Messy rooms & boiling frogs: moving beyond GP
Being an NHS GP can be a real challenge. A wonderful GP colleague of mine used to explain it by showing an image of a really untidy room. Think of the messiest office you can imagine. You set about tidying, organising and sorting as best you can, except there are near constant interruptions. Phone calls, prescriptions, questions from colleagues, medical emergencies, more phone calls. Progress is slow but by the end of the day, against all the odds, the room is in order (more or less). You close the door with a big sigh, of exhaustion and satisfaction and relief. And return the next day to find the room back to being as messy as ever. And so, the cycle continues.
Firefighting, surviving, treading water, boiling frogs are common analogies used to describe the work of a GP. How effectively can we support patients to heal when we are slowly being cooked alive? We barely have time to care for ourselves. That’s not to say GPs do not do incredible, important and wonderful work. They do and I will always have enormous love and respect for my GP colleagues. But as I’ve progressed on my own journey of healing, I’ve wanted to support others to go deeper, and that simply is not possible in the 10 minutes we are allocated per patient. To use Internal Family Systems terminology, I didn’t want to be a firefighter, keeping the pain at bay. I want to work with the exiles, the source of the pain, to support healing at the roots.
And so, I find myself here, for now at least. I’ve jumped out of the boiling water into a very different world. It is exciting and disorientating, more like a fast- flowing river than a boiling pot. Health and healing as industries. I charge patients (or clients, a term I’m still getting used to) to work with me, something I find deeply uncomfortable, having always been a passionate defender of free healthcare for all and acutely aware of the importance of the wonderful Julian Tudor Hart’s inverse care law. The healing modalities that are available are endless- psychedelics, coaching, Rolfing, hypnotherapy, Rapid Transformational Therapy, acupuncture, TRE (trauma release exercises), energy healing, holotropic breathwork, somatic psychotherapies (Somatic Experiencing, NARM, Hakomi), craniosacral therapy, flotation tanks, liver cleanses, shamanic healing, Cacao ceremonies and body poems (and these are just the ones I’ve tried). Some I’ve found extraordinarily powerful, some not so much. It’s hit and miss (not unlike trying to find a good GP). It’s also expensive. It’s with genuine gratitude that I hand my money over to the incredible healers who’ve supported me but I know I am extraordinarily privileged in being able to afford to shop around. Then there is the whole question of evidence, something I’ll return to in another post. For now, I’ll just say that, if something supports my healing at a deep level and creates profound shifts in my life, that’s all the evidence I need. I’m also very aware that a sample size of one is not going to convince NICE (the National Institute of Clinical Excellence) of anything.
As I navigate this new world of healing, bringing many of the skills I’ve learnt as a doctor with me, I have many questions and uncertainties. But the deep shifts in perspective and the expansion and growth I (and the people I work with) continue to experience is what inspires me to keep going. My vision is to create a new paradigm, to bring together the worlds of medicine and healing, so that we can support people/ patients/ clients to heal more deeply. I look forward to seeing where this journey might lead.
