Doctor dismissed me. found a study on what that actually does

read a paper on medical dismissal in long covid patients and it was like watching someone catalog my last two years… not the obvious stuff - everyone knows the “it’s all in your head” dismissals happen. what stuck was the documentation of what comes after… my doc saw my crash data (fifteen min walk → two days of brain fog and dysautonomia symptoms), said it looked like “obsessive health anxiety” rather than pacing mechanics… told me i didn’t need to pace, just do normal activities. the paper called this iatrogenic harm - damage inflicted by the medical system itself, separate from the condition.

what i didn’t expect was how much that one appointment rewired me. now i second-guess even the patterns i’ve logged, wonder if i’m just anxious about being sick… imo can’t separate the real symptoms from the doubt i developed in that office. has the research on medical dismissal changed how you process your own doctor encounters? or does naming it not really help? that’s my take.

It’s incredibly frustrating when ur own lived experience and carefully tracked data are reframed as “obsessive health anxiety.” That kind of dismissal truly does a lot of harm, and I’ve seen it play out in so many ways with patients over the years. While it’s understandable that naming it doesn’t immediately dissolve the doubt, from a clinical perspective, identifying something as ‘iatrogenic harm’ is an important step. It moves the focus from a perceived failing in you ✌️