toxic parents
I developed a skewed sense of life.
With little outside influence to broaden my world, the expectations drilled into me over five years became my reality.
My first job as a surgeon was in a medium-sized hospital, where I continued to live and work like I had done in residency. I put the patients’ needs before my own, worked long hours, pretended the stain had no effect on me, and had a near pathological shyness about asking for help no matter how desperately I needed it.
I was trying to live up to the unrealistic expectations handed down to me in my training — a list of shoulds and oughts about how a surgeon acts that did not fit with my wants and needs.
My continued monastic ways meant my wife and I lived in a comfortable house, but by no means the “doctor’s house” our realtor had tried to sell us. After a year of hard work and continued spartan living, I got a call from my newly appointed personal banker. He informed me that we had more money parked in our checking account than their average customer had saved for retirement.
I looked to the example of others.
Unsure of what to do with all this cash, I wondered how the older and more experienced physicians spent thier money.
They spent it on big houses, luxury cars, and vacation homes.
The problem was that none of these things appealed to me. A bigger house was just more work and expense to maintain, and a luxury car would not be any more fun to drive to the hospital ER at 2:00 a.m. than my Chevy.
As for a vacation home, I wanted to see the world. I did not want to be tied down to spending what little vacation I got in the same location.
What I Wanted.
My problem was that I wanted to explore the inner and outer world. I wanted the luxury of time to read books. But it’s hard to find free time when you work long hours seven days a week. It’s even more challenging once you have three children at home. The only books I was reading were writen by a famous fellow doctor, Dr. Suess.
I wanted the freedom to go on long trips to exotic locations like Bhutan and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and more typical destinations like New York and Paris. However, getting more than one week away from work was nearly impossible when I was expected to be on call ten days a month.
What I wanted out of life was the one thing I seemingly could not have: free time to explore my inner and outer world.
I Incorrectly Blamed Others.
I was frustrated by what I perceived as an unfair system, but in truth, the problem lay within myself.
My problem was all the expectations I had collected during my years in training. No one was holding me back; I was holding myself back. By adhering to the expectations I internalized during training, I was living a life that clashed with who I was and what I wanted.
A Sad Awakening
I couldn’t see all of this at the time. I needed to have it dramatically demonstrated to me. That demonstration came on a beautiful sunny Caribbean island during a family vacation.
I had scheduled a one-week getaway from the Midwest cold with my family to follow a long stretch of calls. My partners went off to their vacation homes, leaving me with the entire service for two weeks.
My reward for those two weeks of long hours and little sleep wasn’t a well-earned rest; it was a case of pneumonia.
Feverish, coughing uncontrollably, and exhausted, I took my three young children to the pool. Despite the tropical sun beaming down, I was shaking with chills in my beach chair. Yet, I did my best to be a good sport. As they zipped down the water slide, I got in the pool to play, splash, and catch my brood.
After only a few minutes of this play, I was so cold that my teeth chattered. I climbed out of the pool and huddled under the two daily beach towels allowed per guest, but I still could not get warm. My teeth continued to chatter, and I was racked by shivering despite the warm day.
That was when my children came over to beg me to play with them some more. As the three of them crowded around to plead with their father to do what fathers do, they dripped cold water from the pool on me, making me feel even more miserable.
I exploded.
“Just leave me alone!” I shouted at children who only wanted love and attention from their father.
I watched their once happy faces fall, and my heart sank with them. I knew I should make it right as I watched them slump back to the pool, but I was too exhausted. So, I lay there and watched them as they sat listlessly at the side of the pool.
Things Needed to Change
That trip convinced me that my life needed to change. When I got home and looked at myself in the mirror, I did not like what I saw. I told myself I was a little overweight, but the fact was that I was obese, unhealthy, aged beyond my years, and had no spark of joy in those eyes. I was not the person I wanted to be.
I Look for Someone to Blame
For a long time, I was angry at “The System” for having done this to me. I blamed the hospital administration for asking too much. I blamed greedy insurance executives for breaking the healthcare system. 
I even blamed patients for getting sick and burdening me with caring for them when they clearly couldn’t be bothered to care for themselves.
I even blamed patients for getting sick and burdening me with caring for them when they clearly couldn’t be bothered to care for themselves.I blamed everyone except the one person who was at fault: me.
I blamed everyone except the one person who was at fault: me.
Anger Motivates Change
The anger may have been misdirected, but it wasn’t all bad. My anger got me motivated to change. I wasn’t going to be pushed around and abused anymore. I would make a major change in my life to get even with the evil other who had done this to me.
