The Four Stories

by William D. Esteb

We’re wired for stories. Perhaps it’s a holdover from evenings spent gathered around the tribal campfire recounting the hunt for the evening’s meal. Today, the campfire is more likely the flickering phosphorous screen in the living room with stories designed to capture pairs of eyeballs that can be sold to advertisers. Who supply still more stories in the form of thirty-second dramas that tap into the needs and wants of our psyche. And so it goes. Everything around us revolves on storytelling. Turns out, some of the busiest chiropractors are excellent storytellers.

There are two critical aspects of storytelling relevant for health care practitioners and chiropractors in particular. There’s the content of the story and the delivery of the story.
The Content

Based upon what you believe chiropractic to be, and the individual circumstances of each patient, it’s important that you give chiropractic a greater context than the symptomatic relief that prompts most patients to begin their care. Here are the four stories most commonly used to give chiropractic context and meaning:

1. The Pain Story. Here the focus is on alleviating symptoms and looking to a third party to pick up the tab. It could also be called the “Reimbursement Story.” This, “path of least resistance” is what has trapped so many chiropractors in a short-term-natural-form-of-pain-relief model of chiropractic.

This is the most acceptable story to both chiropractors and patients who have accepted the prevailing medical model of health care. Thus, chiropractic is seen as a short-term diet; a temporary diversion until the episode of back and neck pain is relieved. This “catch and release” style of practice reduces chiropractic to a drug-free spine therapy. And, since there are countless patients who want little more than being pain free, it’s the perfect choice for the poorest chiropractic storytellers.

2. The Bone Story. This one focuses on proper posture, correct alignment, the degenerative effects of misalignment, the importance of balance, biomechanics, disc spacing and value of curve restoration.

This story offers chiropractors the benefit of being easy to tell, and patients the benefit of being easily embraced. After all, chiropractors are bone doctors. Right?

Where the Symptom Story focuses on compassion and echoes the motives used by medical doctors to ameliorate pain, the Bone Story appeals to those with an analytical bent. Many chiropractors find professional comfort in their ability to see and measure improved range of motion, better balance and the return of a proper cervical lordosis. It’s a great story. Based on facts. Yet it rarely connects with patients who often see such chiropractors as detached mechanists, bent on solving a problem different from the one that prompted them to seek chiropractic care. The Bone Story works for chiropractors, but rarely resonates with patients.

3. The Nerve Story. The elements of this approach center on the supremacy of the nervous system and the whole-body effects of subluxation. Stresses, and the effects of the brain losing touch with the body, are key elements.

This is a bigger story than symptoms or structure. Chiropractors adroit in this realm have reached the upper limits of what is still largely a mechanistic model of the body. Which patients get. The linearity of brain/body communications is something that patients can appreciate, yet this story is missing the “heart” component essential for effective storytelling. So, in some ways, the Nerve Story is simply a derivation of the Bone Story, in that the bones and nerves are linked by something called subluxation.

4. The Lifestyle Story. Since we live our lives through our nervous systems the quality of our lives, our performance, full potential and well-being are influenced by the integrity of our nervous systems—fertile ground for powerful patient storytelling.

The beauty of the Quality of Life Story is that it connects with patients. Chiropractors with a clinical mindset may feel uncomfortable with this approach. Those who find security in the objectivity of facts and figures may find this model too superficial and interest required in the patient’s life too much of a burden to be a compelling storyteller. But this is where the most significant patient leadership lies. Relating chiropractic to what’s important to patients takes creativity, compassion and the minimization of what you think is important! These stories make the patient big and the chiropractor small.

The Delivery

Remember that goof-off from chiropractic college? Remember the jokester who barely graduated and seemed the most popular? Remember him? Turns out that while you graduated in the top third of your class, and he in the bottom third, today he has a larger practice than you. It wasn’t supposed to turn out that way. But he’s a better storyteller than you.

For many of us, the ability to tell stories has atrophied or has never been fully developed. The good news, this is a learned skill. You get good at telling your story (your truth) by practicing (is that why it’s called practice?) and refining your approach. Which you can’t do until you’re clear about what your story is! Content is the what; your delivery is the how.

This isn’t some cerebral practice-building technique. Effective stories connect our hearts with our heads. They must be authentic and come from you. Surprisingly, once you identify your own story, telling it passionately and inspirationally, at the right time and place will come quite naturally. But first you must become acquainted with your story. The one that compelled you to become a chiropractor. The one no one else but you can tell. And then you need to tell it to the world. Who can hardly wait to hear it.

Excerpted from
Adjusting
Published in 2008
240 Pages
US $24.95

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