The Worthy Physician

Healing from Within: Dr. Archana Shrestha on Balancing Medicine, Motherhood, and Self-Care

• Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque MD

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What if the path to healing others starts with healing yourself? Join us in our inspiring conversation with Dr. Archana Shrestha as she shares her heartfelt journey through the trials of medical training and the quest for wellness. We uncover the hidden struggles faced by physicians who, amidst the demands of their profession, often neglect their own needs. Dr. Shrestha bravely recounts how the culture of prioritizing patients led her to resort to stress eating and other coping mechanisms. Her story is a powerful reminder of the necessity of self-care and how rekindling such practices can reignite a passion for medicine.

As we explore the delicate balance between professional life and personal commitments, we hear firsthand the struggles and solutions of being an emergency physician who’s also a parent. Reflecting on the unforeseen toll of juggling these roles, Dr. Shrestha reveals how outsourcing tasks and reevaluating priorities helped her reclaim balance. This episode dives deep into the critical moments that prompted change, illustrating how offloading unwanted tasks can foster a more fulfilling life. The insights shared guide anyone seeking harmony in their work-life dynamic.

Lastly, we focus on the transformative power of redefining self-care beyond traditional boundaries. Dr. Shrestha introduces her ThriveRx program and Mama Docs Weight Loss Accelerator, which are designed to help healthcare professionals overcome burnout and stress eating. By challenging gender stereotypes and emphasizing the role of coaching, she empowers healthcare workers to thrive. The episode is a heartfelt tribute to building communities of support and mutual growth, ending with sincere gratitude for the wisdom and energy shared by our guest, Sapna. Listen in and be inspired to embrace your self-worth and transform your life from the inside out.

Connect with Dr. Shrestha:
https://www.mamadocsschool.com/

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

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shah-Haw, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. I'm here with Dr Archana Shrestha, who is a physician. She's part of a family and many physicians. She has a story of burnout, so she's going to walk us through her journey and how she came out on the other side and what made her passionate about wellness and self-care. So thank you very much for joining us today.

Dr. Shrestha:

Thank you, Sapna, for having me here. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you, and it's very needed and important.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

It is because, before the recording and all the technical issues, I really enjoyed our conversation because we got to know each other on a little bit more of a personal level and not just not just related to the podcast. But physicians are humans. At what point in time did we lose our humanity?

Dr. Shrestha:

Yeah, it's a great question, Sapna. I think that for me I'd feel like it began in med school. The training is very rigorous and those years when you start heading onto the hospital wards and into the clinics and you start seeing what interns and residents are doing, you know you're like wow, like this is pretty intense. I think we all start learning things like eat, pee and sleep while you can, because you never know when there's going to be. You know something crazy is going to happen.

Dr. Shrestha:

There's a bunch of patients in the ER that need to be admitted, or there's a code blue and you don't. You miss lunch, you miss dinner, you don't get to sleep, you don't get to go to the bathroom, right. I think all of those things really started to teach us that we need to just shut off our body signals, right. Like almost become robots, and that had a lot of consequences. You know, the messaging is also always patient first, which the implication there is. Well, of course, that's very important and patients part of the big reason we're there is because of patients, right To take care of patients. But the implication sort of the implied thing that's unsaid is you come last and what you need. Is that important? Certainly not more important than what the patient needs, right?

Dr. Shrestha:

So I think that for me, it really started in med school and I even remember a very specific moment when I was a third-year med student, rotating at a surgical rotation and we were asked to scrub into a vascular case and those are like notoriously long, like eight-hour cases, and we were supposed to stay scrubbed in. As long as the surgeon was scrubbed in, we were scrubbed in, and that meant it didn't matter if it was lunch, it didn't matter if you were thirsty, it didn't matter if your legs were cramping up, it didn't matter if you needed to go to the bathroom. Like you just shut that all off and did what you needed to do to keep going. And we all heard the stories of so-and-so passing out during the long case under the heat or the gowns, the surgical gowns and all of those things. Thankfully, I wasn't one of those who passed out, but for me, I think that's where it really started to begin. Okay, this job requires me to. In subtle ways, it was giving me the message that I can't be a human. I need to basically be a robot and turn off all of those signals, and the consequence for that is really significant.

