79. You Get to Walk Away: Why Resilience Doesn’t Require Trauma

Hey Doc,

We were taught to equate strength with staying, enduring, proving ourselves.

But sometimes the most courageous, grounded, resilient thing you can do… is leave.

Leave the job.

Leave the school.

Leave the situation that is breaking you down in the name of proving your strength.

This episode was inspired by a homeschool thread, but it’s not about curriculum or education. It’s about the lie we’ve been sold, as physician moms and high achievers, that resilience must be earned through trauma. That pushing through toxic environments is some badge of honor. That peace must be postponed until we’ve “made it” or proven we can survive the fire.

I'm here to offer a different truth:

You don’t need to stay and suffer to be strong.

Whether you’re navigating burnout, dealing with a toxic workplace, or watching your child struggle in an unhealthy school system, I want you to know this:

Leaving doesn’t make you weak.

Opting out is not failure.

Walking away is the work.

Inside this episode:

• The myth that trauma builds resilience and why we need to unlearn it
• What homeschooling taught me about agency and peace
• Why toxic work environments aren’t training grounds, they’re danger zones
• A permission slip to choose yourself and never meet the version of you on the other side of unnecessary pain

If you've been waiting for a sign to put down the struggle and reclaim your peace, this is it.

🎧 Tune into this episode of ✨Stethoscopes and Strollers✨ and share it with a fellow doc who needs this reminder: You don’t have to prove anything. Peace is reason enough.

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Transcript

Hey Doc. 

You know, I think sometimes we need to give up. We just need to throw in the towel, cut and run. Just be like, nah, I'm not doing this anymore. And I don't think enough of us do that. And I want to talk about why. In the context of homeschool. So it's just like, how are those two things related? What I'm gonna tell you, I saw this video where a mother was like, come with me to withdraw my child from public school, and I didn't watch a video because I tend not to click on things.

I was just like, eh, I'm vaguely interested, but not enough to click on this video. It seems like something that would disrupt my peace, so I'm just not even in the mood. However, I was interested in the discussion because it was in a Facebook group and unsurprisingly, there was discussion about are we teaching our children that when there are traumatic experiences.

That we just run away from them and don't, you know, stick it out and deal with it. Because the reason she was withdrawing her daughter from public school was because she was facing severe bullying. And that's what I gathered from the comments. Again, I did not watch a video.

And then in that thread was the concern about homeschool. And This idea that people who withdraw their children from school and do homeschooling are taking them away from the socialization that comes with being in school, and also not giving them the opportunity to be able to deal with situations like bullying and teaching them that.

The response, to these negative situations and these traumas is to just run away and not deal with it. And you know, how's that gonna affect their development and their resilience? And I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough, however. When it was back in my head in the proper position, I did decide to engage as a homeschool mom and not just a homeschool mom.

I've given this quite a bit of thought even, before we decided to homeschool our son, which was not because of his own traumatic experience with racism in school, but it was accelerated. By that experience and just made us even more confident that we were making the right decision. I don't know where this comes from, especially amongst physicians and psychiatrists

this idea that the only way to build resilience is to experience trauma. Actually, I'm lying. I know exactly where it comes from. It comes from where everything that is wrong with the Western world comes from capitalism and racism because we are conditioned to believe that you must push through. You must.

Stay in this toxic, traumatic, terrible environment and it's gonna make you stronger. And when you come out on the other side, you're going to be this great person because you made it. And nobody can take . Those experiences away from me. They made me who I am and it is glorified. And does that sound familiar?

And don't get me wrong, every experience that I have had. Every negative one has made me into the person that I am today. I wouldn't take it back. I, all of those things are true. It is the glorification of being in these traumatic experiences that I'm talking about, and the belief, the evolution of the belief that you have to go through these experiences to be a better person, to be resilient.

To be able to deal with difficult situations, especially as a child that I think is completely ridiculous. And my husband summed it up perfectly when I was having this discussion with him. When I saw the video, he was like, when you have people in the military, 'cause he's ex-military. It's like sending a soldier into war without training and being like, I just wanted you to experience the war first and then.

You know, see how good you'll be, how much stronger you'll be on the other side, right? You don't do that. You train them first. You give them a lot of training. You have them in a safe, controlled environment first, and then you send them out into the world. So the fact that we believe that a toxic school environment, a racist school environment, bullying all of that is necessary for our children to be able to deal with adversity and deal with conflict is just like mind boggling you can teach your children about conflict.

About how to deal with people saying no about bullies, all of those things without a constant stressful environment that some school experiences are for some children. For many children, especially when you get to that pre-teen, that adolescent, even teenage year time when kids in that environment can just be so mean and it's like.

Herd mentality cause I refuse to believe an entire class could be mean.

So there are a lot of misconceptions about. Homeschooling and the benefits and when people argue against homeschooling, you can tell that the arguments are about a homeschool concept that is outdated. And that they don't really understand what is possible now, and it's just things that are echoed.

