This post was also published on Whole Hearted Medicine, an organisation run by doctors and offering self care retreats specifically for doctors. Call it 'Imposter Syndrome', call it self doubt. It doesn't really matter what name you give it, most of us feel it to some extent at some point in our lives. Medicine is full of high achieving individuals often with perfectionistic traits. Why wouldn't it be? People's lives fall into our hands every day. This sort of precious cargo demands as close to perfection as possible. As a patient, I completely get it. I want a 'perfect' doctor. Who doesn't?? As a patient, I also benefit from this collective of immense knowledge and dedication. As a doctor, I demand 'perfection' from myself. Yet, as a human being, I understand that no one is perfect. How can I reconcile these facts? This tends to be where self doubt creeps in. We set the bar at perfection and berate ourselves if we ever fall even a millimetre short. We see our colleagues with more compassionate eyes than we see ourselves. We put ourselves or our family members in our patients shoes and understand the need for attention to detail, for the constant striving for perfection. Imposter Syndrome or pervasive self doubt is the natural consequence of this constant self flagellation.
Mindfulness teaches us that we can be an observer to our thoughts.
That we can watch that stream of berating thoughts and self doubt as they come to us just as we might watch a train pulling into a station. That we can choose to step back and not engage, to not 'hop on' the train as it takes us on a journey to Imposter Syndrome Station. Self compassion comes when we gain this ability to disengage with our thoughts. Mindful self awareness is a state of mind in which the default mode of the brain is set to compassion. Compassion for ourselves and compassion for others. This comes from practice. Whether it be a daily meditation practice, regular prayer or even informal mindfulness cultivation. The key is consistency. When we begin to see the goal of perfection not as some unattainable star, always seemingly out of our reach but rather the balance to our own practice of self compassion- we can see that striving for perfection isn't in fact a linear path along a spectrum but rather a constant state of being. Sustainable, but only when in balance with our practice of self compassion.
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by Dr Emily Amos
This is an excerpt from a blog post that was originally published on my website about 18 months ago. I am a good doctor, an empathetic doctor. The sort who listens intently to you and tries to reflect back what I've heard you say with a mixture of comprehension and gentle advice. I've spent the last 15 years either training towards or being a doctor. But right now, I am a doctor who feels jaded and empty. Like the 'doctor' light globe inside me has gone out. The weighty responsibility of trying to help people in their darkest hours finally causing my legs to buckle under me. An unfamiliar mixture of panic and despair stopping my whole being from even getting out the door to go into work. To a job I am good at. A job that helps people. A job that (outwardly at least) appears so fulfilling. So why do I feel like this? This was only a few short weeks after I had stopped work. Little did I know it then, but there was an immense journey ahead of me. A journey that in some ways I think I'll always be on. This path of life that we all walk, I now walk more intentionally. No longer swept just onto the 'treadmill'. Some people are fortunate to have the self awareness to have always been on this intentional path. Yet for many of us, this path is in fact a treadmill. A moving conveyer belt on which we feel sometimes passively shifted along. The 'Medical Treadmill' has such inertia from school, to medical school, to internship, residency, unaccredited positions, being a junior reg, senior registrar, fellowship and eventually consultant. Don't get me wrong, there are huge life decisions to be made in that time. "Which college do I want to join?" "Will I have any say into where I go?" "When will I have time to have a family?" Ultimately however, this process does tend to move along in a fairly linear pattern. Unless we are forced to or choose to step off. What do we say to our colleagues who express a desire to 'step off' the treadmill at any point? Whether for a short break or even forever? I experienced a lot of well intentioned encouragement not to do that. That I would have to work too hard to "get back". Or that I would "miss opportunities". That it would be a "waste of my skills". The dialogue here is really important I think. As it turned out, I ended up needing to 'step off' for a while anyway. Perhaps I could have done this in a more intentional way sooner? Perhaps not. For me personally, I am immensely grateful for the journey I have been on as a result of the last couple of years and my 'burning out'. That doorway I felt myself standing in all that time ago was in fact this doorway into working to support the wellness of the healthcare workforce. Healing the healers. Caring for the carers. I am excited and hopeful for the future. If you are feeling swept up on the medical treadmill, passively shuttled through your professional life towards some seemingly far off goal, I'd encourage you to try and familiarise yourself with the concepts of mindfulness.
Of presence. Of perception. Of non-attachment. Of self compassion. Self awareness comes as we take our consciousness inwards to become more familiar with our own internal environment rather than only focussing on those things outside of ourselves and our control. Sometimes it involves some time "off the treadmill" for self reflection. And that is OK. Sometimes it involves staying "on the treadmill" but building a support structure around you so that you can lean on that and just lift your feet up every now and again. Sometimes it involves the speed and incline being turned up so far that eventually you end up flying off the end of the treadmill, unable to keep up anymore (like I did...). Look, it's not ideal- but that too is manageable. The most important thing to realise is that ultimately, you control the treadmill. Even at the times when you feel like you don't, you always have the choice to step off for a while.
Yet, I was still a square peg. |
AuthorThese are blog posts submitted by those in the healing and healthcare professions who are reflecting on their lives, their roles and themselves. Archives
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