Don't judge too quickly

Lesson of the day: don't judge too quickly! Or my lesson of the posting. well, since I always tend to judge rather quickly sometimes

Anyway I thought that the Fam med posting was a lost cause (by the 2nd day of the posting) which I think I'm quite well-justified sometimes. But turns out, the phrase that "there is something to learn from everybody" is true indeed!

Today is quite funny. When there were no patients, the GP decided to teach us something, so he asked us... "do you all learn about strokes in med sch?" And I'm thinking, is he crazed! Of course we learn about strokes in med sch larh...we are like 4th years now and I was already thinking that oh very good! He's going to teach us something...

Which is why, the next things that come out of his mouth almost made me fall off my chair. And I had to do my best to suppress my laughter. And me and selster were turning red with like suppressing our giggle. But oh well, after he went on for sometime, I realized that what he says makes a lot of sense, even though it's FREAKING hilarious at first.

Turns out this stroke is not the stroke that we are all medically-acquainted with. I wonder if he thought about how ridiculous the flow of his conversation went. Anyway, this stroke has got to do with a guy called Eric Berne who coined the term "stroke" to denote a form of human recognition.

So like e.g. if I smile at a stranger on the bus and he smiles back at me, we have just exchanged a unit of unconditional positive stroke, which is like a form of human recognition. But if a husband abuses a wife, then they have just exchanged a unit of unconditional negative stroke. Unconditional cos you haven't done anyting to earn it. But if let's say a child get's 100 marks in a test and the mummy hugs and kisses the child, then the child has gotten a unit of conditional positive stroke. Confusing right?

so he was saying all this while all the time I was all ready with all the answers of questions he can ask me about strokes. (conventional strokes, those that happen in old pple) it was quite freaking funny

But all in all, it's a very good philosophy lesson!
I thought I was doing psych med already or something.
If you have time, you should go read up on Eric berne's stroke theory or The warm fuzzy tale by Claude steiner at http://www.storybin.com/sponsor/sponsor138.shtml
It's rather insightful!
And like what Darren says about cofm, it could explain everything under the sky!