Last night, while I was looking over recent activity, Chris commented on one of the keywords. 

“PMS weight gain?” Do people really come in for that? 

We ended up having an interesting conversation/debate about where the lines are drawn in terms of when a minor annoyance or discomfort becomes an issue worth seeking treatment for. What “counts” as a medical condition?

He is more of the “rock and roll, deal with it” camp, whereas I am hesitant to tell someone else to man up—especially a woman at the mercy of her hormones. I feel like everybody has different thresholds for pain and responds to triggers in various ways. How do I know that what feels like one of the less pleasant parts of life to me doesn’t equal a debilitating ailment to another person?

(This is why I could never work for an insurance company)

Still, that’s not to say Chris doesn’t have a point. It’s just hard to know when to say when. I always wonder how practitioners make that decision not to treat someone or whether to refer them to someone else. I feel like you really can’t teach that, that it’s a sense you have to develop through experience, being able to gauge whether a person who comes in for the first time would actually benefit from your services.

It makes me think of something a friend told me in college about palm readers. He said that several different palm readers have refused to read his palm, explaining that it’s “too old.” This has become how he decides for himself whether someone is for real. 

That sounds like a pretty good measurement to me. We don’t always like to hear “No,” especially in our “fix me now” culture, but sometimes that is exactly what we need to hear. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather hear someone tell me I am equipped to deal with my own issues or at least be pointed in the right direction to someone who can give me the help I need rather than just being given (for a fee), what I think I need or want.