EP 129: When Caring isn't Enough - Acknowledging our Blind Spots as Clinicians

[clears throat] I wanna tell you about a person, and this is someone who I have physically, and then, you know, like, I physically never treated.

But when all you do is see concussion every day for years, uh, there's things people say, there's questions you can ask that definitely flag you to understand where you would want to look deeper in their care, right? What are the things you would want to look at? And this great human was connected with care, incredibly motivated to get better, and over time, they would come share...

They would a- come ask me questions.

I get a lot of questions on social media and through the podcast and through my email, and I should really do a, like, Ask Natasha hour, um, so that you could all learn from the questions.

Anyways, I tangent.

Um- She would ask questions, and she would ask questions about either something that she'd experienced within herself, uh, or some of her symptoms, or something that she was really confused about on how it was presenting, and then would share the, the experience they had had with their clinician, and they left even more confused, or they left feeling like, "Ugh, it's all in my head," or they left feeling like, "This is just concussion.

There's nothing you can do." And in the beginning, I...

we'd like reaffirm, and I would give feedback on, you know, maybe have a discussion with your clinician, but ask about this.

So I would give them tools because of what they were saying that flagged things for me that needed to be explored a little bit deeper to bring back to their therapist to have a conversation about so that both of them could hopefully learn, have some greater insight, uh, and move forward.

And unfortunately, what tended to ensue [chuckles] more often was me getting frustrated.

Uh, and maybe it wasn't my place to get frustrated, but I got frustrated because this, this amazing human would come back to me and say, "This is what happened today in therapy." And y'all, [sighs] I ju- [growls] [laughs] If you could see my face, I'm like making this like scrunchy face 'cause I, I think about this and I'm just like, "Fuck my life." Um, this...

Oh, it just, it...

I'm struggling to find nice words.

No, I'm kidding.

Um, really, what ended up, what happening is the therapist very clearly cared.

Very clearly, this therapist cared about her clients.

That was never the question.

She listened.

She validated.

She held space.

She offered support.

That, she cared.

The problem with her, and not even her, not her as a human, but in this scenario, is that she didn't have the skill set to know how to go deeper.

And whether, this is where I'm not in this person's head, so I don't know, whether she wasn't aware of her blind spots to know what to ask to know that she even could go deeper, or she just chose that where I'm at is good enough, I don't know.

But what infuriated me about this scenario over and over again was that what started happening is the answers she would give this client were, "That's just part of concussion.