiety), which are treated with medications that often create additional issues.
Since toxicity has always been inherent to the practice of allopathic (Western) medicine, the profession has gradually come up with a playbook to prevent its inevitable medical injuries from sabotaging business. This has essentially been accomplished by doing the following:
•Telling patients the adverse events they experienced either are not occurring or are unrelated to the toxic pharmaceutical.•Developing an elaborate scientific apparatus that provides evidence refuting the link between these injuries and pharmaceuticals on the market, while concurrently training the population to defer to the scientific consensus rather than trusting their own observations.
•Making competing forms of medicine that lack a similar degree of inherent toxicity illegal, therefore making the only choice within the existing medical monopoly be a toxic form of medicine (similarly consider how allopathic medicine is always considered to be the best form of medicine every other approach must find a way to measure up to).
This is also why we have the doctrine in allopathic medicine that every treatment has risks and the treatments are chosen because its benefits outweigh its risk (as opposed to just exploring systems of medicine without those risks).
All of this in turn results in the tragic phenomenon known as medical gaslighting, or as some like to put it “allopathic medicine gaslights you to death.”
The paternalistic model (where you are expected to unquestioningly trust and comply with everything the doctor tells you).
The collaborative model where the physician is your partner in working towards health.
Although the paternalistic model was the standard for most of allopathic medicine’s history, in recent times, there has been a push for the collaborative model. Presently, many patients are seeking out collaborative physicians (especially since system doctors have to spend so much time going through checklists that there is little time for actual engagement with their patients), and the market is economically rewarding physicians who are making this change.
A key misconception much of the public holds about doctors is that we are infallible beings (which is a key justication for the paternalistic model). In reality, once you peer behind the lab coat, we struggle with many of the same issues you all do too. Being able to genuinely recognize this and respectfully treat the physician you see as a fellow human being is one of the most effective strategies for initiating a collaborative doctor-patient relationship.
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/a-primer-on-medical-gaslighting