Do you only work with doctors?

I’ve gotten this question more in the past two weeks than ever before. The answer: no way!

I work with people… With people brains:)  

Chimps, apes, dogs, and dolphins would be pretty awesome too…but I didn’t take that certification yet. 

To be honest, I started this journey and recognized how much it would help doctors. I was in the thick of covid, super burned out and pretty angry at the system. I knew if I had learned these tools a long time ago (like age 6 or maybe high school/ college/ med school time frame)… it would have helped so much. It seemed like a lot of unnecessary suffering. 

But the truth is: this work applies to everyone. We all have human brains, doing what brains do… which is ludicrous $hit sometimes. Whether you are in healthcare or not, it doesn’t matter. You may be a parent, care-giver to a parent, or simply human. We humans overthink; we ruminate; we dooms-day prep for things that will likely never happen. In the ER, sometimes we pride ourselves on this: I see you people with a scalpel and a bougie in your pocket (for my non-medical peeps: this is basically when all hell breaks loose and you can’t secure a breathing tube: you can’t oxygenate someone/ can’t ventilate them…so you are forced to go through someone’s neck. It’s often our last-resort—thankfully it’s pretty rare). In residency, we prep for the worst-case scenario. It’s a legit part of our training that sometimes is helpful… but I’ve learned sometimes: not so much (like when you are at a dinner party or on a boat or any other should-be-fun occasion when your brain is meandering through a worst-case scenario). But we’ve all trained our brains (as has evolution) in past-based and often negative thinking, which creates patterns that somehow turn into unconscious belief systems that tend to run our lives like tyrant toddlers. 

1. Close it back up and not have lights this year. Who needs lights anyway? In fact, I should just turn off my electricity this month. You stew in a little disappointment mixed with regret splashed with a dash of self-criticism as you realize you were last year’s drunken scrooge. 

2. Untangle for hours/ regret it immeasurably / hang the lights up angrily/ swear to yourself you’ll never do that again/ wait until early March to take down the lights when you are feeling shamed by neighbors who are obviously sick of your reindeer blowups. You thought the take-down would be a fun project for the family, realize no one is helping, and get fairly annoyed when packing it up this year because of all the frustration the whole process created and repeat the process next year. Hmmmm… 

3. Decide it’s probably time to buy a few new strands anyway– because half the bulbs were burnt out anyway and emotional health is probably worth more than battling with a giant box of half-working lights for the next several hours. You take your relieved self to the store, buy a new strand or two and decide to be more thoughtful in putting it away for next year. Whew… that was an easier way out. Now let’s see what Alexa has on her holiday playlist while I drink a cup of cocoa.

Somehow, in life: we live with options A or B with both big and small decisions and never realize there’s option C. This is kind of a silly example… but sometimes, when you are “in it”… like elbow deep in a box of lights, tangled around you, cut by a few broken bulbs and angry…you just don’t have the pause or the perspective to know you have so much more control than you think. And that’s the funny part. The vast majority of control is in our thinking… So, all this to say: It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor. I think this work helps tremendously. It gives you space to declutter your human brain, question whether certain patterns/ thoughts/ beliefs are serving you—and the ability to choose new ones. Sometimes, it’s as simple as replacing a broken light with a new one. Once you see it happen in your own life just once… it’s like the real scrooge untangled the whole $#$%^& box of lights himself and left them for you, already hung up.