What a blessing it is to go to a doctor who’s a skilled listener.
As the inhabitant and owner of a highly sensitive body, I’ve amassed a great volume of wisdom about my own self. Because the mainstream medical profession has shown a consistent lack of interest in the valuable database I carry around about me and my body, I tend to seek help from the kinder, gentler types of healers, like naturopaths.
In my experience, the most effective healers listen first. They know they’re starting from scratch, they want the full update, and they know I’ve got it. No one wants to feel like they’re superfluous to their own medical treatment – just another tick mark on the mighty doctor’s daily to-do list.
When Rita Charon, a medical doctor, noticed a connection between healing and storytelling, she explored, researched, and eventually coined the term “medical narrative” to describe the profoundly positive benefits to patients when they’re allowed to tell their own stories to doctors who know how to listen.
Charon took the time to study literature and creative writing, to the point of getting another Ph.D., then went on to found The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, which trains doctors to add listening to their healing skills.
The narrative medicine movement continues to spread – maybe even to a doctor near you. Ask around. There might be someone out there who wants to help you by hearing your story.
“Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness.”
~ From The Program in Narrative Medicine’s Mission Statement
Further Resources
I first learned about Rita Charon and narrative medicine from this lovely article: “Story Telling and Healing,” by Heinz Insu Fenkl.
Rita Charon wrote a book called Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness
The Scientific American published an article about Charon and her work in May of 2005: “When Medicine Meets Literature.”
The New York University School of Medicine medical humanities website includes their Literature, Arts, and Medicine blog and database of resources.
Related reading: Self-Care Basics, Herbal Pharmacy
2 Comments
Most, certainly not all, alternative healers do this but sometimes one needs a “regular” medical doctor — am soooo delighted to know that such a movement has begun! Yea!
Yes, me, too.
And although it’s new, it’s been going on long enough to have spread by now.
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