Welcome to a journey of understanding trauma and its many manifestations with our esteemed guest, Rosie Yeung, a certified trauma recovery coach. We explore the concept that trauma isn't solely a result of bad experiences, but also stems from the absence of good things that didn't happen. Picture the burnout from a job you're passionate about or the unequal treatment from a system you're part of, these can trigger trauma and take a toll on your mental health.
Rosie opens up about her journey, detailing her experiences in the corporate world where she endured systemic inequity and discrimination for two decades. Together, we unpack the cognitive dissonance that ensues when there's a clash between our beliefs and the realities of our environments. With candid conversation, we shed light on the signs of trauma, from feelings of guilt and shame, to perfectionism and hyper-vigilance. We also delve into the connections between trauma and mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
On the path to recovery, we navigate strategies to manage trauma and stress. Learn about the immense courage required to uncover your personal triggers and seek help. Discover the importance of supportive communities, and how self-awareness can be a powerful tool in identifying mental health issues. Encourage yourself to take a step forward, to ask for help, to provide support to others. This conversation aims to empower you to tackle trauma, not just for yourself, but also to help those around you. Join us as we journey towards healing and recovery.
Connect with Rosie:
https://www.changinglenses.ca/resources/traumarecovery
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosieyeung
Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.
Learn more about female physicians' journey through burnout to thriving!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/books
Let's connect for speaking opportunities!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/dr-shahhaque-md-as-a-speaker
Check out the free resources from The Worthy Physician:
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/freebie-downloads
Battle of the Boxes
21 Day Self Focus Journal
Welcome to a journey of understanding trauma and its many manifestations with our esteemed guest, Rosie Yeung, a certified trauma recovery coach. We explore the concept that trauma isn't solely a result of bad experiences, but also stems from the absence of good things that didn't happen. Picture the burnout from a job you're passionate about or the unequal treatment from a system you're part of, these can trigger trauma and take a toll on your mental health.
Rosie opens up about her journey, detailing her experiences in the corporate world where she endured systemic inequity and discrimination for two decades. Together, we unpack the cognitive dissonance that ensues when there's a clash between our beliefs and the realities of our environments. With candid conversation, we shed light on the signs of trauma, from feelings of guilt and shame, to perfectionism and hyper-vigilance. We also delve into the connections between trauma and mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
On the path to recovery, we navigate strategies to manage trauma and stress. Learn about the immense courage required to uncover your personal triggers and seek help. Discover the importance of supportive communities, and how self-awareness can be a powerful tool in identifying mental health issues. Encourage yourself to take a step forward, to ask for help, to provide support to others. This conversation aims to empower you to tackle trauma, not just for yourself, but also to help those around you. Join us as we journey towards healing and recovery.
Connect with Rosie:
https://www.changinglenses.ca/resources/traumarecovery
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosieyeung
Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.
Learn more about female physicians' journey through burnout to thriving!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/books
Let's connect for speaking opportunities!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/dr-shahhaque-md-as-a-speaker
Check out the free resources from The Worthy Physician:
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/freebie-downloads
Battle of the Boxes
21 Day Self Focus Journal
with burnout and moral injury, there's a traumatic response.
Speaker 2:Trauma isn't what happens to you, it's what happens inside you. That trauma isn't just bad things happening to you, it's also the good things that should have happened to you that didn't. That really just blew my mind open to see that One way I could help is by supporting the people who, while systems are changing and yes, there's some progress being made, but it's not changing fast enough and the impact on us is not being recognized.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shahok, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. Today I have Rosie Young, who has a very interesting background and information to share with us about trauma. This is a warning that this episode is about trauma, because it is something that is not discussed, and at least not discussed from a personal standpoint. When I say trauma, I mean exactly that not a car accident, but things that we don't necessarily want to unpack from the past.
Speaker 2:Rosie, thank you, it's a pleasure to be here and, honestly, I'm grateful because this is not something I was aware of before I started researching and learning about it, and we were just saying, before we started recording, how important it is to understand it for ourselves and to share the message.
