The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Maybe it's different for people who can build a relationship with a specific doctor that follows them, but here where you get whoever you're lucky enough to see, the second a non-doctor suggests they have a suspicion as to what they actually have, the doctors will update heavily against the probability of it being that and will do everything they can to dismiss it being what was suggested, as if their now tainted diagnosis should be your punishment for daring to think about anything medical as a stupid plebian. I mean, I know a lot of people otherwise would waste ressources because of Cyberchondria, but not everyone outside of the medical profession is a drooling moron either. And not everyone inside of it hasn't devolved over time into one since medical school.
You are talking to a doctor who has, at least on LessWrong, written a guide that might as well be called:
"Here's how you, a competent non-medical professional who knows how to use Google and ChatGPT, can maximize the value from the medical system in a manner that won't shoot your dick off."
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ypnYfPmn6FqAyxCpJ?commentId=PBQGQ3buve228rNXu
You are preaching to the choir. A reasonably well behaved and sympathetic choir.
At the same time, I have explained at length why the behavior of other doctors is understandable, if not laudable. You and other UMC professionals who do their own research are not representative of the super-majority of patients a typical doctor sees in clinics. There are a lot of idiots out there. Or simply average people who watch the wrong influencers on TikTok.
I would be grateful if I wasn't asked to answer for the sins of a profession I am associated with. That is quite possibly not your intent, but it happens a lot. All I can do is be better myself, and try to help people navigate the system.
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