Physician, Get Healed

The phenomenon of codependency is important to explore. To be codependent is to depend on another person in some way for my sense of well-being; for me to be content, the person must be or act a certain way or think like I do. My “being okay,” even thriving, depends on another person being _____ or doing ____. Two codependent people in a relationship with each other are depending on each other for peace. Codependency can look like controlling, scapegoating, enabling, people-pleasing, or martyrdom.

Codependent people are not taking sole responsibility for their own peace or contentment; they have an unhealthy focus on others that keeps them distracted from working on themselves and their feelings. We only have control, after all, over ourselves and not over any other person’s experience. Why not prioritize working on our own unhealthy perceptions or actions?

It’s a natural outworking of childhood to be codependent. We relied, or longed to rely, on our parents and others for a sense of well-being. We are naturally affected by others. But it’s a privilege of adulthood to take sole responsibility for our own peace without making it conditional on anyone else and how they’re doing. Ask yourself, What do I need to have a contentment that transcends the actions, attitude, and beliefs of other people in my world?

If you notice a repetitive theme of people responding to you in a dysfunctional way, especially in your close circle of family and friends, consider that you may be tolerating or attracting unhealthy dynamics, and seek to change in ways that edify and improve your relationships. Ask yourself, How do I need to change to no longer tolerate or attract the dysfunctional response? What part of me is putting up with unhealthy treatment, and why? Often it is a child part of you that fears losing a relationship, however unhealthy that relationship may be. Our child parts need to know that a relationship with the adult self is enough as we figure out how to exert personal power in our inner circle. A healthy self relationship has a ripple effect, changing the ways that others relate to us.

Take pains to build equal, reciprocal friendships in which you are seen as a whole person and not simply a resource or a demographic. You do not need to be designated as a leader in every group in which you participate. Try to avoid groups of friends who, as we all age, talk mostly about their medical problems. You need at least one group of people who are a safe haven for you with no expectation of you serving a medical purpose regularly.

We all compartmentalize our medical brains when we’re off duty, and you need people who don’t expect you to turn it on. Cultivate friendships in which neither of you is seen as a role but rather as a personality whose being is more delightful than one’s “doing” (role or function). Seek friends who’ll never put you on a pedestal because of your being a doctor. You are a whole person with quirks, mannerisms, strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, character flaws, and endearing qualities, and you need loving relationships in which you can be enjoyed as your whole self and can enjoy others similarly.

We have no actual control over relationships. Good relationships require that both parties are emotionally healthy. Relationships cannot be the most important thing in our lives. Love and truth are most important, and if we adhere to love and truth, some of our relationships will flourish and others will wither. Relational rift occurs when at least one person is not adhering to either love or truth, and rifts are not the end of the world. This rifting happens occasionally in the doctor-patient relationship, and we need not be inconsolable but can rather wish a patient well in their relationship with another doctor. Relationships must always be subordinate to love and truth.

Healthy relationships are possible only if each person takes responsibility for his or her own distress. Even if another person triggers our unpleasant emotions, we have the responsibility and the privilege of discerning what emotions are surfacing and why. As adults, we get to take the time to analyze our own distress and discern any false perceptions that are contributing to our distress.

As we discover the roots of our unpleasant emotions and get healed, we can then assert a healthy power in our relationships to insist on healthier dynamics, including the relationships with those who were triggering us.

On the healing journey, it’s helpful to name the behaviors we’ve endured or witnessed that are the opposites of love. Withdrawing, withholding, punishing with the silent treatment, and pressuring are not love. Minimizing, discounting, ridiculing, accusing, blaming, scapegoating, and manipulating are not love. Making a joke at another’s expense is not love. Yelling, threatening, humiliating, and name-calling are not love. Belittling, condescending, and patronizing are not love.
If you’re not sure of the meaning of one or more terms, look them up. Lots of free, excellent resources exist online.
A future post will cover what love looks like and feels like, but for now, see if you can characterize the unloving behaviors of your childhood home and other environments like extended family gatherings, schools, or religious settings.

Sometimes, when we get triggered by what someone does or doesn’t do, we are making an assumption that causes us pain. If you find yourself being triggered by the same sort of situation over and over again, you’d benefit from searching your thoughts for painful assumptions, assumptions you have carried for decades regarding that situation. You will want to challenge your assumption, starting with the first such situation you encountered, and discern if you can interpret the situation in a more helpful and hopeful way. Your new and more balanced interpretation can then be remembered when other similar situations occur.

As you face your emotional wounds, you gain compassion for yourself even as you learn to put your hurts in perspective. The journey of emotional healing reveals hidden, subconscious lies, and as we slowly awaken and disentangle truths from lies, we realize how complex is our pain, our history, our decisions and conclusions that emerged from the pain. Once we gain compassion for ourselves, we naturally have compassion for other people. Finding compassion for self is a difficult and prolonged process, but the benefit of having compassion for others materializes almost immediately after that with no effort required. And then people, including our patients, know that our compassion for them is genuine.

Sometimes, a loved on or our inner voice keeps scolding us to “get over it,” to get healed and forgive, to rush the process. Do not listen. The psyche of individuals and of dysfunctional family systems are so complex, confusing, and multi-layered that our emotional healing can easily take decades. “Love is patient,” begins the famous chapter in the Bible. “Patience is the essence of love,” wrote Joshua Choonmin Kang. We show love to ourselves by giving ourselves all the time we need to heal. And our loved ones, once they begin the healing journey, will finally understand why “Get over it” is an insensitive and harsh admonition to a hurting and seeking soul.