How Systems and Dynamics Strip Us of Agency
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As those of you who have heard me doing my hypnobirthing monologue will know, one of my heroes is a woman called Siobhan Miller. Her company, Positive Birthing, literally changes lives, shifting the experience of mothers and babies through changing attitudes to birth… changing one of the most significant moments in two people’s lives each time a mother uses the ideas she shares.
And of course not just two people. When our second daughter, Gabriella, arrived before the midwives, the reason I stayed remarkably calm was because Miller’s online course had changed how I thought about birth completely. The three of us got to have a good time, not a terrified time, because we had embodied a new (or we might say, old) approach to birth.
Among the many interesting things that Miller pointed out in the course (which we have taken twice now), is that we always have choice in our interactions with medical professionals. We have to consent.
And yet, that is not how it feels.
As Miller says, a doctor says ‘hop up onto the bed’ and we don’t hesitate, we just do it.
But remember: you’re a grown adult. You don’t have to do anything they say.
Baked into us is our trust in medical professionals. And they are often so certain their control of the situation, of their sense that they know best, that we simply hop up onto the bed.
If you’ve ever accompanied a family member to a doctor’s appointment or a hospital visit, you might have noticed a strange experience: that the non-patient sees things more clearly, remembers more things. It’s almost like the patient is in a haze.
Perhaps it’s increased stress, perhaps it’s the condition they are visiting the doctor or hospital for… Or perhaps it’s something else.
A system and dynamic of power that has been created, which takes normally commanding adult humans and makes them into something different.
Of course, this isn’t to blame doctors - they’re incredibly hardworking people doing their best.
But once you’ve had someone like Siobhan Miller or Dr Rachel Reed point out the many ways in which the system is structured (by accident) to force mothers into situations that often aren’t the best for them or their baby… well, once you’ve done that, then the whole thing becomes a little more questionable.
Because anyone who - like me - has read books like Freakonomics or The Rational Optimist or Thinking, Fast and Slow, which attempt to use data and evidence to show strange ways that humans behave or the odd things that we believe… anyone who has read books like that know that we often create systems that aren’t useful for any of us. And we need to be conscious and alert to the systems and our patterns - we need to be able to see them, rather than be subject to them - to avoid the pitfalls, whether that is a system biased to induce births against some mothers’ best interests, or the judicial system, or the incentives of estate agents.
But perhaps there’s even more at play here.
I noticed something akin to the ‘hop up onto the bed’ command happen yesterday.
A colleague said, ‘Can I give you some feedback?’
And I said, ‘Yes.’
But as I reflected later, I didn’t want the feedback. It’s not that I didn’t want to learn in theory, but I didn’t enjoy getting it and that made me question if I had been wise to say ‘Yes’. As someone who has a commitment to telling the truth, it was a little surprising to find that I had said ‘Yes’ even though I actually didn’t want it.
But in circles like I operate in, of learning professionals, it isn’t really OK not to want feedback.
And, it’s possible to ask a question that isn’t really a question. (I’m not saying my colleague was doing this, but it’s certainly possible.)
When those things come together: a socialised sense of what it’s ok to say yes and no to, and a forceful ask that is strangely similar to a doctor saying ‘hop up onto the bed’… then the dynamics of the conversation can carry us in a direction that if we were our most centred, wisest self we would avoid.
I see the seeds of this this morning, trying to corral two toddlers into the car. The little commands, the little asks that aren’t asks, the little persuasions. Manipulations, even.
And I wonder if sometimes, these dynamics, from a well-meaning doctor or supportive colleague, catapult us back into times long past.
Is the haze we feel in the hospital partly down to being transported to a time, decades earlier, when we had to trust the people of authority around us?
Maybe it was even right to do that, then. Or maybe we were just afraid and alone.
Either way, remember: this is your life.
Notice the times when you find yourself compromising what you really want in favour of what you think you’re supposed to do or say.
And give yourself permission to listen to you.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.