Dr. Shrestha:

Right Like we feel we can't show emotion if we're seeing something sad, even something sad, happening with patients. Right, rapes, domestic violence, terminal illness, you know patients dying in front of us. For many of us, the first code blue we went to was probably the first death we ever really saw in front of our own eyes and there was a lot going on, a lot that we were seeing at such young ages you know, it's in my early 20s at the time and things we were seeing for the first time. But we really just learned to shut it all off. And for me and for many of us, I think that we turn to other things like how do we cope with these emotions? Right, like, we all learned how to give bad news, break the bad news to the patient. Right, like you know your family member's ill, they need emergency surgery, they're about to die. You know we learn how to break that news to the patient and their family. But we had no coping skills. We never learned how to handle it within ourselves.

Dr. Shrestha:

And so many of us turn to different things. Right, Like you know, because we couldn't. You know you're on a 30-hour call. You can't just go to happy hour or just like throw back a beard to decompress. You turn to food, right To feel better in the moment, and most of us didn't smoke, most of us didn't do drugs right, but we had to turn to something and it seems socially acceptable after all. So I think many of us turn to food and you know, for me that ended up in me learning to stress eat like a pro. I'd never been a stress eater before that and you know, carrying extra weight that I didn't want to carry.

Dr. Shrestha:

Er working all sorts of odd hours and then coming home to and of course, in a stressful, high, demanding, you know, incredibly demanding environment where people's lives literally are on the line at times, you know, and so there was no room for error we're seeing lots of sad things Can't tell you how many rape victims, domestic violence victims, child abusers you know how much of that I've seen right. And then you come home to the second shift of taking care of home responsibilities and you know, of course, many of us, you know, wanted to be mothers. We love being with our kids, but when you're exhausted and have nothing left to give, it can be an extra strain and drain on you when you feel, and it's a worse feeling when you feel like you're giving them the rest of you instead of the best of you and ended up going through a round of burnout and trying to figure out how to get through that, and that took me on a journey. So I'll stop there in case you have any questions about that, because I know I said a lot right there.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

I really appreciate your candidness and there are three things I wanted to circle back to because that was just a very rich narrative. So you're highlighting about the culture of medical school Pee when you can eat, when you can sleep, when you can Absolutely and so it starts there and maybe some specialties are more prone to those than others, but there's just this underlying culture of exactly that and so it just gets compounded each year. It's almost like compound interest where this is just the way it is. And, holy cow, it's three o'clock, I'm in attending. Now it's 3 pm. I'm now gosh, when was the last time I drank anything? When was the last time I peed? Wow, I'm now going to have to run to the bathroom to do all those three things and so that way I can also drink or eat my lunch real quick on the way to and back, and that might take three minutes.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

We would never allow our patients to. We would not give that medical advice, right. So we're doing things to ourselves that we know and we're actively advising patients against patients to do so. It's like compound interest and that just the further away we move from regular operating like yes, I'm tired. I'm going to take a nap. Yes, I'm hungry, I'm going to get something to eat. I feel overwhelmed, so I'm going to take a step back, honor what I'm feeling and then step back into the room the further away we get from that. A lot of times, at least for myself, it's hard to break that cycle. It is really hard to break that cycle.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

The second thing is the point about coping. We are taught to do very hard things. We're taught CPR, we're taught ACLS, we're taught how to break bad news, but why were we not taught how to have a debriefing or what are some ways to cope? At the same age, where the brain is still forming and we're still forming habits, I don't think we're given tools to develop healthy coping mechanisms. It's sure, talk to your friends and going back to the same rigmarole eat, sleep, exercise when you can and good luck.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And then we highlight those two things. We don't take care of ourselves, because that's the culture of medicine. And then a lot of times we don't have great ways to or to honor or to really process these things that are coming through the er, coming through the clinic, and we see the horrific you and er and er medicine. You see some of the most horrific things and the worst side of human nature. And then we come home to families, to kids. That's a lot and that's just a lot to process. That's a lot. There there is no energy and and how do you switch from physician and this is? All I've seen today is trauma and some things that are horrific, that I don't even, I can't even explain to my children, or nor do I want them to understand. That's a lot.

