What To Do When You No Longer Find Joy In Your Work?

 

Hear Ye!  Hear Ye! Calling all stressed out physicians and healthcare professionals! 

 

A couple of years ago, in my web searching for support resources for physicians seeking greater purpose and meaning in their work and lives, I found and joined the “Finding Meaning in Medicine” listerv. (http://www.meaninginmedicine.org).  

 

From a posting I received several days ago, written by a woman physician:

 

“I am at a crossroads. I went to medical school and became a

surgeon to please my parents. I am very good at my job. I

have spent the last year and a half looking at what brings me joy.

And sadly I have found that most of my job does not bring me joy…..

I am feeling like this is a life or death decision and that if keep

going at this frantic pace my body and perhaps my soul will quit.”

 

Can you relate to this?  If not, I’ll bet you know a number of folks who could.

 

The sad reality, which is no secret, is that many physicians are retiring early, leaving a vocation that often they still love but now find they just can’t or don’t want to put up with what are too often imbalances in the system, competing values and demands, technology medicine that overshadows “human medicine”, and too little time with patients to make the difference and have the impact they were trained to have.

 

So is there an alternative to leaving your job? 

 

Now while a job or geographic cure may be in order, don’t be too quick to act.  It’s possible that what’s needed isn’t a career change or even a job change - it’s a healing process. 

 

As the proverb in Luke 4:23 says, “Physician, heal thyself…”

 

I was fortunate that before I became a physician, I was trained as a healer (using several modalities including therapeutic touch, massage therapy, counseling, and energy balancing techniques) so I came to understand the core principles and philosophy of healing.

 

Here are a few of the core principles and premises:

-          Healing is a focus on achieving a sense of balance, recognizing that balance is a dynamic state.

-          It always involves a freeing up of energy.  This could be where energy is blocked (a deficiency) or where there’s excessive energy.  Releasing excess energy (as occurs in exercise, neuro-muscular re-education, massage, acupuncture, and many other modalities) and restoring energy when one is depleted both free up energy. 

-          When you replenish energy or remove congested excessive energy, there is a greater flow of energy through the system, allowing greater clarity, more vitality, more fluidity, and new choices.

-          Healing, in contrast to curing, always happens from the inside out – by restoring or releasing energy, the healing mechanisms that are innate to a fundamentally healthy structure are free to propagate.

-          Healing typically requires a letting go of some sort.  This could be of a relationship, a situation, a belief or attitude, stored emotion, or some other habit or behavior that has simply become limiting.  In letting go, we let something that needs to die, do so, in order that we may create new life.

 

The beauty of healing principles is that they apply to all living systems, not just human beings but also organizations, which are simply collections of human beings. There are energy patterns and pathways in any living entity.  In Eastern medicine, these are known as meridians.  These pathways must be balanced amongst themselves and between themselves to achieve and support optimal health.

 

It’s no wonder that many docs find themselves way out of balance, demoralized, burned out, unhappy with their situations. 

 

Let’s face it – medical training is pretty brutal. The long hours, the fatigue, the steep learning curve, the sheer amount of information, emotionally challenging and stressful life and death situations….. Furthermore, medical training is designed to strengthen doctors’ ability to operate under duress, so they became acclimated to high stress levels.  Even after training when they have the ability to exercise more control, they’re so conditioned to tolerate stress that they may not recognize when things are getting out of balance and they need to take corrective action.

 

Then, because of the rigorous and focused training demands during their 20’s and 30’s, many docs never get the kind of life/work experience that many of their cohorts get through engaging in the social contact and exploration of living and working in multiple and varying contexts.  Thus, docs don’t learn some of the adaptability and change management skills their cohorts necessarily learn that confer greater stress resilience.

 

What’s the way out of this seeming straitjacket? 

 

If you’re clear that the intolerable situation can’t be negotiated, influenced or changed by you, then certainly it’s time to consider a new and different job or new route within your career.

 

If you’re not clear about what that situation would be, then it’s likely that some healing work is needed first. If that’s the case, here are some steps you can take to get clarity about what direction you want to take and what decision is right for you.

 

First, recognize that it’s time to pay attention to your self.  Create some distance – physically, temporally, and/or psychologically – from the situation that you’re experiencing as life-draining or debilitating.

 

Then, create an intention and take action.  The resources that support healing and re-balancing are endless and could be as simple as taking to journal and reflect or reaching out to talk with people you trust who care about you.  Re-engage in activities that you love, find energizing, nourishing, and stimulating.

 

Then, after you’ve replenished your spirit, think both about how you might be able to make some changes in your current situation (if that’s possible) AND also allow yourself to imagine all the ways in which you could apply your talents and skills, recognizing that there are many ways to be a doctor! 

 

There are so many ways physicians can now make a difference in people’s lives; you don’t have to tolerate an environment that doesn’t bring out the best in you.  The possibilities are limited primarily by your creativity and your vision of what you allow to be possible for you.