I am a control freak and need your help.  I have built a very successful practice, but live with the fear that if a patient doesn't keep their appointment or do their stretches that they will blame me for not getting better.

My Response:

Sounds like you’ve made your practice about you, instead of the patient.

If you keep chiropractic principles secret from your patients and don’t reveal ways they can get well faster and avoid a relapse, then you’d have the moral obligation to “mother hen” patients out of fear they’d sabotage their success with chiropractic. That’s rarely the case with chiropractors!

When you care too much, and are afraid you’ll look bad by something a patient does (or doesn’t do), you keep your practice small while exhausting tremendous energy better spent elsewhere. This is like the guy who is afraid to fall sleep on an airplane, thinking it requires his constant attention to keep it aloft!

When you invest your life spirit in outcomes you are powerless to control, such as a patient’s behavior, you set yourself up for burnout. The ego seeks out opportunities to claim credit for the success you see around you, but you are merely a servant; a conduit. The patient is the master; you are the servant. Try to reverse these roles or overlook this fundamental fact and you fight an uphill battle and never have the confidence and certainty patients find attractive. In the process, you cut off God’s attempts at blessing you! In this way, your practice resides fully in the mechanical, never ascending to the emotional and spiritual heights that true healers enjoy.

It takes a loose arm to throw a fastball.

Bill