Dr. Shrestha:

Yeah, I mean it really is a lot. I think that it becomes a little bit of our background right, like we're just like constantly like this, taking this for granted that this is just the job, this is what we signed up for, right? The notion especially as an emergency physician, like I certainly knew this kind of stuff was coming my way, right. But I guess I didn't really realize fully the kind of toll it would take on me. And I think for me what really shifted was having kids, because then I lost this decompression time like this time that I had for myself after work. And I often say about emergency medicine, it's like work hard, play hard. When you're there you're just busting your butt, like you're in it, it's messy, it's crazy, it's you're full on, right and then. But then when you come home, I mean you finished your charts, and that was my rule I made for myself. I was like I just finished my charts at work, I never do it at home. I just made that a rule. I'd rather stay an hour late, get it done, so that when I go home I can just be home, I can just be me and take this time for myself. But that was my saving grace was that time off where I could really decompress or just get outside. I generally have always loved exercising, just hanging out with friends, all those fun things, travel. But then when I had kids and don't get me wrong, I love my kids, I'm so blessed to have them, but it's just a lot of these things fall on the shoulders of women. We want to take it on or we believe that this is my role. I'm supposed to be doing all the child care, supposed to be doing all the cooking, I'm supposed to be doing the laundry, planning all the birthday parties, like all this stuff, right. So some of it could be imposed on ourselves, some of it could be, you know, maybe we don't have a spouse or a partner that is really helpful. I actually did have one who was very helpful, but we were both working full time, right. And so what I had to realize was like, how do I work through this? Like how do I?

Dr. Shrestha:

One of the things I did was to really start to shift into building a team, you know, so that's not all just falling on me, and instead of feeling like I had to be this superwoman which, being a superwoman, is sort of like you do the work full time, but then you also add on all the responsibilities of a mom who stays at home, right, like? So you're doing both the things and so you just keep kind of piling it all on top of one another, whereas being a career woman is like you're're, like you're deciding that my career is what I'm focused in on and I'm going to have other people do maybe the childcare, maybe the cooking, the cleaning, you know, outsourcing a lot of those things. And I started to kind of shift like what are the things that are actually important to me when I come home, like what are the things that only I can do and that I really want to do? And like for me, that came down to like I really don't like cooking, I don't really like going to the grocery store and I don't like doing laundry, but I love being with my kids and I love playing with them and I love getting to go to their you know activities at school, like if they had a school concert, or I love going to watch their games. You know, like that part was important to me, but all the other, like housework, wasn't. It was like how can I get as much of this off my plate so that I can focus on work, focus on my own wellness, which I really started to prioritize more and more, and so that I could show up great at work, show up great for my kids, you know, and so that I could also just create this more time with my kids.

Dr. Shrestha:

So that was like a really fundamental shift for me was realizing how, without me taking care of my own wellness, that everything else falls apart, right, like I can't show up the way I want to at work. And you know, at one point, like when I was in burnout, you know, I got the dreaded phone call from my medical director of like Archana, what's going on with you? Like we're getting complaints about how you're showing up at work. And I was like, you know, it's like my one of my rock bottom moments, you know, a real wake up call of like wow, it's really showing through, like how burnt up, how burnt out I am. And that was really unlike me, because I mean, maybe you can hear my voice, but I'm generally a pretty happy, bubbly kind of person and and always got along with, you know, other staff and everything you know is not like me.

Dr. Shrestha:

But yeah, I think like for me it really came down to like making that shift and really understanding how important it was to really prioritize and make that. One of the top three things that I was focused in on was my own wellness, so that I could also give to my family in a way and show up with my family the way I want to do, and also same thing at work so you had a defining moment that you it started to come out, and how long did it take you to define okay, this is what I want to offload, because I've been there myself before and it took me forever to let go of something.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

So how did you go through that process and say, okay, I'm going to offload this. You know yourself well, and we get rid of the things we don't like to do. But can you walk us through that process briefly?

Dr. Shrestha:

Yeah, I think for me it was actually quite easy because there were some very obvious things I really disliked. So those are like these are the first things to go. I like cooking sometimes, but I have to be inspired, but I don't like to do it just like routinely. On the other hand, my husband likes to cook and he likes to go to the grocery store and he likes to look at all the different things and he likes he's more of a foodie than me, so he's and I would say overall a better cook. And so I was like, why don't you handle that department? And I'll definitely help where needed or cook some meals. But it was just like, I think, like for me.

