"Listening" vs. "Hearing": A Patient Success Story
In today's day and age of social media and various communication mediums, we all have a voice that we can share with the entire world. It truly is a wonderful time to be alive, especially to those who have a passion and love to learn. Within this excess of sharing information worldwide, topics and ideas which once were considered esoteric, in a manner of speaking, can now be found with over a million results in less than a second on a device that can fit in our hands. Google© as well as other reputable search engines on web browsers changed the game in terms of information sharing, and continue to open up new avenues of information exchange.
Now, I am not one to usually be an outspoken critic, especially to a widely accepted way-of-life idea, but the only problem that comes out of all of this information sharing is having an audience. 'Audience' comes from the from Latin meaning of "to listen". This commonly refers to spoken word. In our world today, yes, we have videos that we share with one another on Facebook© and Instagram©, and of course with the volume on we listen to the various audio on the video. This is not what I'm referring to.
'Listen' is defined as "to give one's attention to sound"; or: "take notice of and act on what someone says". 'Hear' is defined as "perceive with the ear the sound made by someone or something"; or: "be told or informed of". (1) Now, these definitions have relatively the same meaning at first glance, but the way each garner a meaning in the tone of a sentence can say a lot about the intention of the individual. We use these words interchangeably in our daily lives, however, in almost 'slang' talk, "hear" becomes a more powerful word when conveying a message. "Listen up!" or "Are you listening?" only go so far in regards to how the individual is trying to get their message across and to just gain attention. When one speaks to another saying: "You hear me?!", the tone instantly changes. The word "hear" becomes more of an immediacy, meaning you have to instantly gather all of your attention, and as a result, you remember more.
The point I am trying to get at with all the quotations, examples, and definition breakdowns is that with all of our information sharing we are doing everyday, are we really "hearing" each other, or are we just "listening"? As a doctor, I have to keep a diligent attention to each patient telling me about their various issues. There are always key factors when a patient tells me about a specific part of their history that tells me the story of how they got their issue in the first place. For the most part, if it is a specific incidence that caused their back pain, such as "I was squatting at the gym, and I heard a pop!", we know the cause that directly contributed to the issue at hand. However, this is not always the case.
In the office, I utilize what is known as "Applied Kinesiology" as an analysis technique for the care and the evaluation of my patients. The International College of Applied Kinesiology (ICAK) defines Applied Kinesiology (AK) as a system that evaluates structural, chemical and mental aspects of health using manual muscle testing combined with other standard methods of diagnosis. (2) Throughout using this system during my time in my chiropractic school as well as my first year in practice, I have picked up on a lot of patterns that exist in human beings. These can be related to emotions, mental stressors, chemical stressors, and of course physical stressors. Upon picking up on these patterns, using AK, I have also learned to try and "hear" what people say more when taking a history. I hear key aspects of their diet; I hear about their physical demands with work and home; I hear about their various day lives and emotions between families and/or friends. Throughout hearing all these main factors, it goes much beyond just "listening" to actually fix an individual.
Story Time! I had a patient who was dealing with a 9/10 shoulder pain in her left shoulder that had virtually crippled what mobility she had. I took a history and went through a basic protocol of how I usually treat a patient on a first visit. Over the course of 3-6 visits she did overall start improving in terms of mobility and the range of motion in the shoulder. So, I was thinking her case was looking promising, and now it was time to start leading her into a way of lifestyle change with exercise. As time progressed with this patient, the pain would go away and come back sporadically in her left shoulder. So after about a month of not seeing this patient, she comes back in the office with 9/10 pain in her left shoulder again. I thought to myself: "OK, if she's been doing the exercises to improve her shoulder then it is not technically a 'physical stressor' which is causing it to return to this state. In that case, lets go to 'chemical stressors' in her life that may be affecting her." I ask her about her diet, and in my analysis of her on this particular visit, I find that she has a heart meridian issue. She tells me that she drinks a Rockstar© energy drink everyday, and that she had been for a while now. That night, I did my research online and found out that Rockstar and other energy drinks could cause an increase in heart disease. (3) This was in addition to several other studies that told about similar cardiovascular risks with cosuming energy drinks. I told the patient about the risks associated with energy drink consumption, and related it back to her as to why they were causing her shoulder pain to keep returning. I still see that patient to this day, and her shoulder pain has not returned after a couple treatments of our care together. She's a sweetheart too!
Now, had I not "heard" her say that she had an energy drink everyday, I never would have been able to figure out what was causing her shoulder pain. I have many stories of various patients and what we have done together to fix their issues, but my philosophy of listening vs. hearing, I choose to "hear". I choose it because it can accomplish any task we put our minds and efforts to. If we all just heard each other a little bit more, it could solve many more issues even outside the doctor's office. Even among all of our social media. You hear me?!
- http://icakusa.com/what-is-ak
- http://www.sciencealert.com/just-one-energy-drink-could-increase-risk-of-heart-disease-experts-warn