Late last year, I was stuck. Lost. Feeling uncertain about my career direction. Isolated. Examining deeper existential questions related to my life purpose and what I was doing here on earth. Being an emotional person, this manifested as heightened emotions – anxiety, tears, feeling restless, with nowhere to go.
One afternoon amid this state it was quiet at work and I was able to finish early. But where to go? I had so much time to myself that it had become a source of anxiety. Many people in this overly busy world perhaps could not fathom such a state of being. Yet on my life path, alone time was a familiar state.
I had time for exercise, hobbies, to see family and friends and spend quality time with my husband, a luxury many yearn for and wish to create. Perhaps there are subconscious reasons why they don’t. Maybe the questions that might arise when alone with oneself for too long. The emotions that might surface. The thoughts that may enter.
Our society is based on a model where outrunning oneself is the key to staying afloat, but sometimes the universe calls us to stop and really look within. But that afternoon was not a day for self-reflection. For connection to my deeper truths or higher self. I was in panic. I needed to connect. To be heard. To be seen by another. To feel understood.
And so I did what so many people often do when needing the very same things. I made a last-minute appointment with the GP. Not a GP I had seen before, but another at the practice I attended.
As I entered the consult, I was acutely aware of how it felt to be in her shoes having worked in similar situations before. Often as the doctor, we feel as if we must do something to fix whatever it is that the person in front of us has presented with.
So, I said from the outset, in attempt to make her job easier, that I just needed someone to talk to. I became emotional, hurriedly expressing my feelings due to being aware of the time pressure she was under. Delving straight into the deeper emotions and existential questions that had been on my mind. Just wanting someone to tell me that it would all be okay.
But instead she pulled out the K10. Or perhaps it was the DASS21, my memory eludes me, but either way it had the same effect. It was the point at which I knew the appointment had been a mistake. That I was not going to get what I was looking for. She then proceeded to tell me, albeit the first time she had ever met me, that I was probably depressed. That perhaps medication was required. Straight into diagnose, label, treatment.
Which made me wonder, at what point as doctors did we become so detached? So uncomfortable dealing with very normal human emotions. So quick to label, not for the sake of the person sitting in front of us, but to feel like we have done something. Solved something. Fixed something.
And that sometimes instead of seeing a patient, perhaps we could see a person, realising that emotions are normal. Even big emotions. And really if we were honest with ourselves, have we not felt anxiety, flatness, loneliness, or any other of the myriad emotions that are a normal part of the human experience?
And perhaps, even more so, given the fact that doctors’ mental health is often a lot worse than that of the general population. So surely many of us know how it feels to have these thoughts and feelings running though us, and very much not wanting to rush into a diagnosis. Label. Treatment.
So perhaps it is time to shift the way we view mental health. I am not saying that the diagnosis and treatment of ongoing symptoms can’t be of value. There is a role for this. However, we need to be less hasty in trying to move a person from where they are at in a given moment, to try to fix it. The question we really need to ask ourselves in these situations is, who are we really trying to fix it for? The patient, who just wants to talk and be heard and feel seen, or ourselves?
Key messages
- Emotions are human and perhaps we can hold off on our medical model of diagnose, label and treat until it is necessary
- Remember patient is person, and doctor is patient too.
- Often what someone really needs when going through issues of the heart or mind is someone to see them. To validate their experience. Not to “fix” them, but to connect with another human being in a time of need.
Author competing interests – nil