Beware the Pendulum’s Swing
A friend recently described clinical practice in an interesting way: moving through a gauntlet of swinging pendulums.
As techniques fall in and out of favor, it's hard to know which to dodge and which to grab on to.
Consider:
The young clinician: without context and experience, they are susceptible to jumping on or being swept away.
The burned out: tired of navigating the chaos, they’ve removed themselves from combat and hardly notice the changing tides.
The scholar: naturally skeptical of the understudied, they’re prone to letting a promising technique swing by.
The guru: convinced by their own success, they’re prone to pulling back so far that view is obscured and the fall is far.
The balanced clinician, on the other hand, gets good at navigating the course. They learn to balance the chaos, examine the merits of each pendulum, integrate lessons learned with the merits and drawbacks of what has come before, and (most importantly) stay on the path.
How can you know where you stand?