Speaker 1:The reason why I'm interested in this is because with burnout and moral injury, there's a traumatic response. I think a lot of what we deal with in medicine and in the world today we don't necessarily have the coping skills for, or if we do, we're not allowed to use them. As physicians, in multiple states we seek help for depression, anxiety, ptsd, substance abuse. There's punitive damage that flags us as having a problem. What we prescribe is first-line therapy to our patients. If we seek that, it can boomerang and even the physician monitoring programs are very punitive, are very horrific and can be very dehumanizing. I think it's important to recognize and have these conversations. Like you said, until you actually started looking into this, there was a lot of unknown, so much.
Speaker 2:I think of trauma as the new mental health where, before it became less stigmatized I won't even say de-stigmatized fully yet, but before it became less stigmatized, some of the things you named burnout, depression, anxiety these were all not considered real things. It was like oh, those are for crazy people or weak people who can't handle the workload or the job. It's the strong, it's the hard workers that they just tough it out. There's no such thing as depression and anxiety, and it gets compounded looking at intersectional identities too, which is also a lens that I like to take.
Speaker 2:I have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and that was only maybe 10 years ago that I was diagnosed with it. I'm quite sure I was living with it for much longer than that. But who knew? And I believe I have it. But as I've been learning about trauma, I also understand that the symptoms or how trauma shows up can also very much present as depression, anxiety, bipolar substance abuse, all sorts of things. Not to say that it has to be one or the other, it can also be both. But this is also the importance of why we need to learn about it, because I think things can be confused or things can get mixed up, and so we may be trying to treat the one without understanding that the cause is another.
Speaker 1:And so how did you get into this realm of trauma.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you how I got into it, and when I say it out loud it sounds ridiculous. Because, first of all, I'm not a medical doctor. So shout out to you and all your listeners who are doctors or physicians or healers of any kind, because so much respect. And I never wanted to be in science at all. I just was like I don't want to see disease and blood and guts and all that stuff. I'm Chinese-Canadian, so I followed the model of minority myth, or the model of being a minority, and I became an accountant because I didn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. For 20 years I worked in corporate. I hated my job. For probably about half that time I definitely was part of a systemically inequitable discriminatory system, as we all are, because that it just exists. But this is also why I think trauma knowledge is so important, because I had just had no idea how the little things the too much for too long is how some of my trauma teachers have put it have an impact on people, and so I fell into doing more frontline equity work, I would say Like I was.
Speaker 2:By profession, I am trained in and certified as a human resources leader as well as a charter professional accountant, so nothing at all to do with trauma or counseling or health in any way. But behind it all, or underneath it all, what I really wanted to do is help hurting people and as an accountant I tried to find all sorts of ways to do that. I worked in a lot of not-for-profits, a lot of charities. I worked with communities and catchment, but I guess communities of support that were individuals that are marginalized. And when I was laid off from my job right before COVID because there was some restructuring, that was the opportunity. Just what am I going to do for the rest of my life and my career? And I was trying to find different ways to support and help in human rights. It kind of fell into equity, diversity, inclusion type work because of my corporate background and trying to merge the two.
Speaker 2:Why I ended up getting trained as a certified trauma recovery coach is just seeing the impact of the lack of equity, lack of inclusion, the lack of morality, and when I say that I mean whatever.
Speaker 2:The opposite of moral injury is the cognitive dissonance from seeing people say they believe in certain values but it doesn't actually get displayed in a job, in a work environment, in your team, in your leaders, and what that does to a person.
Speaker 2:Everything in our world, everything in our daily environment, what we encounter, things in our families, even conflict or unresolved relationship issues between family members the impacts of these are what happens inside us, and that's when I started learning from teachers like Dr Gawar Mate, dr Bessel Vendorkook, that trauma isn't what happens to you, it's what happens inside you, and that trauma isn't just bad things happening to you, it's also the good things that should have happened to you that didn't, and that really just blew my mind open to see that one way I could help is by supporting the people who, while systems are changing and yes, there's some progress being made, but it's not changing fast enough and the impact on us is not being recognized.