My quiet seething led to a mini-rebellion. I started sneaking time to exercise in the gym. I discovered a comfortable chair in the hospital library (back when hospitals had libraries) and made a point to sit in it and read a book rather than cram in more work over my “break.” And I flat out resigned from most of the administrative junk and hospital committees that kept me from enjoying meals with my family.
My anger and rebellion caused me to make some needed changes, but those changes were also misdirected. The problem was not that the “system” was taking advantage of me. My real problem was me and all the expectations I had placed on myself.
The Real Criminal
The real criminal was all the shoulds and oughts I was carrying around in my head.
What was wrong was that I had created a split in myself. A split between who I was and what medical culture told me I should be. A split between what I wanted and what I thought I ought to want.
I had split myself in two. One part of me was a loving man who wanted to be a good husband and father. Who wanted to read books, explore the world, and expand his mind. Who needed to be active so he could be healthy and fit.
The other side was convinced that I must put the patient’s wants ahead of my needs. That side believed there was virtue in sacrificing myself for others, leading to the belief that I was wrong to be happy unless all of my patients were free of problems — an unrealistic requirement in a busy surgical practice.
I had set an unrealistic expectation.
I was making myself miserable as if my suffering would somehow alleviate the suffering of others. It didn’t. In fact, it did the opposite.
My unhappiness made me a worse physician.
I was a worse doctor when I was angry, tired, and unhappy. I didn’t listen to my patients like I needed to. When I had no compassion for myself, it was impossible to have compassion for others. Instead, I came to loathe some of my patients for thier illness, as if they had deliberately gotten sick to ruin my life.
Without self-compassion, how was I supposed to have compassion for my patients? If I didn’t care for myself, how was I supposed to care for others? If I wasn’t healthy, could I help others get healthy?
The answer to all these questions was no.
I couldn’t be a good doctor until I resolved the split in my life. You can’t become happy, healthy, and well-adjusted until you do the same.
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Should, Ought, and Reality
When our shoulds and oughts conflict with reality, the result is a split. You are divided against yourself, and that division leads to suffering.
I was suffering because I could not resolve the split between the doctor I thought I should be and the modest, bookish, outdoorsy boy I was. I felt I had to choose between the two options and decided to do what I thought I was supposed to do; I sacrificed myself to become what my culture expected me to be.
Culture places demands on us. Those demands come in the form of things we’re told we should want and how we ought to act. But those expectations are there for the benefit of society and not us. Working long hours at a feverish pace was profitable for the healthcare system but costly for myself and my patients.
When we try to live by society’s rules, we aren’t true to ourselves; instead, we are phony. This may sound like a bad thing, but society celebrates the phony. The person who subjugates their needs and desires to fit society’s expectations is told they are doing the right thing.
To society, the phony is a saint.
To society, the phony is a saint.
However, it is a short step from saint to martyr, and we all know how martyrs end. I found that if martyrdom was the price of being a saint, I wasn’t willing to pay it.
The Surprising Lesson
When I decided to stop working like others expected me to and start working in a more humane and sustainable way, I got better at my job. I had more compassion for my patients, offered them my time generously rather than reluctantly, and did better work. Resolving my split, dropping all the shoulds, and living in accordance with who I was did not ruin me as a surgeon; it made me better.
I had more compassion for my patients, offered them my time generously rather than reluctantly, and did better work. Resolving my split, dropping all the shoulds, and living in accordance with who I was did not ruin me as a surgeon; it made me better.Being a phony is psychologically taxing. It takes time and effort to constantly consult the rules of how you should act. Worrying about whether others think you are doing what you should is emotionally taxing. All that is wasted energy that could be better spent doing what you do.
When you release yourself from the need to live up to other’s expectations, you free yourself to become your best person and do your best work. You free up energy wasted on concerns about your appearance to invest in doing your best work.
You might not be doing it as others think you should, but you will know that you are doing the right things when you see your results. You will know you are on the right path when you feel energized as you step onto it.
Conclusion
When you try to live according to society’s expectations, you create a split between who you are and who you think you should be. The split creates division within you, and where there is division, there is suffering.
If you are suffering in your life or your work, it is because you are split. That suffering is a signal that something is wrong. Listen to it. Act on it in a way that is in harmony with who you are, and you will find joy as a byproduct of living in harmony with yourself.
Source: medium.com
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