Dr. Shrestha:

So the process was, I think the thing was I started to first recognize there's obviously gender stereotypes in the world, right, and so we tend to. And I think early in my marriage I started to just adopt those gender stereotypes of oh, this is how I'm supposed to be, you know, as a wife. And then, when I became a mom, I was like, oh, this is how I'm supposed to be as a mom. Then, when I became a mom, I was like, oh, this is how I'm supposed to be as a mom I just like assimilated, like adopted those and just accepted them. And then I started to realize like that wasn't helpful to me because it was making me like I was trying to be a super mom who did it all, which when I was working you know, when I'm working 40 hours in the ER and doing all sorts of odd shifts, like to add an additional like 20 hours of weekly house chores and other things it's not really feasible without. Well, the cost would be that I burned myself out, right. And so I saw my mom doing that. She's actually a family physician and she is now retired, but I saw her doing that where she was working full time. She had a solo private practice and she would also do all her you know, take care of all her patients in the hospital, and then she would come home and do the cooking and cleaning. Well, cooking, cleaning we eventually started to pick up all of us kind of shared in the family. But the cooking, the grocery shopping, she did a lot of like socializing, you know, and hosting parties and things like that. But what I started to realize like that the cost was that her own health, like she sacrificed her own health and ended up down the line, having some medical problems Right, and, and I think it honestly was affecting her mood and how she just generally felt at her energy levels in general.

Dr. Shrestha:

And so I started to really realize that was the road I was setting down. I was trying to do it all and trying to have the Pinterest-worthy birthday parties and all the cute little things and have these awesome like playdates for my kids and cook these complex meals, and I showed you a lot and I finally sort of realized like this wasn't going to be sustainable. And I mean I had another rock battle moment, so that I kind of shared my professional rock battle moment. But my personal rock battle moment was like when I really just lost it with my kids and was like yelling at them and I was like and my son ran away from me and he was just a toddler and my daughter was even younger than him, but he ran away. He's like mom, she's scary. And like when my husband came home from work he ran right up to him and was like mommy scary. And I was like, oh my God, this is the worst moment and I was like I don't want to be the scary mom. That is not what I want to be. It's the last thing I want to be, and so I would.

Dr. Shrestha:

I think, like that determination, those rock bottom moments, was like we're like you've got to make some changes here. And I went through multiple rounds of burnout. But the first thing I changed was to work on my self-care, and I also like to call it self-stewardship In fact, I prefer that term because self-care can seem somewhat optional, especially when people equate it with things like manicures and pedicures and massages, which we do occasionally. But I think it's so much more basic than that. Just, we have to be stewards of our car, right? Check the tires, check the oil, rotate the tires, check the brakes. There's so many basic things we need to do to make sure it's functioning well. I think self-stewardship brings that across, that this is like really basic things. It's about getting enough sleep, it's about drinking enough water, it's about taking some downtime for yourself, it's about getting some movement and it's about healthy nutrition, right. It's about mental health too, right? Like having a way to know how to manage your emotions and processing emotions, how to do thought work as well.

Dr. Shrestha:

And so in my first round of burnout, I only focused on self-care and the physical exhaustion I was feeling and while it did help and while I did delegate some things and I did start doing a lot more of the exercising regularly, the good nutrition, focusing in on sleep water, I ended up finding myself in another round of burnout down the road. And that's when I hit that professional rock bottom, getting that dreaded phone call and I couldn't understand why I was still feeling burnt out because I was like my self-care is amazing, I'm doing amazing self-care. In fact I had lost a bunch of weight as a result and I was just feeling good physically. But what I hadn't, what I had failed to do, was address the mental component, the mental exhaustion and the emotional exhaustion Right, and even if I were to cut down, at one point I ended up cutting down my hours, and even that wasn't enough because there was still the same hour, like those hours I was there, still going in with this negative attitude, or like the same different thought, the same thoughts that were leading me to feel sort of defeated and losing the joy of what I was doing. And so it really took addressing both, like all three elements.

Dr. Shrestha:

And so when I coach on burnout, one of the things I always teach my clients is that there's three elements that have to be addressed. The first is the physical exhaustion, the mental exhaustion, which is all the thoughts going on in our head. Right, that's what I refer to when I say mental exhaustion. It's like the second guessing, the imposter thoughts, right, the thoughts of I'm not good enough or I'm not doing enough. And then there's the emotional exhaustion, which is simply like the feelings that we're having, then the frustration, the stress, the feeling defeated and feeling disempowered. So we need to address all three of those. And when I got through, when I started to learn how to manage all of those and work through all of those, that's when I finally got out of burnout and stayed out of burnout.