Speaker 2:It's all well and good to talk about how we are dealing with issues systematically or systemically for COVID, for the return to work or not return to work, for burnout, especially during COVID, frontline workers and what they're suffering but it was more like hire more people or how do we get more vaccines, or how do we deal with vaccine disinformation, rather than how are we supporting the individuals that are being psychologically, biologically and emotionally impacted Through soul searching, all that stuff to be. I think this is how I meant to help hurting people.
Speaker 1:You said something that really struck me. Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you. And then, going back to a comment you made previously, is that anxiety and depression? But it could be a result of trauma. I know it's gonna be different for everybody, but what are the top ways that trauma manifests?
Speaker 2:Such a good question because I think that's part of how we as a society, we as peers and community members can learn to support each other is just to start understanding what might be happening. Let me give a personal example because I think it helps to see it from a. How does it show up in actuality? Something constantly, I think literally through my whole life, just always been ashamed. And when I say ashamed, thinking is very quick to look for what's. How is it my fault If something goes wrong, if somebody seems displeased with me, if I'm not getting the instant feedback or some recognition, approval at work, the pat on the head, so to speak.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh, not do something. And that doesn't on the surface, look like anxiety, necessarily, or depression. It doesn't look like, oh, this person must have gone through a horrific earthquake or something like that. So we tend to think trauma is or what is the result of. And it wasn't until I started linking stories of my own background, how I grew up as a child, very loving parents, but that didn't mean that I got all the nurturing that I needed. It didn't mean that all the things well, especially that we know now. I mean I was born over 40 years ago. So what we know now about what children need for attachment, to feel secure, to feel safe. I didn't have all those things necessarily then. How I responded the response, as you said, is very dependent on the individual. But now that I see how things present, I look back over time and it's like, ah, I can see now why I have these perfectionistic tendencies. Because I learned as my trauma response that the way to ensure my survival and my approval by peers, by my family, which is essentially part of survival, the way I learned to do that was by doing things, by being perfect, by making sure that I performed the way that everybody around me needed to perform. And, of course, you take that to the extreme or make that happen time after time and it's burnout and it's oh my gosh. I need to control things, I need to make sure everything is just right, and I'm very hyper vigilant. I'm very hyper aware of oh. What does that facial expression mean? What does that tone mean from that person? Are they displeased with me in some way? Did I screw up? Did I fail? And then all that anxiety that I now know I've had for so long. It isn't because I'm screwed up in the head. It isn't because I'm just this, like you know, very hyper anxious person. It can be, and this is the confusing thing, right, but it's this mix of oh.
Speaker 2:When you trace everything back to oh and what happened before that and where did you learn that behavior and how did you get that thinking, that mindset, that understanding. As you trace everything back, you realize, ah, okay, these are some things that were missing from my life. These were some of the things that if I'd had this, maybe I wouldn't feel so insecure when working, when presenting information to people, maybe I wouldn't be so anxious about what people think about me and I would have some more confidence in just being able to state my opinion. And so I see how things break down that in a classic, you know American corporate workplace or in a hospital, let's say, where it's like well, that person you know they don't present very well when they are delivering a message, or you know, maybe speaking to a patient, and they do this or do that. Maybe they're easy, quick to anger, maybe they are too much of a people pleaser, all these things that don't fit the perfect model that the Goldilocks, so to speak, of you know what a worthy physician would be.
Speaker 2:Then the person gets blamed instead of looking at, well, what are some of the circumstances that might have led to that?
Speaker 2:And I can almost immediately hear the counterargument of what about accountability? Like, are you saying that everything can be blamed on trauma and therefore we have no responsibility for actions? No, that's definitely not what I'm saying. It's not an excuse for any kind of bad behavior.
Speaker 2:It's empathy and getting to the root of are we blaming people for things that is, a not in their control and also B not really understanding how human nature works, because it's a man-made system that we're in literally I use that word very literally and we're pushing people to meet some kind of ideal that actually I don't think we all as human beings it's really hard to meet, and then we blame them for it, and I think that our tendency is to blame more than to empathize. So I would rather go to empathy first, because I think people get blamed or assigned responsibility for more things that they're really not responsible for, and then we lose empathy for, well, this person's burnt out. Why? How do we get there? Is it because they couldn't handle it, or is it because of all the things both in their personal lives and in their work lives that have been brought to bear.
