John Wayne Syndrome

 

John Wayne - The Great American Cowboy

 

 

It seems that lately I’ve been encountering more people that suffer from what I call “JWS” or “John Wayne Syndrome.”   For those of you not familiar with the term, I’d like to just take a moment an expound on this phenomenon.

 

Although I did not have a name for it early on, I most certainly grew up in a culture plagued by it.  In rural Wyoming, the Code of the West and a cowboy mentality rule.  Now please do not misunderstand me, I am not bashing the Code of the West here.  There is much to be said about the honesty and integrity that comes from living by the Code of the West.  However,  JWS stems from the cowboy mentality of toughness.

When a cowboy suffers an injury, he does not go see a doctor.  He walks it off and continues doing what he’s doing.  This is where we get the old adage “Cowboy Up!”  This is a gritting of the teeth and toughing it out.  No complaining.  It is exemplary in many of the characters that John Wayne played.  And this is why I have dubbed the behavior “John Wayne Syndrome.”  This sort of mentality by no means affects just those that live in rural areas.  John Wayne is an American icon.  His influence has spread throughout our country.  There are just as many people that live in urban settings who suffer from JWS as opposed to their rural cohorts.  It also effects both men and women, though I believe men exhibit the lion’s share of JWS.

The sheer tenacity of this cowboy mentality is undeniably admirable.  However, there is a special kind of lunacy that accompanies it.  When one is injured, one should do their best to take care of themselves so that they can continue  to maintain living and working with certain youthful exuberance.  This is the logical thing to do.  Instead, those that suffer from JWS do just the opposite and create for themselves a life of constant and continual pain.

Take for example the man who accidentally bashes his finger while hammering.  Instead of receiving proper medical care for it, he slowly nurses the injury by himself over a period of several weeks.  The finger does not receive correct or effective treatment, and the joints freeze up and become arthritic.  Now for the rest of his life, he can only bend his finger a fraction of what it used to.  It hampers his work and causes him pain each time the weather changes, but he continues to “cowboy up.”  If, after the accident ocurred, this poor fellow with JWS had gone to see his health care professionals, the finger would have been given proper treatment.  He would have gained the majority, if not all, of  his range of motion back, and arthritis would not have set in until much later in his life.

I do have to admit that I am a little ambivalent in my feelings toward JWS.  For one, having grown up in the heart of cowboy culture, I do recognize that I have acquired some of this mentality.  I struggle against it in order to keep myself healthy.  This is my own personal battle, and it is one of the reasons why I have decided to blog about this specific subject.

Second, I must also admit that folks with JWS help keep me in business.  Not when they’re young, of course, but once they have gotten older and their doctors tell them that surgery or drugs is the only answer to their various problems.  Then Traditional Chinese Medicine becomes their last bastion of hope that will not be forever tied to the doctors that they despise.  I love treating these folks because they generally become my staunchest advocates.  They find that TCM works and they express regret in not knowing about it earlier in their lives.

It is quite likely that you or someone you know has John Wayne Syndrome.  If so, I would love to hear from you about your trials and tribulations concerning JWS.   Please feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or send me an email.  In return, it would be my pleasure to personally educate you on how Traditional Chinese Medicine can be a great benefit in regard to this often debilitating condition.