Dr. Shrestha:

But to cycle back to your question of, like, how did I delegate these things or how did I go through that process I started to say that I looked at these gender stereotypes and realized how unhelpful they were, and so what I started to do instead was to say if both my husband and I were the same gender, what would we each do? Let's say it was a same-sex marriage, right? Then you throw out all these gender stereotypes within the marriage, that men should do this and women should do that. But if we were the same gender, like how would we divide this up? And it became very clear to me we would just do what we liked doing. We would focus in on what we liked, or we were maybe good at Right.

Dr. Shrestha:

And so for me, like I mentioned, for my husband, he was a better cook than me. He liked going to the grocery store. He's actually more organized about like house management and stuff like that. Like he has a day he'll do the laundry and he'll make sure the laundry gets folded the next day. Like he's just actually way better than that at me, better at that than I am. And but then, on the other hand, like I'm really good at helping the kids with homework. I'm good at having great conversations with them and bringing out the best in them. I'm good at planning things ahead for them in terms of, like their summer camps or activities they want to do or social events. I'm good at the travel planning. So we just started to look.

Dr. Shrestha:

When I asked myself the question, what are we good at? What do we like doing, it became just so much more clear as to who could handle what and what would be a great kind of division of this labor and also what things can we automate? Like what things can we just delete from our life that we really don't need to have anymore? Like for me, I stopped sending the Christmas cards. I'm like this is just too much work.

Dr. Shrestha:

Like getting the pictures, designing the card, like emailing it out. I was like I'm just not going to do that anymore. Certain social events is I'm just not going to do that anymore. Certain social events is I'm just not going to do that anymore. And then what things can I automate? Like I always had diapers coming to my house on autopilot from Amazon Diapers wipes, like the certain things like we were always using. Like I just automated that stuff. I was like I just want it coming to the house and I don't even need to think about certain things or hiring someone to mow the lawn. There's just certain things that can be outsourced that you don't have to do.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

No, thank you for highlighting that, because I think that was great. About what do my husband and I like to do and then going from there and outsourcing it, because I don't get the way you frame it. It just it makes sense. It makes sense. So, looking at what people like to do and using their strengths and automating the rest, having it on it, just it makes sense. It makes sense. So, looking at what people like to do and using their strengths and automating the rest, having it on autopilot, especially today, in today's world, we can have technology work for us and Amazon's a great thing, yeah, but tell us more about Mama Doc School, because for all the physician moms, even physician dads, but focusing on physician moms, because the struggle's real. We show up and sometimes we don't feel like we're enough at work or at home. Or hey, mom, all the other parents were at work, the Halloween party, how come you weren't there?

Dr. Shrestha:

Yeah, totally. My daughter used to ask me to work at her school. She's Mom, why can't you work at my school? And I was like because they have a school nurse, not a school doctor, but I thought it was so sweet.

Dr. Shrestha:

But yes, 100%, I can relate to every feeling that I think almost every mother in medicine goes through. Every parent in medicine really goes through when they first become a parent. Like I always say there's three. They say there's three things that change a person forever. One is going to war as a soldier, which I've never done that. But the second is becoming a doctor, which I've done that and I definitely do believe that changes you forever. And then the third is becoming a parent. Like you're never going to be the same after you become a parent.

Dr. Shrestha:

