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What is it – fear of illness, shame for your petty “sins”, deviations from the right way of life? Let’s try to figure out why we happen to lie to doctors and how to avoid innuendo when their professional opinion can be vital.
“My father is a doctor, and it always seemed to me that some huge secret about the human body was revealed to him, inaccessible to others,” recalls 36-year-old Alena. – When I was a child, when I got sick, my father began to ask me what hurts. And I was very afraid to tell him the truth: what if he discovers that my illness is dangerous? Any runny nose seemed to me a symptom of a terrible disease. Until now, when I go to the doctor, I am afraid to hear that I am terminally ill, because I myself do not understand what is happening in my body. Everything is clear to him.”
“All patients are deceiving or, more precisely, correcting reality,” says doctor and writer Martin Winkler. “Which, of course, does not prevent us from treating them, unless we become attached to the “truth of the fact,” since their truth, symbolic or emotional, is more important here.”
The big question is why do people do this? Often we give the doctor the role of a being standing above everything and everything. A sort of magician and sorcerer, who knows something about our life and death that we ourselves do not know. And at the same time, a judge, because often he acts as a judge, letting us know that we are behaving “wrongly”.
Nothing will come out of the doctor’s office – they are obliged to observe medical secrecy
“When undressing, some patients do not feel safe in front of the doctor and try to “protect themselves” in advance, just in case, which can lead to various forms of simulation and lies,” explains the therapist Alexandra Grigorieva. “While in reality, the doctor is only performing his function, serving as a facilitator of therapy that helps reduce suffering.”
So, we happen to lie to doctors, and we have at least five reasons that push us to do so.
From a feeling of sympathy
If we go to the same doctor as our relatives, we may feel that the doctor is immersed in family history much deeper than we would like.
That is why 40-year-old Pavel did not tell his doctor that he was visiting an osteopath in parallel to reduce neck pain. It was easier for him to accept a prescription for anti-inflammatory drugs from her than to “hurt” a good but conservative specialist by successfully resorting to alternative medicine. Over time, the situation only gets confused: it would be much easier to immediately admit that it was the manipulations of the osteopath that helped him a lot.
“Patients feel sympathy for us,” says therapist Wanda Yakutik. – They seem to be trying to protect us from their “wrongness”, they are afraid to somehow hurt our feelings or turn out to be “traitors” in relation to us.
However, some patients do this because they feel that the doctor can neither listen nor understand them. And when it comes to the interaction between classical therapies and nutritional supplements, herbal remedies, essential oils, silence can be fraught with negative health consequences. More than 60% of patients admitted to the hospital due to drug incompatibility kept the fact that they are taking dietary supplements a secret from their doctor1.
Phytotherapeutist Berenger Arnal-Shnebelyan recommends that you always discuss with your doctor all medications and supplements you take: “If a remedy is of natural origin, this in itself does not mean that it is harmless and goes well with everything.”
Out of shame
It is difficult to admit without any embarrassment that you have, for example, mycosis, dermatitis, infection or other minor problems of the intimate sphere. “Meanwhile, we exist in order to listen to everything,” emphasizes Nadezhda Zadontseva, oncogynecologist, associate professor at Altai State Medical University. – Nothing will come out of the doctor’s office – we are obliged to observe medical secrecy. Don’t take the risk of ignoring your problems, or, even worse, bringing the situation to the point of infertility, when most often a course of antibiotics or an anti-infection capsule is enough to deal with the problem.
It is possible and necessary to negotiate with the doctor – and agree with him on how to conduct treatment.
Some women need to overcome the fear and admit that, despite the pregnancy, which is not very noticeable yet, they allow themselves to drink a little wine to relieve tension. The same goes for smoking, which does not go well with birth control pills: you should not tell your gynecologist that you smoke only two or three cigarettes, when in fact you smoke a pack a day. If you admit that you are unable to give up cigarettes, he may recommend a more suitable method of contraception. The title of doctor deprives him of the moral right to condemn the patient, his actions or habits.
“It is possible and necessary to negotiate with a doctor – and agree with him on how to conduct treatment,” emphasizes Nadezhda Zadontseva.
Out of fear
“Once, when I went to the doctor with severe pain in the back, I caught myself evading direct answers, trying to downplay, alleviate the symptoms,” recalls 43-year-old Alexander. “Perhaps I was just afraid to be honest, not so much with the doctor, but with myself, I was afraid to admit that I was sick.”