Speaker 1:You unlocked a lot of things right Perfectionism, people pleasing, control those are not every physician, not everybody in healthcare has those tendencies or personality traits, but they are seen in caregivers. We know that. And it's not necessarily that. Yeah, medicine's a great field, but also there is a tendency to be a perfectionist, because that's what is expected To be a high achiever every time because of all the hopes we have to jump through. But then there's also the control. I have to control everything because if something goes wrong it is my fault Not that it is my fault per se, but the system does blame the physician or the practitioner because that's the way it is set up.
Speaker 1:So, yes, I appreciate everything you have said about I don't think we actually truly understand human nature and we are humans. We don't understand ourselves, let alone other people's behavior within a man-made system, in a man-made system that is going back to the word moral, the morals of the healthcare system puts money before patients, and yet most of us that go into healthcare say the other way around we put people before money. So that's, I think, the crux where, how do we realize what trauma has happened in our lives, whether it's in the professional sphere, personal sphere or other parts of our childhood. How do we start to really notice our behavior, our triggers and label those things? I know for me it's been a therapy and life coaching and I'm pretty open about that fact. But I've had to go pretty far back as to why I have some of my tendencies. It's very uncomfortable and it's time consuming.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think uncomfortable is probably the kindest or the best case scenario. You'll feel uncomfortable. I don't know anyone who's ever gone back and thought about, oh yes, this all started when that time when my parents thanked me or whatever it was and thought, yeah, I'm totally fine with that. No one's ever okay. So it takes a lot of courage and I'm thankful also, sapna, for you being able to say openly, without shame I see therapists and I see coach and I have to look at some of these things that I'm not so proud of about myself, because it's not easy to do and particularly when we are in trauma, when we are in burnout, when we're just deeply stressed, we really have very limited capacity for that and that's also a sign that we're still suffering the impacts of trauma.
Speaker 2:Is that our window of capacity or a window of tolerance, that steady state, I would say the well-regulated state, that steady state between our autonomic, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems isn't there, like we're either too activated everything's a danger, we just got to keep going, the adrenaline keeps pushing us forward and we can't stop, or we are too down and we can't get out of bed and nothing. We just can't face anything we force ourselves to because maybe our livelihood depends on it or our kids depend on us. But it's just, it's so hard, it's just so hard to even put one foot in front of the other. So those I mean those might sound like mental illnesses and again they could be right. It sounds like depression, it sounds like potentially bipolar if you're swinging between them. But that's one thing to look out for is just if you're able to see yourself that independently, like that self-awareness.
Speaker 2:Because again, if we're not in our window capacity, we might just be like well, I've been like this for I don't know 20 years, 10 years, right, I'm always on the go. What's wrong with that? Or I didn't even know there was a, I didn't even know it wasn't hard to get out of bed, I didn't even know that it was possible to go into work in the morning and not feel like I hate it, I don't want to be here. If you can have supportive community, that's super helpful. But I know that, again, if you're not in your window capacity, you feel alone, you feel isolated. So these are all really challenging things that there is no easy answer to get over to the point of. If it's okay to ask you, subna, how did you reach the point where like, okay, I'd need to see a therapist, or I want to see a therapist Because that's a big step, sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for me it was a culmination of things, really. I'd been through burnout twice. I didn't have words to really express or describe what I was feeling. Twice I was ready to leave medicine altogether, to be honest, and it was because the system is abusive, right, let's call it what it is it's abusive and, like many other corporate entities, they want you to shut up. Keep working and I'm talking about medicine as a whole. I'm actually at a pretty good place right now where I see longevity right, that's the reason why I'm here but overall, medicine wants to squeeze as much as it can out of you. See more patients, see faster patients, dismiss them early even though clinically they're not ready, but insurance doesn't going to cover, right that stay that extra day, and so, again, putting finances before people. And what does that have to do? Well, I had an episode of burnout in 2016 and then again in 2019.