Right, like life just shifts, like your priorities shift, everything shifts, and I completely understand all the struggles that physician parents, in particular physician moms, go through. And so my focus with the Momodak School I founded that a few years ago was to really help physician moms prioritize their own wellness and to stop sacrificing themselves, despite what we're taught and our training in med school and residency is like so much self-sacrifice. I want to teach them to do the opposite, which is to first fill themselves up so much so that they're giving from the overflow. And the analogy I often use is imagine someone's got a cup and you've got a pitcher of water, let's say, and you're trying to fill their cup, but if your pitcher of water is empty, like you have nothing to pour into that person and how is it that this pitcher is getting empty? This is because we're giving, giving, giving till there's nothing left to give, right, and we're just constantly sacrificing ourselves. So instead, I encourage people to give from the overflow. And I don't know if you've ever seen like those champagne towers, but the idea is they've got all these champagne glasses stacked up on one another. You may see it at a wedding and they pour champagne. Yeah, they pour champagne into that top glass and it trickles down into every single other glass there. And that's what I encourage everyone of us to do is to fill yourself up so much so that you're giving from the overflow and it's a win for everyone. Like you're winning, they're winning, and it doesn't have to come from a place of self-sacrifice. And honestly, I believe that is true. Giving from abundance, giving from overflow is true. Giving, not giving by depleting yourself, like at the end of the day, is harming you and eventually you burn out, you fizzle out. You've got nothing left to give right. You're like a car stuck on the side of the road, like no gas left, like you can't go anywhere. You can't help anyone, and that's what I believe and so I.

Dr. Shrestha:

There's two areas in which I focus. One is on burnout and helping women thrive really in their life. Women like all healthcare professionals. I work with all healthcare professionals in that program it's called ThriveRx, and I help them end the feelings of exhaustion, overwhelm and burnout in four weeks without having to quit their job or go part-time. And we do that by addressing the three pillars of burnout, which I explain is basically like a stool If you imagine a three-legged stool and it's got these three legs. It's got the physical exhaustion, the mental and emotional exhaustion. If any one of those legs are missing, we don't address one of those, like that stool is going to topple over and that person falls back into burnout, and that was my own personal story. So we address all three aspects of those.

Dr. Shrestha:

I teach people some key skills that most of us never learned along the way, which is like emotional processing, thought work, how to get our brains actually working for us instead of against us. Because we've all got these two sides of our brain and we tend to have this negativity bias because we've been trained to look for the negative in our work right. Like we always look for the abnormals, like abnormal physical exam, abnormal vital signs, abnormal lab results. Like we're hyper-focused on that and we start to internalize that and do that to ourselves. We look for everything that's wrong with us. So these are some of the things that I help healthcare professionals work through and we've had really fantastic results with seeing decrease in burnout, people having overall improved wellbeing, improved resilience. So it's been really fantastic and rewarding and working in that area with them.

Dr. Shrestha:

And then the other area where I focus in on is helping people achieve their health and wellness, fitness, weight loss goals in what's called my Mama Docs Weight Loss Accelerator, and so many of us learn those habits of maybe it's stress eating. We learn to disconnect from our body our hunger and satiety signals. Maybe it's stress eating. We learn to disconnect from our body our hunger and satiety signals. We basically learn to turn to food to handle a variety of emotions. And so I help women physicians and lose weight for the last time by truly getting to the root cause of that, by ending stress eating, mindless snacking, and reconnecting with themselves their body signals for hunger and satiety. And reconnecting with themselves their body signals for hunger and satiety and that has allows them, when they really truly address stress eating or any other kinds of emotional eating that might be gone on, then they're able to achieve weight loss for the last time.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And all these amazing tools that you offer. How can the listeners get in touch with you or even learn more about these programs and enroll? Where can we find?

Dr. Shrestha:

it. Where can we find all these? Yeah, absolutely so I'm happy to share. The best ways to go is to my website. It's called mamadocschoolcom, and if you go there, you'll be able to opt into my free mini course, and it's called Secrets to Lasting Weight Loss. We didn't learn in med school, but if you'd like to learn more about how to work with me with regards to burnout, you can go to my blog, which is mamadocschoolcom forward slash blog, and then you can click on a link there that'll take you to my ThriveRx program, and there's also other free things there that you can check out, between blog articles, a quiz, free courses, mini courses and mini trainings. So there's a lot of great content there. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook, where you can find me at Mighty Mom.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And for the listeners. These links are going to be in the show notes. So everything that we've talked about, you have, let's be our own stewardships for our own health. I love that word. I love that word. That really frames it just beautifully. Be a steward of your own health and wellness. Go check out her resources, because you've been through it, you've come out the other side and you know what moms and dads. You're enough. You are enough. So, archana, what is one last pearl of wisdom that you would like to leave for the listeners?

Dr. Shrestha:

Yeah, along those lines I like to say that you are worthy, you're 100% worthy. You were born worthy. There's nothing that can ever take that away no board score, no board certification test, no amount of salary that you make. Sometimes we use different numbers against ourselves oh, I didn't get this board score, I didn't pass this test the first time, or I don't make as much as so-and-so right, but none of those numbers determine who you are and your worth, your inherent self-worth, and no one can ever take that away from you.

