When Things Get Under Our Skin
March 19, 2024
When we do not feel well, our resistance is lower, and our emotions can be “prickly.” Not only is our physical energy drained, but so is our spiritual energy. As for me, some disturbances roll like water off a duck’s back, but if I am tired, stressed, or sick, they tend to get under my skin. It’s particularly distressing when I do not have the spiritual reserve to handle things in the most loving way possible.
The problem is that we are not really ourselves in sickness, stress, and fatigue. Well …. we are, but we are impaired. For eleven years, I was an assistant professor of family medicine in a medical residency program training physicians in the behavioral sciences. I researched, wrote about, and taught bedside manner, doctor-patient communication, listening with the third ear, behavioral and mental issues, patient counseling, physician self-care, etc. For eleven years, I observed that most physicians were hungry to know these vital ways to relate to their patients, and they applied these methods spectacularly.
However, if the doctor was on call in the emergency room overnight, I noticed they were not the same physician they were on a normal day. They tended to be short with patients and dismissive of their concerns. No amount of coffee helped them cope with sleep deprivation and the overwhelmingly stressful situations in the ER. They were apt to snap at the nurses and techs and were not as patient with the patient’s family. Their stress overlapped into their personal lives. Some turned to drugs and alcohol. Some were so impaired that they could not work.
Physician impairment is a well-documented phenomenon that every state medical board deals with. Instead of punishing impaired doctors as many boards used to, now they require treatment for the physician. In recovery programs, doctors learn the value of self-compassion, healthy coping, and recovery. The success rate is high. Medical programs are more student-friendly now, so long exhaustive hours have been reduced, but more needs to be done.
Like the doctors on call, our stress stretches us emotionally and physically. The things we could typically cope with now fester under our skin. We who strive to become more conscious and to treat others with love and compassion are disappointed in ourselves when we are impaired. Instead of being self-compassionate, we punish ourselves for our impairments. The inner critic’s voice is like pouring gasoline on the fire of our impairment. With each punitive word, we tell ourselves, we become less able to love ourselves or others. We get under our own skins.
However, the soul is like the wise medical board’s physician recovery program that allows impaired physicians to recover and return to the critical role of physician and healer. Our soul has a recovery program for us when we stop listening to our inner critic and listen instead to the voice of love. We realize that God always has open arms and hearts for us. The Divine bids us to do the same for ourselves. All nine virtues depicted on the Enneagram are ways we can love and heal our failures, and our Holy Ideas are direct pathways to living from our souls.
Inquiry: What three ways would you punish yourself because of something you did or said while you were impaired?
Dear God,
I pray to know each beautiful virtue more intimately and to live out of them on my journey into wholeness. I pray they replace my inner critic, Oh God.
Amen.
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