What gets reported, and what gets absorbed

Ask people what they told their clinician and then ask what they experienced, and the two lists differ. The gap is not made of dramatic events. It is made of things the person had decided, privately, were supposed to happen.

That private decision usually traces back to a single sentence in an early appointment — a general reassurance that some effects are common — which the listener converts into a rule about which of their own experiences are worth mentioning.

I had been told it was common. I took that to mean I should not bother anybody with it.

Illustrative composite

The fix people describe is narrow and asymmetric: report it and let the clinician decide whether it matters. That is what the appointment is for, and it is a judgement the patient is being asked to make without any of the information required to make it.