Tag: positive

Do NOT apologize for advocating for yourself!

To advocate is to publicly recommend or support. In terms of healthcare, it means speaking up for yourself and feeling more confident about the choices you make with your doctor. It means not letting someone else make all of your health care decisions without your input. It means being an active player in your health care team and helping drive your outcomes in a positive direction. It means asking questions when you don’t understand. It means keeping track of the course of your care. It means knowing your history and your family history and any other details pertinent to your health. It means following through with your doctor’s recommendations and taking your medications as directed. It means emphasizing an honest, team-oriented relationship with your physicians. It means being honest about your preferences or concerns. Let me clarify. This does not mean being rude or inappropriate or deliberately obstinate with your physician or constantly being on the lookout for a mistake that you can capitalize on. It is exactly the opposite. That kind of behavior really does nothing but insure a negative outcome.

You get the picture? Advocating for yourself requires action! You are representing you! You are the only one who knows you intimately and is with you 24 hours a day. This is something that you should never have to apologize for. For me personally, I love it when patients ask questions and get involved with their care. It shows me that they are actually interested in getting better. I have some colleagues that would strongly disagree. They hate it when they have to spend extra time answering questions. They view it as more of an act of belligerence or a personal attack, doubting their expertise. To me that is just a sign of their own insecurity in their recommendations. I say ask away and don’t leave the office until you feel comfortable.

Did you know that studies show that people who advocate for themselves are healthier and tend to live longer? Sounds like another bonus to speaking up if you ask me. Self advocacy is important because it helps you to be able to make your own decisions. It helps you gain self-respect and self-confidence. It helps you form an alliance with your physician. It helps you be a part of the doctor patient team relationship. It helps you learn to express yourself properly to attain the goals that you want. From what I can see, there really isn’t a down side so speak up why don’t ya?

Dr. Katz

Sometimes it’s hard

Sometimes it’s hard

Hard to always smile

Hard to show a good face

Hard to have a positive attitude

But you know what’s harder?

Negativity

Frowns

Apathy

Each of those

more destructive than the last.

Not for me I said.

Not for me.

I need all my strength

To fight the real enemy.

Every Memory Has Value

Memories - kMITRA

Have you ever noticed that when an experience ends in a sour note, our first instinct is to try to erase it’s memory as if it never existed in the first place? We attempt to block any recollection of the event as if to protect ourselves from the pain. Sometimes we go as far as to rewrite history to attempt to make ourselves feel better about the whole thing or to justify our decision in the end. I think that we do this in order to regain control and shield ourselves from the bad experience, thus taking away it’s power and impact. This is what we tell ourselves at least. However, I feel like the exact opposite is true. Every experience, good or bad, has value and a take away point. Most experiences that end badly were not truly 100% bad, or we wouldn’t have engaged with that experience to begin with. Nobody is that masochistic. I think that by expending the mental energy to rewrite history or deny any good memories that were also associated with it, we are actually granting more power to the bad part of the experience than it deserves. We are actually chaining ourselves to that negativity and becoming an essential part of the bad experience. We are discounting our own credibility in our judgement regarding what we chose to participate in. By allowing ourselves to acknowledge any positive aspects as well, we truly begin to free ourselves from that negativity and realize that, whatever the experience was, it wasn’t just a waste of our time to begin with. Have a fantastic day everybody!

Dr. Katz