Speaker 1:What spurred me to get help was the fact that I lost my best friend to suicide. She was also a physician. She did not want professional repercussions for actually seeking help, and so the biggest question was why in the world would a physician die by suicide? And so I started reading, and I was astonished that 300 to 400 physicians take their lives a year here in the United States and I'm sure that number is underreported and probably outdated by now because this was pre-COVID. So when I started reading about burnout and moral injury and physician suicide, the one year death anniversary came around and I actually started having nightmares.
Speaker 1:So I didn't know how to process that. I didn't know how to process any of this, and so I sought counseling and life coaching and for me it was very liberating, like I believe in accountability, but I think my biggest issue was I had to hold myself accountable, to try to practice what I preached to my patients and what I know is first line, which is therapy. I never really sought pharmacotherapy because for me I knew I needed to talk to someone and to try and figure out my feelings and frustrations, because it was starting to come out as irritability. Or waking up at three o'clock in the morning with a complete sweat because of nightmares. For why and why was it manifesting that way? And I had. It didn't make sense to me, but I knew I had to figure that out and address what was staring me out in the face.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being so open and honest about that, and I'm actually I wasn't. We didn't plan this, but I think it's actually a perfect example of how trauma manifests and also why it's so hard to recognize or even acknowledge it, because I've experienced some of those things too. I've had lots of night sweats, the dysregulated sleeping where it's either you can't fall asleep or you're dead tired, but your head keeps filling and spinning with all these thoughts and you ruminate on things. These are the things that are physiological impacts, because when we are constantly overactivated in our sympathetic nervous system the cortisol, like the, all the chemicals that come on our bodies you can tell I'm not a medical doctor but all the chemicals that come on our bodies they have the physiological impact where maybe your digestive system is not so great, maybe you have more inflammatory diseases Like these.
Speaker 2:There's actual known research and data that supports the fact that people who have had trauma in their lives these are some of the things that can present and it doesn't change the diagnosis Like, maybe you have irritable bowel syndrome, maybe you have Crohn's disease or other things or other autoimmune diseases and they need to be treated. But what hasn't been happening in professional medicine for a long time because we didn't know. Not because anyone's not qualified, right, but because we didn't know is we're not asking these questions? Oh, what's happening in your life right now? Oh, you just lost your job. Oh, you just went through a divorce. Oh, your friend just committed suicide. Oh, when you were a child, you went through these horrific events.
Speaker 2:All of these things, listically, can play a role. But again, it's not one or the other, it's the both and right. And I think what we forget, or we didn't know, is that trauma is cumulative, trauma is intersecting and trauma is constraining. It is all about not just too much too soon, not just the earthquakes, but it can be too much for too long, right. The constant moral injury, the constant, oh, put money over people and it could be too little for too long, right? Not enough rest, not enough affirmation that you're doing a good job, that you're a good person, that you're not to blame for things. These all matter.
Speaker 1:Thank you for saying that, because that affirms what many physicians are fighting for right. Yeah, no, it's not our fault. We're some of the most resilient individuals because of everything we've had to go through for medical training, and not just physicians. But this podcast is geared towards physicians, but nurses, I think, also get the brunt of it. We know that there's a lot of violence. They put up with a lot and I'm very thankful for nurses 100%. They're at the bedside, they have so much insight to patient care and actually everybody in the healthcare realm. But it's just nice to hear someone that is versed in trauma and a trauma recovery coach say that. So how do we start asking for help? For me it was. I couldn't sleep and how does someone take the first step to get help instead of other than just waking up in a cold sweat or nightmares or feeling like they're not themselves?
Speaker 2:I'm pondering on the feeling like they're not themselves piece, because that is actually already a really good sign, but it can be hard. Who are ourselves by the time we get to whatever age 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, older? What is self-dead If we ever really bit ourselves, because so much of what we do are masks or defense mechanisms? And actually that's both one of the signs and maybe something to help burr people on to look for help or resources in whatever ways they want to work on is if they're coping mechanisms, how they've become resilient against some of these things, if they don't want to keep doing that anymore. And I'm going to compare unhealthy versus healthy coping mechanisms.
