Physician, Get Healed

We can benefit from pondering the patients who elicit disproportionate emotions from us. Whether a patient is hostile, controlling, pressuring, or apathetic, our strong inner response teaches us something about our own pain and need for healing. The more healing we get, the less often we are triggered into an unpleasant emotional state. I’ve had a few unpleasant encounters in the last several years, and I process my emotions once I’m home: How do I feel? When have I felt this before? Did this patient remind me of someone? And so on. Never waste an opportunity to learn about the origins of your anger, your stewing over an interaction, your fight or flight or freeze response to a patient.

This blog will not be exalting the “high calling of medicine,” which is actually a thinly veiled term of self-pressure that embraces a mentality of performance-drivenness. Rather, I hope to encourage other physicians to get real with themselves and other trustworthy people about their own inner struggles in order to heal. We are not doing our patients any favors by neglecting ourselves. Realizing and tending to our emotional needs will make us more human, more humble, and more genuinely helpful. Join with me in the journey of healing.