The doctor is within

This is the SoulCollage card I made today to represent my Inner Healer–and yours.

Whether it’s firing a surgeon who won’t listen and doesn’t value your opinion, doing your physical therapy or energy medicine homework, releasing your own toxic bitterness, or noticing whether a treatment is actually beneficial to you or not, I believe you yourself are the most important agent of your own healing.

I once had a surgeon who wanted me to take a drug used to treat both genders by cutting off hormone production. In my case, it would have put my body into an immediate temporary menopause–something that doesn’t occur in nature, where menopause is a gradual process. Some women have such severe symptoms that this treatment comes as a real relief. Post-surgery, I had no symptoms, and my symptoms had never been debilitating, so I strongly suspected the cure would be worse than the disease. And that wasn’t counting the real possibility of permanent cognitive side effects.

Additionally, nothing I read agreed with what my doctor said the drug would do for me. To the contrary, everything I read indicated that what he was saying was impossible–that it was, in fact, magical thinking.

When I went back for my followup appointment, I told him I had researched the drug as he requested, and that my thoughts were that I didn’t want to take it, or any risk at all to my cognitive ability, on which my livelihood depends. He pointed out a medical model in the exam room that had been supplied by “those nice Lupron people,” and seemed to imply that my lack of compliance with his advice was ungrateful. He also said he’d only ever had one patient who’d had a problem with the drug–and strongly implied that she was the sort of difficult person who would naturally have those kinds of problems. Well, perhaps I would be too–but I had no intention of finding out.

He was an excellent surgeon, but it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to accept my decision with grace, so within a matter of months, I had a new doctor. I’d asked my internist for a referral to a doctor who would consider me an equal partner in my healthcare. I thought it was telling that he referred me to a woman. Nearly 15 years later, I still see her at least annually.

Right now, I’m working at least three times a day to permanently shift an apparently deeply-rooted energy pattern to a more stable pattern that will better support me. Doing this has given me a strong sense of being my own healer.

Is there something in your body, or in your life, that requires healing today? Is there something you’ve been accepting that you don’t actually have to accept? How can you act as your own healer today?

This post is illustrated with the SoulCollage card I made today, Inner Healer.

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