40+FAB Blog

No quacks please

I don’t know if you ever wonder why someone who is a fraud is called a quack. The word came from the Dutch language quacksalver and denoted someone who tried to solve real problems with false remedies, especially in the medical field.

One of the reactions of humans in the face of change is to deny it. This was researched for many years by psychologist, Kubler-Ross, who came up with a change lifecycle, which says that when we experience a ground-breaking change like the death of a loved one, our first reaction is shock, and then we move into a period of denial.

These same reactions have been found to be true with most other types of changes that are noticeable enough to the person going through them. This brings us back to the quack. When we go through real problems, we need real solutions and not false ones which feed our denial.

I remember as a teenager when I first broke out it pimples, it was a shock, and I did all I could to get rid of them, my denial left me with many creams and potions on my table which I applied diligently, but it never solved my problem. When I finally accepted this as part of puberty, I was able to handle it better.
In another scenario, I heard the sad case of a father who refused to bury his son for months because he believed that he would get up again.

When we are experiencing challenging changes in our lives, be it as serious as death, or something less important like a car needing repairs, we need help and support from people who know what to do, and who will offer us real solutions to our problems. We don’t need quacks to feed our denial and exploit our weakness at that point.

When you are looking for a solution, don’t let denial get in the way, and please do not employ the services of a quack.