In Healing The Doctor-Patient Relationship, I wrote about the traumas that can happen for both patient and doctor, when the doctor-patient relationship is a patriarchal, hierarchical “power over” structure. But what’s the alternative? How else might we consider...
When I was training to become a physician, the rules of the broken, outdated, patriarchal medical system were made clear to me. They went something like this. As your doctor, I will sacrifice everything in my personal life in order to fix what is broken in you. I...
When I was working on my New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine, a friend of mine wrote to me right after leaving her doctor’s office. With her permission, I published her letter in Mind Over Medicine. She wrote: Lissa, if this doctor robs me as I leave the...
It's hard to believe it's been four years since the world stopped. I'll never forget the terror I felt when I saw the spooky, surreal, apocalyptic images of Times Square completely empty. I remember vividly the tears that flowed when the strictest part of San...
As I watch the horrifying news in Ukraine, as hospitals are bombed and unarmed civilians, some of them children, are killed, I can’t help wondering about the question I asked every healer, guru, spiritual leader, mind-body doctor, and trauma therapist during...
Although there is a grain of truth in the teachings, law of attraction folks put too much emphasis on thinking yourself well without acknowledging that illness is multifactorial, complex, and your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings are only a part of what impacts your...
Sometimes we get sick, and conventional medicine can cure us lickety-split. And thank God for those cures and for the doctors who deliver them. I was once one of those doctors, and it felt so satisfying when one of those medical cures could ease the suffering of...
*Trigger alert: Emotional, physical, sexual, and financial abuse at the hands of those we entrust to help us heal when we are at our most vulnerable. I used to believe that doctors were heroes, if not gods. My father was one of those doctors I idolized, and at...