Dr. Shrestha:

And I think that one of the most life-changing things that I have done for myself was to invest in myself in the form of coaching, and having a safe space to talk about all the different things with a coach was like, honestly, life-changing. It's changed every area of my life, improved every area of my life, from like my relationships, to my self-confidence, to my weight, to my career and where I've been able to go within my career. So it has. And my marriage I would say it's improved my marriage too, and so I would say it's improved every single area of my life. And I truly believe that every physician needs a coach, because we are dealing with a lot of different things, so many different things at work all the different stressors that we face at work with patients, the sad things we're seeing with them, with our family too, the different things that we might be going through with our children, with our partners, with extended family, with friends. There's so many different things that we are facing and we need to have a safe space to talk about it. We oftentimes don't feel comfortable to talk about these things with our colleagues because maybe we're worried about repercussions. Our colleagues because maybe we're worried about repercussions. And sometimes we don't even want to talk to our spouse about it because if they're not in the same field as us, we're like well, maybe they don't understand fully and we certainly don't want to burden our kids with this kind of stuff A lot of it but we need a place to go to be able to talk with someone who understands and who gets it.

Dr. Shrestha:

And what I love about coaching and I will say I have done some therapy in the past but what I find is different is that coaching is taking you from a place of already being good like you're good. There's no need for a diagnosis here. We're just taking you from good to great Like we're helping you. We're building upon all the things that you are already doing so well, but you just are not recognizing in yourself right now. You're not giving yourself the credit for it, and we're going to take you to the next level and empower you. It's really about empowering you.

Dr. Shrestha:

Therapy, on the other hand, it definitely has its place and is so needed For me. I felt that there's a little bit of was there a diagnosis here. Am I going to get a diagnosis? I don't want a diagnosis and worrying concern about that and sometimes more past focused.

Dr. Shrestha:

But what I liked about coaching is it's really about the future and that's really the most important thing. Yes, we do need to process our past, but let's stay future focused. Where do we want to go from now? Where do we want to go from here? Where is your power and what things can you control? What things can't you?

Dr. Shrestha:

And that has been so life-changing for me and with all the people I've worked with who are healthcare professionals mostly physicians they've also found it really incredibly life-changing and like the missing piece that they always they didn't even know they needed.

Dr. Shrestha:

So I want to encourage everyone to invest in themselves in that way, realizing that you're the golden goose, and I tell people that all the time, like you're the golden goose, like you are as a physician, as a healthcare professional, you are making golden eggs every day in the form of taking care of patients, in the form of productivity. Our view, all this income that's being generated by your practice right, and in the form of what you take home to your family, too right, like the salary that you take home to your family to support them. And so if you don't take care of the golden goose, like who is, is your employer going to take care of the golden goose? Is your partner going to take care of the golden goose? Unfortunately, no, no one else is going to take care of that golden goose, and it's on us and, as adults, that's our responsibility, it's our privilege to do so. I just encourage people to just realize that that important piece of things too.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Thank you for those words, and I'm smiling because you are spot on. Yes to coaching, yes to taking care of yourself. Yes, I love the phrase you just used, the golden goose. We don't look at ourselves like in that light, do we? No, we don't.

Dr. Shrestha:

We tend not to. We tend not to, but we need to. You know, say, like the doctor or the you know, even the AP, everyone's making appointments with them, right? Like I used to say, my team is incredibly important but, like, most of the time the patients are coming because they want to see the doctor and they want to know my opinion, right, and so, like you're the talent, so just maybe start they're the talent, like they're the ones people are coming to see. So recognize, like, how valuable your skills are and value it.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Value it, value yourself, invest in yourself and you are inherently worthy. Thank you so much, just thank you for the great conversation and the pearls of wisdom that are just scattered throughout this conversation. So to the listeners click on the links, check out her resources and really, if you didn't pick up the positive vibe that she's given off, go back and listen to it again, because there's just so much just wisdom. So if you have found this episode helpful, share with a friend, because we can all use camaraderie.

Dr. Shrestha:

Yeah, thank you so much, sapna. It's been so great having this conversation with you. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank, you.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Thank you so much, and especially for your patience.