The Rooted DC- Reclaim Your Legitimacy

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Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley

22 October 2026

23m 50s

S3E9 Checking the “Other” Box: Chiropractic Identity and Burnout

00:00

23:50

There was no box for us.

On a survey from the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches, every health profession had a checkbox except mine. I clicked “other,” typed in Doctor of Chiropractic, and couldn’t stop thinking about what that tiny moment says about where we stand as a profession.

We survived a medical establishment that formed a committee to destroy us. We won Wilk v. AMA. And we still spend so much energy proving we belong inside a system that was never built for us.

What is that costing us? I see it in the most common burnout pattern I come across in DCs: resignation. We give up, a little at a time, on the dream that brought us to chiropractic in the first place.

This episode connects our profession’s collective history to the exhaustion so many of us carry in our own practices. It also asks a question only you can answer: why is chiropractic your vehicle?

What you’ll hear in this episode

  • Recognize how the AMA’s legacy still shapes the way you explain, defend, and value your work, decades after Wilk v. AMA
  • See the crossroads our profession faces: absorption into Western medicine, or defining standards of our own
  • Spot the “resigned practice owner” pattern in yourself, the slow surrender that passes for acceptance
  • Understand why the fight between “philosophy” chiropractors and “evidence-based” chiropractors grows from the same root of collective trauma
  • Use the lens of organizations as psychic prisons to see our profession’s shadow side and where it shows up in your practice
  • Reconnect with your own reason for choosing chiropractic, the root that can hold you steady when the system won’t

Resources mentioned

Chapter Summary

[00:00] The Box That Wasn’t There

A routine survey with no checkbox for chiropractors opens a bigger conversation. Dr. Alex looks at the profession in its ecological context and at the leftovers of a history that was built to erase us.

[02:39] Absorbed or Distinct: How Professions Organize

Drawing on her PhD studies, Dr. Alex explains how professions form around sameness, standards, and control over who belongs. She traces how the AMA built a monopoly and why chiropractic, born in an era open to spiritual approaches to healing, still sits on the outside.

[05:38] We Won Wilk, Then Kept Asking Permission

Winning the lawsuit should have changed everything. Instead, the profession kept trying to prove itself by medicine’s standards, while bias continues to show up in medical and PA education today.

[08:46] A Career Interview With My Son, and the Resigned Practice Owner

When her 13-year-old asks what it’s really like to be a chiropractor, Dr. Alex gives an honest answer that surprises even her. That leads to the most common archetype in her burnout quiz, the resigned practice owner, and a parallel she sees in Indigenous communities trying to hold onto their values inside Western systems.

[13:23] Two Reactions, One Wound

A social media post about D.D. Palmer’s mystic roots draws two predictable camps, and Dr. Alex shows how both come from the same collective trauma. She makes the case for defining legitimacy through the people we serve, shares her own story of healing through chiropractic, and challenges a research model that leaves out the art of what we do.

[16:28] The Practice Beneath the Practice

Under every frustration in practice sits a deeper layer: your identity, your values, your strengths. Dr. Alex asks each listener to get clear on why chiropractic, out of every path to healing, is the one they chose.

[17:53] Our Profession’s Shadow

Using Gareth Morgan’s metaphor of organizations as psychic prisons, Dr. Alex looks at the collective shadow shaping our profession’s decisions and our personal fulfillment. She closes with her own three years away, why she came back, and where to start this deeper work.