Fear is difficult to control and sometimes pushes us into an ostrich stance. So, 59-year-old Maria, incredibly afraid that she would find breast or cervical cancer, has not been to the gynecologist since the birth of her youngest son (who is now over thirty). Fear of the outcome prevents 25-year-old Anna from taking an HIV test and admitting to a doctor that she had unprotected sex. The main thing to remember first of all is that if fear paralyzes and prevents you from acting, it can be life-threatening.
“If it’s difficult to talk about something with the doctor you are used to, then you need to turn to another doctor,” advises Nadezhda Zadontseva. There is always a way out: in case of risk of contracting HIV, there is an antiretroviral drug that must be taken within the first forty-eight hours. And if a woman forgot to take a birth control pill, then there are drugs intended to be taken within the first three days after sexual contact, or, in extreme cases, a remedy taken in the first eight days.
Out of self-interest
Lying to get a prescription for medication (such as antidepressants or sleeping pills) or sick leave is something doctors are familiar with.
“Such a game with medicines does not go unnoticed for health,” says Vanda Yakutik. “In the long term, this leads to liver, heart and thyroid problems.”
Those who like to lie should understand: the doctor needs to know the truth in order to make a diagnosis and prescribe the right treatment.
Trying to get sick leave is a seemingly harmless lie. However, in reality, the habit of feigning is more of an indicator of existing problems than a means to solve them.
Out of a desire to get attention
Who among us at least once pretended to be sick in childhood in order not to go to school? Zhanna, 39, still feels embarrassed for abusing the trust of her school doctor when she was 12: I have a wrong cycle.
“Such repeated complaints can serve the purpose of obtaining some side benefits: to attract attention to yourself, to avoid doing unpleasant work, to regain your lost place in the family circle,” notes Alexandra Grigorieva.
Those who know their habit of lying should understand that such behavior is all the more dangerous because the doctor needs to know the truth in order to diagnose and prescribe the correct treatment. Trust is a key factor in this. And, of course, a sense of tact. Listening, weighing every word, sharing knowledge, sharing emotions, doubts, weaknesses, somewhere just nodding, holding hands, being there… Or maybe the best doctor is the one who wants to tell the truth?
Honesty for Health
“Fear makes a person lie to himself,” says oncopsychologist Olga Rozhkova, consultant for Avon’s “Together Against Breast Cancer” charity program. “But to overcome it is not only in our power, but also in our common interests.”
“In my work with cancer patients, I often come across situations where people refuse examinations, deceive doctors and their loved ones. Not so long ago, a 42-year-old woman came to me for an appointment – her illness had passed into the last stage and was not amenable to treatment. She had to inform her ten-year-old son that he would remain an orphan (it so happened that she had no relatives at all). She herself was a child when she lost her mother to cancer. And after the death of her husband, she saw her only purpose in caring for her son, the fear of losing him overshadowed everything else. For a long time, she turned a blind eye to the clear signs of a progressive tumor, to which, quite likely, she had a genetic predisposition. “If I had the opportunity to “rewind the tape”,” she regretted, “I would have behaved completely differently.”
What are the reasons for such behavior of people, which sometimes has irreversible consequences? First, we often deal with unprocessed psychotrauma. For example, when a person was faced with a serious illness of loved ones and concluded for himself: “It’s scary to get sick, no one needs the sick.” The psyche turns on the mechanisms of self-defense and displaces the perception of the symptoms of the disease from consciousness. Such a person often neglects his own needs, prioritizing the needs of his family and children. Not going to the doctors in time, not doing prevention, he forgets that his illness can become a drama not only for himself, but also for those close to him.
Secondly, behind such a reaction there may be social fears, myths in which a sick person is an outcast who is threatened with the loss of a job, family, and friends. Sometimes they do not believe (by the way, undeservedly) in the possibility of domestic medicine, bowing to foreign medicine.
Thirdly, behind such behavior lies a poor awareness of the methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. I often come across the general belief that cancer is a death sentence. Although 90% of malignant tumors detected in the early stages are curable, statistics confirm this. Being honest with yourself is just as important as being honest with your doctor. It can help in diagnosis, create conditions for treatment, and whether we will be healthy depends largely on us, on our attention and love for ourselves. After all, such love is always mutual.
About it
Jerome Grupman “What Do Doctors Think?” Eksmo, 2008.
1 “Human Reproduction News.” The Lancet, 2000.