Speaker 2:First off, this is really hard. It sounds simple, but it's so hard to do is to not blame yourself, to not shame yourself about however you're surviving. It's one thing to say, oh, I'm an Asian woman, I'm surviving, I'm doing this in a man's profession, all this sort of stuff. Clearly I'm strong, I'm resilient. What do you mean? I don't need help anymore, and that's the real thing. That itself is a coping mechanism to be saying to yourself well, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, there's nothing wrong with me, Then we don't have to deal with it, so that whole fight flight bond. As a newer one, I should say that isn't just literally fighting and fighting, it's the avoidance, it's numbing myself out. I'm a TV addict. I've had to actually cancel cable many times, or when we had cable I had to cancel subscriptions as well, because I knew that I just couldn't stop myself from keeping on going. And it goes from healthy. So watching some TV, it's nothing wrong with that. Having a glass of wine for dinner, there's nothing wrong with that. It's when it crosses over into I don't even want to keep doing this anymore, but I can't stop. Or I enjoy a bowl of ice cream and it makes me feel good when I've had a long and bad day. But that's now my like. I have to have some ice cream if I'm having a bad day. Or I can't at all even stop working. That's the worst one.
Speaker 2:Society rewards us for working our asses off and burning out. Or then the answer is the bandaid of oh well, maybe you should go see a therapist, or maybe take a day or two off and get some sleep. But we're not recognizing that the source of it is the too much working to begin with. And too much working could be a coping mechanism or a defense mechanism so you don't have to think about the whatever thing it is that you're avoiding because you're working and it's very hard to see. And this is also sometimes where we need to have a third person. It could be a friend, it could be a family member sort of an intervention to say, hey, sapna, are you okay, because this is what I'm seeing in you and it doesn't look good for you. And to be able to hear that depends on our window of capacity. It takes a lot of skill. So, as ourselves, as friends, as caregivers to other people, we can really support each other as a village by doing that, by starting to denormalize what's become normal right.
Speaker 2:To be like this is not just about getting some sleep on the weekend. It's long-term health, it's caring about you and our relationship. It's hey, maybe there's it. Is there anything else going on? Just asking the question out of curiosity and compassion, not out of shame, not out of all. Right, rosie, I see that this is a.
Speaker 2:Can you stop doing that? Can you stop watching so much TV, don't you know it's bad for you? Stop eating so much ice cream. You're getting fat. That's our default. We just blame the person for the behaviors, versus helping to impact what's actually leading to those behaviors. And then the help is also do you want to do something different? So even keeping track or being aware of our daily activities? What time are we going to bed? How many hours of sleep are we getting? Is that actually working for us long-term? Is that something we want to keep doing, or would we rather find a different way, an alternate, healthier behavior to handle whatever that thing is that we can't really face or that's bothering us right now? So maybe a question would be what's causing you pain at the moment and how are you dealing with that pain? What are you doing to manage it? And is that, then, what you want to keep doing, or would you like to try to find a different way to manage it?
Speaker 1:I appreciate that, because those are all hard conversations that really we need to have, and sometimes it's difficult because we need to create white space for that. We need to create white space in order and what do I mean by white space Just carve out time where it's nothing but time to reflect on that and go deeper. Look at those deep triggers or what do I actually need in order to thrive right now? Okay, well, if I don't have that, how do I create that? We need some time to think and process. A lot of times it's hard to really carve that out.
Speaker 1:Number one life is hard, it's busy, especially when you wear multiple hats. And number two it also almost forces you to confront some of those demons that, again, maybe we are avoiding because they make us feel uncomfortable. But what I will say is that sometimes you have to embrace the dark side in order to get onto the other side you know where the light's shining or to get through that dark tunnel. It is uncomfortable, but it doesn't have to be every single issue all at once. You know, I think for me it was tackling the biggest thing that was staring at me in the face at that point in time, that made me feel stuck and that was honestly not knowing how to process my friend's death, the method, the why behind it, and processing a true loss of friendship. And. But sometimes it's a big kick into the ego to admit that, because in the healthcare field we're supposed to have all the answers and the truth is many times we don't.
