The End of Arrogance: Inviting Humility & Curiosity into the Healing Professions

One of my earliest microdosing clients had such a remarkable experience with the medicine she went on to support her own clients & community in the practice. This happens a lot - the mycelium in action!  Because she is in her 70s, many of her clients are also 70+ too, and over the last few years she has witnessed profound healing and growth especially in the realms of cognitive decline, depression, dementia, and end of life anxiety.  She was at a dinner party and recounting some of her clients' many positive experiences with microdosing when she noticed one of the diners looking increasingly sullen, his mouth twisting into a frown of distaste.

Knowing the man was a psychiatrist and wanting to include him the conversation, my client inquired if he had any of his patients work with plant or earth medicines in their healing journeys?  "No," he snapped angrily.  "I don't believe in it."  

My client is exceptionally magnanimous and good natured (she was that way even before microdosing!) and didn't take his condescension personally.  Instead, she suggested all of the research coming out and wondered what it would take for him to be convinced it might be a healing modality worth exploring.

"Nothing.  I don't believe in it because I think it's a short-cut."

Whoa.

I think it's a good moment to pause and remember that all of us - in every single healing and wellness profession across the spectrum - that the central guiding principle for all of us should be: WHAT IS BEST FOR OUR CLIENTS. Not what fits into our narrow personal paradigm. Not what profits or benefits us. Not what falsely props up our faux necessity or cultural authority. But what is actually most effective for our clients.

It's absolutely absurd for a physician to be denying modalities and resources on the grounds they are "too effective" or "too easy" for people, intimating that people must suffer needlessly, 'work for' and 'earn' their healing, or that people should only have access to healing that authorities such as himself deem they're 'allowed' to have.  This is not a professional who is centering his clients and their healing; this is someone who is threatened by people empowering themselves to heal effectively - more effectively - without him.

I have worked with tens of thousands of clients in my career and - trust me - a willingness to “work” at their healing is not the issue. The vast majority of them have suffered greatly while investing thousands of dollars, hours and untold energy into various prescription drugs and supplements, talk therapy and counseling, a multitude of programs, healing modalities and immersing themselves in education and learning... All in an effort to get better.  They have tried everything.  And none of them are looking for "short-cuts."  Most of them have spent decades living a life of limitation and made great sacrifices trying very hard to feel better.  To heal.  To be a better parent.  The idea that they somehow haven't "worked hard enough" to deserve healing and should suffer versus accessing the "short-cut" of natural healing is unbelievably arrogant, infantilizing and cruel.

Our role as healers, doctors, guides, coaches, clinicians and health professionals is to work together to empower our clients with the most effective, safe, natural, innately healing and personally empowering modalities and practices we have available to us.  To gate-keep, limit, disparage, express disinterest, censor or malign modalities simply to preserve our own advantage, privilege and authority is deeply unethical.  If you are in the healing fields, you have taken a pledge to put your clients - not your ego - first.  

People are looking to us as health & wellness providers to center their best interest and share ALL the information, wisdom and best practices we have available to us. It is unethical for any of us to withhold knowledge and education around effective natural healing modalities just because they don’t yet fit within the confines of the pharmaceutical industry and highly biased, compromised government institutions. If we truly want to help, serve and empower people, there is no room for personal arrogance and gate-keeping any longer - let’s do what we have pledged in our professions to do: to pursue excellence in our crafts and always center our client’s healing above our own interests.