An Armchair Psychologist's Thoughts About Guilt

Many of my clients are innocent people who have been injured. Some have been in car wrecks. Others are hurt in accidents at work. Some are good employees who’ve been fired.

Regardless of the type of problem they are facing, I’ve noticed that most of these folks spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they did to cause the mess they are in.

A woman who was rear-ended at a stop light tries to figure out how she could have avoided getting hit by a speeding truck. “Maybe if I’d been looking in the rear view mirror, I’d have seen him coming and blown my horn. Then he might have stopped.” Another woman who was attacked by a man lurking in a park said, “If I had looked behind that building before I walked by, I might have seen him hiding there.” Yet, another client said, “I should have known my boss was going to falsify those reports. I could have avoided all of this if I had taken a copy of the originals home with me.”

Society has conditioned us to “blame the victim.” Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti, I read an article claiming that geologists had warned the Haitian government of an impending quake. Apparently, the Haitians brought all this misery on themselves by ignoring the scientists. They should have just moved out before the quake. After all, we would have welcomed them here in the U.S.

But there is more to this than an ingrained knee-jerk reaction to disasters. We want to think that our behavior caused our problems. Because we can control our behavior, we can prevent impending doom by changing our behavior. This way, we gain a false sense of control over our future.

It seems that the more damage a person has sustained, the more drastic steps that person will take to gain a sense of control over the future. Rape victims I’ve represented turn to psychics to predict, and thereby control, the future. Abuse victims join cults whose leaders assure them that their obedience to cult rules will protect them from future harm.

We can’t seem to acknowledge the fact that, no matter what precautions we take, none of us is getting out of this alive. Bad things will happen to us no matter what we do. We need to quit blaming ourselves when things go wrong and spend more time focused on doing better and helping others. C’mon, folks, give yourselves a break.

Red Dot Sanctions

RED DOT RESULTS IN HIPAA SANCTIONS

Most health care providers and attorneys have worked diligently to achieve compliance with new federal privacy standards known as the "HIPAA" regulations. Sadly, one dentist's office didn't get the memo. The office had placed a large red dot on the outside of a patient's chart. On the red dot, in black ink, were the letters: "AIDS." Predictably, federal agents sanctioned the office.

I've seen my chart at the local hospital where I tend to end up every few years. In large red magic marker letters is the message:

"Don't Give This TRIAL LAWYER Codeine!!!”

The notation is doubtless in response to numerous episodes in which nurses have given me codeine despite my insistence that the drug will make me very, very sick. The nurses usually try to assure me that the particular pill they are offering doesn’t contain codeine. I then pull out my pocket copy of the latest drug reference book to show them that Percocet actually does have codeine in it. This tends to have a calming effect on both the nursing staff and the risk management officer who, by this time, has been called in.

After my most recent encounter with the drug, masquerading as hydrocodone, I apparently made some comments that upset the medical staff. Hence my “red dot.”

If there are any HIPAA police reading this, PLEASE do not make the doctors remove the warning from my chart. They put it there with my consent.