And one of my constants in my life is that my path has been that percentile where something bad happens, out of the norm. For example, my colonoscopy was not easy at all, I suffered a spleen injury and wound up in ICU and in a situation where no one would tell me the truth because no one wanted to be sued, oh how awful that was. This is indicative of the cognitive distortion of "mind reading." By assuming no one would tell you the "truth" and that it was because they didn't want to be sued, you are saying you can read their mind. Not a good thing. You have no idea how and why each person acted the way they did etc. Really. Someone may have had a personal crisis, another may just be incompetent in decision making...etc.

Ok, here is an example of how I am misunderstood. I did everything but mind read in this experience with the damage to my spleen during the colonoscopy. I couldn't drive and my sister took me to get all my records and then I when I could drive myself, I went and spoke to the partner of the doctor that did the procedure because I wanted the damage explained to me. That partner stared me in the eyes and insisted that I was in a car accident and the seat belt must have injured my spleen. He would not even admit that the spleen was damaged in the procedure.
I could not believe it, even when I told him that I had not been in a car accident all he said was the doctor that performed the procedure was a good man and that being injured was very rare etc. But he would not address the reality and I left him in tears.

And when I was in the hospital the attending surgen also would not discuss that my spleen was injured during a colonoscopy. I could not understand why I was jumping through hoops to just get the facts.

It wasn't until I finally insisted on visiting with my GP and even though he too did not want to discuss it, I actually made an appointment and pinned him down to seeing me. I brought my husband with me who just sat and said nothing and that is when my regular GP who was the one who referred me to the specialist that performed the procedure finally explained to me that the reason why I was left out in the cold and no one would talk about how the damage occured is simply because they were all afraid of being sued. So it had nothing to do with me mind reading, I never did any mind reading, I simply kept going until I pinned someone down to explain to me why I was not able to get anyone to explain to me what had happened.

So I didn't even get to a mind reading process. I had to learn why I was left out in the cold. And I found out even more when I happened across a young doctor who told me that now the insurance companies do not allow physicians to use any wordage like I am sorry etc, that can lead a patient to a lawsuite. So basically the physicians are very restricted and they don't like it, but they have to follow the rules of what they can say that are given to them by the insurance companies.

So this has nothing to do with me reading minds. I am not even reading minds now, I am infact facing a reality of my own attorneys errors. And I also am now more aware of the hoops that are laid out to skirt around liability for these errors.

It has nothing to do with reading anything into it, and everything to do with tr, ying to see my way through the hoops. I could not begin to mind read this stuff. And I did try to confur with an attorney to see if I could get help to actually find a way to have a doctor explain to me what happened and show me my damage and that attorney told me that I could not sue or do anything unless I had been perminently damaged, so even an attorney could not help me just gain access to a doctor that could explain to me what had happened. It was incredibly bizaar and nothing I could read into, it was nothing I was ever prepared to experience.

And to be honest, I feel like I have to somehow learn to be a mind reader and somehow see the hoops that I have no idea are in place.

And along with that, I have this PTSD and it has this symptom of catastrophizing and so that makes it challenging because when I finally do see the reality, that catastrophizing is more created than me just doing it. And thats what I am afraid of, I am afraid that the damage being done to my brain will finally just result in catastrophizing taking over. And I don't want to do that, and I certainly don't want to become that way. But to be honest, I can see how the brain can be so confused by real issues, no imagining, but real, that it can get to a point where everything becomes more than it is. And that is why I hang back and try to look at situations realisitically. I purposely put myself in check JD.

Open Eyes