Taken together, these theories on interactions help explain “how we can make people better, how we can make people worse with ‘nothing,’ ” he maintained. “Of course, it’s not nothing – it’s the totality of our behavior with another person, and it’s crucial. And it can, in extreme cases, positively activate the innate healing response, or it can, as we often do sadly in clinical practice, activate an invalidation, fight-or-flight response, and make everything a lot worse.”
“There are colossal implications about how we behave when we are with patients,” Dr. Dieppe concluded. “I think basically, it’s just about our ability to be present for another human being in a nonjudgmental way. And that’s difficult, but that’s what we need to be able to do.”