Let’s conduct an experiment. An internet mad-lib, if you will.
Once upon a time, James Altucher wrote an influential book called Choose Yourself, encouraging people’s inner entrepreneurs. One of the central lessons of the book is “your boss hates you.” Over the years, he has compiled a long-running list of reasons why.
Now, let’s switch gears to healthcare. In a typical doctor/patient relationship, it is easy to view Doctor as “boss.” The Doctor has power of knowledge and prescription medicine, and the Patient’s job is to comply with the Doctor’s orders. Sounds a lot like a boss/employee relationship to me.
I’m curious to see what happens if I take James Altucher’s list of reasons my boss hates me, and replace “boss” with “doctor.” Will the list still make sense?
Here’s one from Twitter:
Reason your [doctor] hates you, part 47: YOU CAN QUIT. He can’t. Where else is he going to get a […] job that pays $127k to pay off his mortgage and 2 kids. You have freedom and he/she doesn’t.
This rings true to me. I bet your doctor has more debt than your boss, too.
How about another one? This is from James’ blog post on the subject.
I had a [doctor] who would push his glasses down on his nose when I walked in and look at me above the glasses.
Like I was not worth focusing on. Like I was half a human.
He hated me.
Your [doctor] hates you also.
HATES.
He takes your [hard work to get healthy] and pretends, to his boss, that it’s his [work], and uses that to get promotions, money, and love from his spouse and children.
He should love you. But he doesn’t. He hates you.
So far, I can’t argue with that.
Back to James:
If you [get healthy], he’s afraid you will pass him. Or you won’t give him credit.
Or that someone else will steal you away. Like [alternative medicine], or even worse, [functional or integrative medicine].
How many times has a [doctor] said to you, “Don’t talk to them direct. Talk to me first.”
Many times.
I’ve experienced this. Many times that I’ve asked questions about alternative treatments, only to find that my doctor immediately checks out of the conversation. Or all those comments you hear from medical professionals about how Google research doesn’t count (it does, if you’re smart about it).
If [your health gets worse], it’s all your fault. You’re fired [for being non-compliant]
Gotta love it when you’re sick, and they still blame you for not following orders correctly.
He constantly thinks you are talking about him with other [patients] (he’s right).
So he tries to be your friend (he can’t) but you just pretend.
I actually was friends with my doctor once, as much as a teenage girl can be friends with a 50-something man who prescribes her medication. But that was one doctor, out of many. The exception, not the rule.
(And I still didn’t tell him when I started to experiment with my diet.)
At a certain point, the parallels start to break down. This is partly because James’ list has some silly elements to it—and also because your doctor does not pay you money. It’s not a 1:1 correlation.
However, it can be easy to fall into the trap of treating your doctor like a boss, like he knows everything and cares about you feeling better and all you have to do is exactly what he tells you to do. It feels good to get the gold star and a pat on the head for being “compliant.”
If you elevate you doctor’s judgment and protocols over what you can observably see makes you feel better, you give your doctor power over you. Your doctor becomes your boss. And as we learned from James, your boss hates you.
Stop doing things for your doctor when you could be doing them for yourself.
In the spirit of James Altucher: choose yourself.
Choose your health.
PS. I’ve read Choose Yourself at least twice. I might read it again now.
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