Speaker 2:And that's one of those norms, too, that really needs to be dismantled. Right that you're the doctor, you're the nurse. I'm coming to you because I'm not, so why else am I paying you for that? That was horrible, the pressure that puts on somebody, and then what you have to do to live up to that is intense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find that educating patients, like medicine, is so diverse and super specialized nowadays. The amount of information coming out is astronomical compared to 30, 40 years ago, and so that puts it in perspective and I think a lot of it is educating the public, and that's a big reason for having conversations like this. Burnout and moral injury is a result of working in a system that really doesn't give a shit about physicians. It's built for capital gains and the shareholders for insurance companies here in the States. Having said that, it is still a beautiful profession because of the impact we can have on communities and individuals as hopefully improving their quality of life. That's the reason why many of us go into a healing profession. You yourself, as a trauma coach. You don't have all the answers, but you can be impactful for improving someone's life.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. That feels really good to hear, and I think you also brought up something for me too, about how long term this is and how nebulous the results are. We've, in a capitalist society particularly, and in our social media, instant gratification society. It's about, okay, get a person in as quick as you can, tell them what's wrong with them and then prescribe some kind of treatment and let's hope that we get results within a week, tops a week, and it is just not that simple, which is how actually we're built as human beings.
Speaker 2:This is what I mean by trauma is cumulative. It's not just that you are traumatized while working. You're also working while traumatized. However, you got to this point. All the experiences of your life have led to how you process information, how you think about things, how you interpret information, and that's also why people respond differently to this same event and why it's not what happens to you, but what happens inside you, because the exact same thing could happen and you and I are both there, and how you interpret that subno would be very different, potentially, than how I interpret it, and a healthy, balanced, regulated person who has community, who has support, who has people who model the behavior, for them could be traumatized but be able to recover much quicker. And another person would be stuck in that place where they're spinning and they can't get up and they are in bed for two months afterwards, or they are working 24, seven or two months. However, their responses because they don't have people around them to help co-regulate. Maybe they never even learned to self soothe or self regulate.
Speaker 2:There's all these things where maybe one question just to help to start peeling back the onion for people and recognizing where they are particular sources are is to ask where did you learn that? Where did you learn that if someone tells you just something wrong, you're a horrible, bad person, you're a failure? Where did that thinking come from? Where did you learn that if somebody has a fight with you or disagrees with you on something, then you're your enemy, right? You better get rid of that person, you better cut them out of your life? Where did you learn that? And that is obviously not an easy answer. If it was, we wouldn't need therapists or anybody else, but that's kind of how we start unpacking and peeling back. Does that look like trauma? Is that person even traumatized? Maybe not, but this is the important, difficult, confusing, long term work that I think is needed in order to heal ourselves and be healers for each other.
Speaker 1:Now, that's definitely something that I appreciate and this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as trauma, but it's a great way to start that conversation and even if it's a conversation within ourselves, I mean, I think that that's a great place to start and to start normalizing having these topics, having these types of conversation. So, rosie, if the listeners wanted to reach out to you, how and where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Great question. I'm so glad you asked that. I have a website, my coaching practice. I call it Changing Lenses because it's all about shifting the way that we see things, things that have been normalized, to not see those as normal anymore, and things that are thought of as weird or crazy. Maybe those are actually more normal and my website address is changinglensesca. I also have a three day email series, like three sets of emails. If people are interested in just practicing a couple of things or learning some tips, some techniques on how could I start. If I am experiencing just stress, right, we don't have to label it as trauma, but I'm just not in a really good place right now. Are there some things I could do? They're welcome to sign up for the email series. It's completely free and I go through three different types of ways to tackle the stress, the potential trauma, and just start your recovery how to start getting a little bit better or even getting back to your window of capacity so you can recognize some things.
Speaker 1:I would appreciate that. Yes, because any resources that can help the listener and even just get those thoughts rolling, I'm all for. So, Rosie, as always, thank you very much for your insight and for being on. Thank you, sepna, it was a real pleasure to talk to you. If you have enjoyed this episode, click subscribe shirt with a friend, because we could all use a little bit of normalizing the topic of burnout, knowing that we're not alone.