Helping Each Other Carry the Weight of Our Professional Burdens

“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is perhaps the bravest thing we will ever do.”  Brené Brown

Imagine eleven physicians sitting in a circle, devoting an hour together to process their “collective stories” of professional challenges.  While for some that may be hard to imagine, that is exactly what I did with 10 other colleagues last week.  After a brief introduction, we each read a short, prepared vignette we had been given about a professional struggle that had been experienced by a colleague.  While none had been written by the group, each one read sounded eerily familiar.

“One of my colleagues appears completely burned out and I worry about them but am hesitant to say anything because I don’t want to make them defensive or appear to think that I know what’s best for them.  And I feeling pretty crispy myself!” read the first.  Then after a brief moment of silence and already some knowing nods, the next was read.  “By the time I get home after a day at work I am often so exhausted that I can’t even pretend I’m excited to see my partner and children.  And our sex life has tanked and sadly, I’m not sure I really care,” read the next with more nods and a few fleeting grimaces of recognition.  

And so we continued around the circle.  After some time for quiet reflection, we then shared what spoke to us, what we identified with, and how these stories related to our own experience and the professional burdens we carried.  Similar to the many other “Burdens and Blessings” workshops I have co-facilitated for medical students, residents, and practicing physicians across numerous specialties, our burdens were plentiful.  Likewise, with our sharing, we were also comforted in our realization that we were not alone in our experience of them. 

As often happens, one of the group reminded us that these challenges were part of “what we signed up for.”  Certainly our professional training and socialization would have us believe this.  If this is true, then where do our “human selves” go to share and begin to process all our stories of the tragedy, despair, powerlessness, woundedness, pain and loss we see daily in our work?  For too many of us, the answer is ”nowhere and with no one,” as most have had no modeling for doing so, and often no encouragement.  Instead, we carry these burdens by ourselves, concluding that since others appear to be adeptly handling these challenges, we must be weak or flawed because we are finding them overwhelming.  And so we struggle in silence and too often are left feeling isolated and alone.

The work we do is good and important work, and yes, we knew it would be hard, but that in no way justifies our allowing it to break us.  The PeerRxMed process was created to help dismantle the many barriers the culture of medicine has created which interfere with our fundamental human need to connect with and support each other on our professional journey.  With my PeerRx partners, I’ve found a safe space where we can share our stories – stories of grief, of burdens, of loss, and also of the many blessings of our work.  Please don’t keep the stories you carry bottled up inside.  We need to share our stories with each other.  No one should carry their professional burdens alone.