Author: Kelly Pelton

Physicians encounter patients from time to time with whom we cannot establish a rapport. We may remind them of someone unpleasant in their past, we may trigger them in some way, or we may be unwilling to grant a request they have. Pay attention to your tension when you become aware you are disappointing a patient. If you sense inordinate dread or unbearable anxiety, you may have a history of someone close to you who wanted you to be a different sort of person than you actually are. Delve into that old story, for many of us have people-pleasing tendencies from which we need to be freed in order to authentically and unapologetically be ourselves and to practice medicine without undue social anxiety.

To begin the healing journey, we must first detect and acknowledge the distress within us. Most of us have postponed our emotional healing by blaming another person or a circumstance for our distress, but when we take ownership of our feelings, we are engaging in a healing practice. We can then ask probing questions like, “What thought is giving me pain?” “What problematic perspective do I have?” “How can I see this differently, in a less painful way?”

If our only thought about our distress is to blame it on a series of people or circumstances, we can procrastinate our own healing for years or even decades. Taking ownership of our emotions – which is accepting responsibility for them instead of holding others responsible – is step #2 of emotional healing, with step #1 being to notice our feelings in the first place.

Self-respect is not the same as self-centeredness, conceit, or entitlement. We can be arrogant or entitled without having true self-respect. People assume that physicians have a healthy amount of self-respect, but this is not the case. To respect yourself, you must know your story and have compassion and kindness toward yourself. Self-respect means you esteem yourself as much as you esteem others, that you value yourself as much as you value others. The journey of emotional healing leads to growth in self-respect, which prompts you to insist on healthier dynamics in all of your relationships. Self-respect means that not only do I treat people well, I teach them to also treat me respectfully. This is how we teach one another how to love.

As we get healthier emotionally, we set healthier boundaries without false guilt, second-guessing, or inner turmoil. Our boundaries keep our personal and professional lives separate and balanced, our friendships mutually enriching, and our family lives respectful and kind.

It is impossible to formulate and to unapologetically insist on a healthy boundary without first getting the healing that frees us from taking responsibility for another’s feelings. We can learn to take responsibility for our own feelings and expect others to manage their own feelings, and then we know that our boundary is not harming anyone around us, no matter how much the boundary is questioned, disputed, or resisted.

Emotional healing leads to healthier boundaries and thus to healthier relationships. This is a win-win for us and for those in our circle.

It takes courage and discipline to feel your feelings. Some of us who are more avoidant on the attachment spectrum don’t even know that we have any feelings beyond our daily surface moods. But to begin the journey of emotional healing, one must get in touch with the tender feelings of sadness, loneliness, anxiety, and many others. Anger is a secondary emotion protecting the more tender emotions, and some of us readily feel our anger while others cannot access even this less vulnerable emotion.

Sometimes we must begin with a problematic behavior we keep doing and work backwards from there to detect the feeling beneath it. There are various ways to get in touch with our feelings and from there, to learn what false belief or perception is fueling the feeling. The cognitive behavioral therapists have much to offer in this arena of emotional healing.

Although the journey of emotional healing is lifelong, we can get healed enough to enjoy our vocation, to enjoy our family lives, to enjoy ourselves and others in general. “Physician, Get Healed” is a challenge to seek the healing that frees us to enjoy the present moment and that empowers us to insist upon healthier dynamics in our current circumstances. As people who are healing and more empowered, we can have longer, more satisfying careers in medicine.

The heaviest false perception we can harbor, the one that will kill the joy of practicing medicine and of life in general, is that “everything depends on me.” We acquire this perception in childhood or adolescence and carry it into our work and family lives. With regard to a patient’s outcome, we fail to factor in the influence of the patient, their circumstances, and God in determining what happens. If everything depends on us, we have to know everything and do everything right, with no mistakes. This perception is paralyzing or at least keeps us living in fear. We are not the savior of anyone nor are the the sole determinant of a patient’s physical outcome. We do what we can to help patients but also voice the expectation that they must also help themselves in certain ways to get better. The doctor-patient relationship is a partnership, not a parent-child or boss-subordinate relationship. As I pray on my way to work each morning, I want to be an instrument of healing and to enjoy every patient encounter without the burden of falsely thinking I am fully responsible for the outcome. We are responsible to practice medicine to the best of our ability, but a multitude of variables are not under our control.

This blog, though it seeks to prevent physician burnout, has the more positive goal of helping physicians to prioritize their own healing. As the healers get healed, as we gain compassion and patience for ourselves, we become more compassionate and patient with others. As we cease to be hard on ourselves, we cease to be hard on others. Our harsh, pressure-driven, performance-oriented inner narrative can be replaced by kind concern, understanding, the shedding of false perceptions, and a healthier perspective on ourselves and our profession. This leads to less of us retiring early or transitioning out of patient care.

Being a physician is only one facet of our identity, and it’s not even the dominant aspect of who we are. Identity goes much deeper than one’s vocation and also deeper than our roles as an adult son or daughter, a parent or aunt or uncle, a spouse, etc. I see my primary identity as a child of God but also as a person with a story of perseverance. The better we know our own backstories, to use a fiction term, the more we know who we are. If we see our identities as mostly being physicians, our sense of who we are can be threatened by our own retirement or health problems or a medical mistake or a lawsuit. If we see our identities as rich, complex, and multi-faceted, our career does not greatly or excessively factor in to our sense of worth.