Forgiving Western Medicine Approaches

A really good friend of mine and I recently collaborated on a course with relation to forgiveness work and she brought up an interesting topic: forgiving doctors, gynecologists and all the hospitals etc. within our journey to healing. I never considered this at all and it was only when I looked at my views on them, with an honest, open mind that I realized I actually had many angry thoughts and feelings about it all.

I don’t know about your experiences but mine were never pleasant. I felt invaded in my personal space around endometriosis from the very beginning! I mean, open your legs and lets have a feel inside your vagina for a minute? Who doesn’t feel invaded by that statement? I wished there was a way I could check out what was going on inside my body, without the assistance of some gynecologist peering through my legs into the abyss of my personal parts!

The awkward thing was, it didn’t just end there. I then had to entrust someone into my inner body, while being completely knocked out. Not knowing, what exactly they did or how they did it. There was one time, I actually woke up with the tube still down my throat! It was fairly scary. I struggled to entrust all those sacred spaces and my personal bits to someone else. What if they left something in there by mistake? What if they didn’t put things back in properly? It was always a terrifying thought and to be honest, I still think about this today, over ten years later.

So, I realized something along this exploration into my feelings about doctors and gynecologists and the whole Western approach to endometriosis: I had heaps of past anger around the topic, for my own personal reasons. I disliked how I was treated. I hated how I was given a patient number to be admitted for surgery. I hated how my doctor never seemed to have enough time to actually listen to what was going on with me. I hated how no matter how many times I told them that the treatments made me feel terrible, they never offered any other viable solutions. To be honest, I think I have held onto these pains and emotions for so long and have indirectly blamed the entire Western medical system for it all. It made me dismiss anything that came up that was vaguely Western medicine based for endometriosis.

Well, I have decided two things: firstly, I am going to forgive all of it, my entire past experience and secondly, I will open my mind to more of the Western approaches and pick out the elements which could be beneficial for our healing.

Now, if you have feelings of anger or resentment about your experiences, you might be keen to give this a go with me. Holding onto all of that anger is never a good thing!

So, let’s begin with forgiving it all. Picture your most uncaring doctor or your gynecologist that made you feel nasty or invaded and simply say out loud, “I forgive you, I am sorry and I love you.” You can forgive them for the personal invasion, the way they perhaps treated you without realizing how it affected you or any other elements of the experience that you want to forgive. You could be sorry that they only have this amount of training in their field, that it is the best they can do within their environment or with what they have been told. Saying I love you is more directed at yourself and forgiving yourself for the reactions, the pain in your body (or even your body) and saying you are sorry there too. Just remember to breathe in deep when you do this and trust that it will be released. It is funny because I thought it was going to be super hard to do this but I feel much better in letting it all go.

I know I still have a long way to go in accepting that Western medicine can certainly have it’s place within our healing journey with endometriosis. I think I have fought against it for a few years now and it feels very much like a David and Goliath battle at times but I know that ultimately, for me to really help women with endometriosis, I can’t be blocking this approach so much.

I know that there are many advancements within Western medicine that could be helping us, perhaps from a testing and research perspective, rather than necessarily a treatment perspective that could be incredibly powerful. Upon studying my degree in naturopathy, there is many examples of these benefits and other treatment options which are saving lives.

I think however, that ultimately, I will always be pushing for the holistic approach first and foremost. I have seen far too many incredible results not to trust that we are really onto something powerful here! Surgery will only ever be something I ever do if nothing else has worked and I have truly explored all options.