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Dear Anita,
Excuse any typos I am doing a voice text here because I want to report back to you before I forgot the immediate results of my most recent and unique experiment in a long time.
I have told you many times about the lady at work, the lady physician who is very aggressive and rude, but has a side that is very charming and engaging. And that way she’s not unlike my mother, you could have 99% amazing fun happy experiences, but when push comes to show of and that 1% she will throw you under the busAnd find a way to manipulate you to make it think it’s your fault. These are the true dangerous people, the ones that are very good at hiding their evil. I now know her quite easily and I do not trust her.
Anyway, about a week ago we had a disagreement about how to approach a patient. This is fine it happens quite often, it is not new. Medicine requires a teamwork approach in these sort of scenarios.
She quickly went to passive aggressive behavior, bullying techniques, and used verbiage that was quite demeaning. It was as though the mother was speaking to her child and parading her coming from a sense of power. It was not like to professional speaking to one another.
Given this, I became very upset, I thought about speaking to the medical director about not working with her any further, but along the same time there were other things going on with my husband that you know about. It was difficult for me to not take the stress of working with her home, but luckily she only works at the center one and a half days per week. As you know however it’s not only about the time that you spend with these type of people, the emotional trauma can carry over into the next day. It can carry over into the evening far after this person is gone. Especially given the history that I have and people like us, we can be emotionally sensitized to any kind of negative or abusive behavior.
After everything that happened with my husband, on Friday, it occurred to me that perhaps being able to work every single day, and often with people like her, and also be very good at healing may not actually work out. In fact it — Maybe to the detriment of my own personal life, and what is more important?
I let that thought pass as you know, I regain composure and was able to approach my personal life with focus, as you saw from Friday evening forward. And here we are today.
So today I knew I was going to work with her from about 1-4 pm (just finished). In the grand scheme of things it is only three hours, three hours in a week, no big deal. But recently, because I put so much effort into doing as great of a job as I can, it is very difficult to be around any sort of negative energy like this, it is very difficult to brush it off, or let it go. I have judged myself tremendously for this, feeling angry at myself that I hold onto things, and useless people that really shouldn’t affect my personal life. I now I’m gentle with myself knowing that I am only human.
So of course I want to approach a patient around 1 PM, just like clockwork this patient had some things in their history missing, and vital piece of information that I should have known by now. If it was any other colleague of mine I would have sent them a text message or phone call and discussed with Them on the phone or in person. However I did not do this. I quickly gathered all the information I needed to on my own, I wanted to communicate with the mean lady. My colleague said why don’t you just wait for her to arrive you can discuss together. I said, yes that would be possible if this was a reasonable person, it is not. I’m going to approach this in the way that allows me the most peace.
By the time she arrived, which was of course late, I had all of the information I needed, and was happy to proceed with this patient. When she arrived, I didn’t waste time with any niceties – I directly approached her with what was missing and the patient history and what I have found. She did not say thank you of course, she quickly made up excuses of why those things were missing, and made sure to “let me know that they were actually not very important.”
I did nothing Anita. I said nothing. I am there as a physician, I Am not there to engage with unreasonable people. And I want you to know, that for the next three hours when I worked with this woman, I was absolutely silent. Absolutely. I have never been silent for this long in a room with another physician and Tech a nurse etc. while doing procedures. Never. In fact it’s quite awkward. But I didn’t let that discomfort affect me. She continued to make small talk and conversation with the other staff, and you could tell that she also wanted to engage with me. I had made up my mind. You don’t get to have fun easy small talk with me, and then also treat me like crap and disrespect me at the drop of a hat when it’s coming up to you know. I do not want to engage with you and I won’t. I have never been able to accomplish so much silence in my life. I focused on the patient, I focused on what I would be writing to you after I was done with work. I had so much peace but also so much discomfort. I did not feel the need or urge to talk, I observed that if I was talking during that time it was just nervous energy to break the ice. Nonsense useless.
Now I’m not saying that being completely silent and not engaging with others is the cure to most problems. Of course not. But in this scenario this woman needs to know that she can’t just act however she wants – and the other party doesn’t want to play her games. That other party is me.
This was only something I learned exactly in that moment of discomfort. I could have went left, and continued my fun natural way of being easy-going, but of course quickly disrespected again the next time.
Or I could’ve went right and thought, this is not a friend, this is not a good person, this is not someone I trust. I am not going to waste my breath on her.
So I didn’t. I am powerful and in control of my own self. In the moments of most distress, I can stand strong and still.
Dear Anita,
I noticed a benefit of seeing squirrel life from below and above. That once you get a glimpse from above – you know you are capable of climbing there – and so hopefully (like this time) you can more quickly jump back up there.
Versus an unknown ambiguous goal of reaching above.
I thought about how the frenzied bobble head bird and the squirrel both spin the wheels but get nowhere. I also thought about how beyond the mother voice – on some days there’s distress and anger, some of which may be just one layer of repressed emotion. Just one – peeling away.
It can be ugly and strange the way it’s released. But who said the path isn’t windy?
I am working on today, thinking about differentiating truths and lies. I do believe this will further my work of releasing anger at My mother that is often redirected everywhere else.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 