Patient -“Doc, I have a terrible sinking feeling at times, as if doom is round the corner.” Doctor - “Don’t worry, just take it easy” Patient - looks askance, as if saying – “Doc, it is so easy for you to say so.” So often such a scene is played out in the consultation room of a physician, and yet we tend to overlook the fact that the patient’s problem is real, and not imaginary. We tend to forget that the mind has a strange, queer way of functioning, and it can conjure and concoct things to such an extent that the distinction between the imagined and the real can be completely blurred. How dismissive we are of others’ worries, and how defensive of our own.
We so easily tend to mock the worries of others, but how many of us have the courage to put up our own, for scrutiny? And come to think of it, at the moment of happening, all those worked up images are real, with all the potential…
