And there are people who are trying to reclaim the narrative—as we are trying to do. The question becomes: How do we utilize narrative to promote mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical health? I think we have to change the way that we teach our young clinicians, whether those are behavioral health clinicians, medical providers, or nurses. The million people in the United States involved in healthcare must begin to think about the narrative rather than just the three or four defining features of a person.

Mark

To amplify Jack’s point. People like a story. For instance, if I were 25 pounds overweight and could make it into Mark’s weekly serial. This is what I’m doing. I’m walking. I make it a modest goal that’s attainable. I’m walking 6,000 steps a day, seven days a week. And I’m cutting out this. It’s not a draconian cut. But I make it a weekly narrative, showing progress, and I become human. And, you know, it’s going to take a certain amount of marketing. Or I have diabetes. Or I have this or that. My son has this XY mental illness, and this is what we are doing not only as a family but also as an extended family. I think people respond to things like that.

Bill B

So, medicine suddenly got credible when it became “scientific”, which meant an objectivist perspective is taken. So clearly the physician is credible because they know what’s “true”. And as Jack said, they can condense it down into a few simple facts. This means that the physician has won the day, but today it’s coming back to haunt them, Jack. So, as Jack has mentioned, the issue is that nuts have “cured” my sleeplessness: “I couldn’t sleep, and now I can, with the consumption of nuts”. This is itself a construction. Someone built the story about cause and effect. They constructed a story, and it’s very compelling. It’s much more compelling than the story of when they go to the physician, only to find that the physician will not spend their time listening to the idea of nuts and sleep. The physician’s failure to consider the connection between nuts and sleep contributes to the story. The physician’s resistance expands the story and gives it further credibility. The physician essentially either denies the connection or asks their patient: Who in the hell did you hear that from?