Max's Morning Mayhem

My experience with Doctors has lead me to really lower my expectations of them. I find the best approach is to treat them a little like a robot. I just want to say here that this is really my own very subjective perspective on it. Even though I us language like "you have to", please take it with a pinch of salt. I hold these opinions quite firmly but I'm just one guy.

Their main problem is that they are incapable of engaging with any information that doesn't fit into what they already know or what they already think they know. They really are literally incapable. I think it's because they are very busy and it's the way their training is. If it doesn't fit into a box they already have, then they don't know what to do with it, so it goes nowhere.

The result of this is that you can be reporting extremely dramatic and distressing things to them, and they, effectively, ignore you. This is very bad. But it's not something that's going to change any time soon.

And, I can tell you're hurting from this neglect, and I've been there too, I know how much it hurts. But, to get anything out of doctors at all, you have to stop expecting them to behave like you expect doctors to behave, and work out how to adapt to their way of thinking so that they can be useful to you. Really, you, and/or whoever cares for you, has to become the doctor, the person/people who take ultimate responsibility for your care. Doctors are just agents who can either help or hinder your access to therapy.

So this comes back to treating them like robots. They have boxes, with labels, and those boxes are the only things that exist to them, So to get a doctor to listen to you, you have to take your symptoms, and then find the closest word or terms that you think a doctor may have on one of their boxes.

For example, before I had an autism diagnosis and I was having what I now call meltdowns and shut downs, I would go to my doctor and say "Sometimes my whole body convulses. Sometimes my legs collapse. Sometimes I find it difficult to talk." No dice.

So then I think, okay, what's a box that a doctor has? So next time I go to the doctor, and instead of telling them everything that happens, I just say "I'm having seizures." because that's another way of saying "my whole body convulses" except this time, it's something a doctor has a box for. And bang, I get a referral to neurology, and eventually some kind of psychotherapy, which helped a little.

I hope this helps. I'm not sure how to translate what you've described into something a doctor would act on, but I would just try wording it in different ways. They always prioritise the physical, but they will tend to ignore it when they think it's "just psychosomatic". You will tend to get better results from doctors when you can separate the physical from the mental. They are really really really really REALLY bad when there is a crossover between the two, it's like telling a robot "here is a 1 but it's also a 0".

So yes, I think my approach there would be to separate your physical symptoms from your mental symptoms, and present them to your doctor as totally separate things. Possibly even in different appointments, to different doctors. And try just going for one at a time. For example your ears gunking up. Or your sleep difficulties.

I hope this helps, I know I'm a wordy brotherducker. For me there was something deeply painful about being ignored by doctors, like being let down and ignored by a figure you really trusted, who was meant to look after you. I no longer put my faith in doctors, though I do benefit from the skills and knowledge they do have from time to time. I am much happier now I expect much less from them.

My experience with Doctors has lead me to really lower my expectations of them. I find the best approach is to treat them a little like a robot. I just want to say here that this is really my own very subjective perspective on it. Even though I us language like "you have to", please take it with a pinch of salt. I hold these opinions quite firmly but I'm just one guy.

Their main problem is that they are incapable of engaging with any information that doesn't fit into what they already know or what they already think they know. They really are literally incapable. I think it's because they are very busy and it's the way their training is. If it doesn't fit into a box they already have, then they don't know what to do with it, so it goes nowhere.

The result of this is that you can be reporting extremely dramatic and distressing things to them, and they, effectively, ignore you. This is very bad. But it's not something that's going to change any time soon.

And, I can tell you're hurting from this neglect, and I've been there too, I know how much it hurts. But, to get anything out of doctors at all, you have to stop expecting them to behave like you expect doctors to behave, and work out how to adapt to their way of thinking so that they can be useful to you. Really, you, and/or whoever cares for you, has to become the doctor, the person/people who take ultimate responsibility for your care. Doctors are just agents who can either help or hinder your access to therapy.

So this comes back to treating them like robots. They have boxes, with labels, and those boxes are the only things that exist to them, So to get a doctor to listen to you, you have to take your symptoms, and then find the closest word or terms that you think a doctor may have on one of their boxes.

For example, before I had an autism diagnosis and I was having what I now call meltdowns and shut downs, I would go to my doctor and say "Sometimes my whole body convulses. Sometimes my legs collapse. Sometimes I find it difficult to talk." No dice.

So then I think, okay, what's a box that a doctor has? So next time I go to the doctor, and instead of telling them everything that happens, I just say "I'm having seizures." because that's another way of saying "my whole body convulses" except this time, it's something a doctor has a box for. And bang, I get a referral to neurology, and eventually some kind of psychotherapy, which helped a little.

I hope this helps. I'm not sure how to translate what you've described into something a doctor would act on, but I would just try wording it in different ways. They always prioritise the physical, but they will tend to ignore it when they think it's "just psychosomatic". You will tend to get better results from doctors when you can separate the physical from the mental. They are really really really really REALLY bad when there is a crossover between the two, it's like telling a robot "here is a 1 but it's also a 0".

So yes, I think my approach there would be to separate your physical symptoms from your mental symptoms, and present them to your doctor as totally separate things. Possibly even in different appointments, to different doctors. And try just going for one at a time. For example your ears gunking up. Or your sleep difficulties.

I hope this helps, I know I'm a wordy brotherducker. For me there was something deeply painful about being ignored by doctors, like being let down and ignored by a figure you really trusted, who was meant to look after you. I no longer put my faith in doctors, though I do benefit from the skills and knowledge they do have from time to time. I am much happier now I expect much less from them.