It's not really that anybody gave this much thought, and that's fine. I usually, shrug. All of the homeschool misconceptions off. But this one in particular, I wanted to to talk about because I feel like we can learn a lot from it and from the decision of parents whose children have had traumatic bullying, toxic experiences at school and decide to take them out and homeschool. And it's really not even just homeschool. Like if they switch schools, send 'em to a private school, whatever it is, remove them from that situation. Because, to me, the most important parts of resilience in children is making sure they have a strong sense of self, making sure that they love themselves deeply, unconditionally,

They know that they are safe and loved and protected.

That's what builds resilient children, and that resilience is then the antidote to these negative experiences. Right. And. Being homeschooled doesn't mean you're never gonna go out into the world again. That's an outdated belief that homeschool children are just like stuck in their house, and being indoctrinated I mean, I'm sure that's what's going on in some places, but we've moved beyond that, You're still going to be out in the world dealing with other children, dealing with other people. You have ample opportunity to have negative experiences and not even negative experiences conflict. 'cause not all conflict is necessarily negative, it's just conflict, right? If I'm playing with a ball and you want the ball that's conflict, you know, they have more than enough opportunity without being in a state of constant stress, When. We had already made a decision to homeschool my son, but he had had his incident and the kid continued to bully him. My son would cry every single day. mummy, I don't want to go back to school. I don't wanna go to school. Don't make me go to school. He was under constant stress and by this logic at four years old.

I was supposed to what? Leave him and teach him. Teach him how to deal with bullies and be like, no, it's okay. why. Why would I leave my child in that environment? Why would I at home? Tell him you're loved and you're strong, and you're hardworking, and all of these things, and then send them off to a place.

He has eight hours of constant stress. that's the A.C.E. that he's going to need the resilience to deal with when he's older. Right. And he was only four at the time. There are children who have that constant stress from. Preschool all the way until they graduate. And by this logic we teach 'em how to deal with it while their beautiful, soft little brains are developing.

Yes, let's put them under stress. See what happens. I send them off to war and you know, teach them how to deal with war. Before we give them any kind of training, any kind of foundation of self, of love, of security, it just does not make any sense to me and how this relates to you as a physician and many of our physician colleagues. that I see the same thing with doctors in toxic work environments.

The response is to work harder to get the training to just push through and keep going because it'll make you stronger because you'll get through it. Because this is what we do, this is what we were trained to do. 'cause that's what residency is training you to push through and it's the same like mentality.

And I'm just wondering. Can we learn from this mom who. Was like, this is enough. We are just gonna leave from all of the other homeschool parents who are like, I don't want my child to deal with this. I'm just gonna take them out and homeschool them and just say, you know what? I choose me. I choose peace. This chronic stress is not worth it. I don't want to have to learn how to deal with this. I'm, I'm out.

Is that sometimes the answer?

I really think we are so conditioned. to just deal with it. And we have that glorification of the struggle and the person that we will become on the other side, that we often stay in situations that we have no business staying in that are breaking us down day by day

because of this idea that. It'll make us stronger. Sometimes we just need to cut and run. Sometimes we just need to say, this is enough. I've had enough.

I don't want to find out what type of person I'll be at the end of this. Because the other side of that story of the glory story of making through the struggle is the person who. Did not thrive on the other end, who did not have enough of the skills and the love and the security to make it through who was so beaten down by this situation that they never recovered.

That is a possibility too. But we don't hear about those stories, or we do, and we call it something else, right? Those are, the people who have the breakdown and they, they leave medicine for good

so yes, making it through difficult situations gives you skills. It gives you resilience. It makes you a different person, it changes you. And all of those things can be good, but it can also traumatize you. It could also change you for the worse. It could also change your brain chemistry in a way that is detrimental and that will affect every other part of your life.

So you get to run away. Sometimes you get to say, nah, I choose me. I'm not dealing with this.

You get to not figure it out and see who you'll become on the, other side.

You do not have to, to stay in that toxic work environment.

Don't worry about what, it's gonna do. To your cv. Don't worry about burning bridges. If it's that toxic, you don't have bridges.

Whatever you have is made of matchsticks and will collapse at any given moment because if it is that bad, those people are not on your side and it is okay to say I'm done.

That doesn't make you weak. It doesn't mean you run away from your troubles, it doesn't mean any of that. Learn from this homeschool mom. Learn from the military. There must be a better way You can know how to navigate difficult situations.

You can deal with adversity, you can adapt to change. You can learn all of those skills without chronic stress and chronic trauma and toxicity every single day.

This is your permission slip to. Never meet the person who is on the other side of that trauma. You don't need to see her. You don't need to know who she is. Focus on the doc that's with you now. The doc that is looking back at you in the mirror right now, choose her and just cut and run. It's okay. It is.

Okay.

And I know there are a lot of physicians now that need to hear this message, so please share it with them. Give them that permission. That they need to choose themselves and to choose their peace

because we all deserve that. Okay. I will see you on the next episode of Stethoscopes and Strollers.