When entering the United States health care system the tendency to pressure patients into masking suffering comes from to two main sources- health care professionals and family members of the patient. It is difficult for health care professionals to avoid emotional investment surrounding their success of their work, like any other occupation. Family members, contribute to this pressure, because there is escalating emotional investment in the outcome of the treatment. When these are established for a lengthy amount of time, they turn into societal rules that are rarely violated, no matter how detrimental they are. The expectation for notions of positive outlooks and ‘normal’ behavior are exhaustive for an individual who is either sick or recovering
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In her work “On Being a Cripple” she describes personally how these sources of pressure, do not specifically come from individuals, but collective societal standards. “Todays ideal woman, .. is never a cripple” (Mairs 76). Due to her overall fortune of having an understanding doctor and family, she does not have to deal with pressure from them, because they realize it would be condescending and unrealistic plus ultimately stressful for themselves. Instead, it is the everyday pressure to be perfect, to be beautiful that is placed on all women in western culture that she feels in particular, due to this representation almost never inclusive of how she must live. Despite this bitterness, and because the pressures from her family for constant positivity are not present, she is able to make peace with what she wants done when she cant move and needs to die (Mairs 79). As a patient, she sees that doctors are upset by her incurable disease (Mairs 80) but because of recognizing this cognitive dissonance in individual medical professionals, it is not a huge source of guilt for her now in her stage of life. For the particular situation of MS, it seems as if for some, social pressures to keep an appearance of painlessness do not come from emotional investment from individuals, but from pre-existing cultural
In her work “On Being a Cripple” she describes personally how these sources of pressure, do not specifically come from individuals, but collective societal standards. “Todays ideal woman, .. is never a cripple” (Mairs 76). Due to her overall fortune of having an understanding doctor and family, she does not have to deal with pressure from them, because they realize it would be condescending and unrealistic plus ultimately stressful for themselves. Instead, it is the everyday pressure to be perfect, to be beautiful that is placed on all women in western culture that she feels in particular, due to this representation almost never inclusive of how she must live. Despite this bitterness, and because the pressures from her family for constant positivity are not present, she is able to make peace with what she wants done when she cant move and needs to die (Mairs 79). As a patient, she sees that doctors are upset by her incurable disease (Mairs 80) but because of recognizing this cognitive dissonance in individual medical professionals, it is not a huge source of guilt for her now in her stage of life. For the particular situation of MS, it seems as if for some, social pressures to keep an appearance of painlessness do not come from emotional investment from individuals, but from pre-existing cultural