Morning Person

Posted by fxckfeelings on April 16, 2020

People worship self-esteem and confidence as if they signify success and are as much of a job requirement as being able to learn fast and use Excel. In reality, although skill and experience will certainly make you feel more confident, and while confidence is a useful trait, there are lots of random, uncontrollable conditions that can deflate your feelings of self-worth, like illness, depression, and loss, and they have a way of combining and reinforcing one another and making work, and life, impossible. So if you’ve built up real skill and experience and know you’re good at what you do, it shouldn’t matter if you feel terrible. Indeed, if you can feel lousy and still do a good enough job, you’re qualified to do almost anything.

-Dr. Lastname

It has been almost a year since I’ve lost my father. Aside from trying relentlessly to deal with the grief, I’ve also turned into a less confident, socially awkward person at the worst possible moment. I’m in my residency where confidence and interaction with people is highly scrutinized, along with the intelligence and capacity to handle extremely sick people. Stress is at an all time high, and I struggle everyday to remember how proud my dad was of me for achieving my goals. But now that I’m so close to completing my goals…I feel myself letting them slip through my fingers because I don’t have the will or energy to do the work. My goal is to learn how to get a grip and to not lose track of my life goals.

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If dealing with loss and stress weren’t depressing enough, you now have actual depression to make you feel even worse. A stupid/simply as it may sound, it’s really depressing to be depressed, particularly when it interferes with your energy, performance, and ability to achieve your bigger life goals.

Unfortunately, severe depression often affects those parts of your brain that control drive, concentration and social interaction, and grief is often indistinguishable from depression, so your father’s death has, in effect, triggered a disabling illness. Then your feelings of failure about your disability are causing more depression, which makes his absence feel even more painful, and it keeps feeding itself until your career, ability to get out of bed, and will to live are completely gone.

But don’t believe for a moment that your current disability is any more significant than one caused by a stroke or concussion. Your poor performance is not a measure of laziness or incompetence, simply of temporary brain dysfunction and bad luck. Depression will tell you otherwise because it is notorious for creating intensely negative self-judgments and ruminations, but depression is also a notorious liar. So it’s important for you to confront the vicious cycle of depressive symptoms, fake news of failure, and more depression.

With the help of a friend, coach, or therapist, get help in restoring your perspective. Then let others know about your illness and its symptoms. Your colleagues and supervisors will be relieved to know why you’re not performing as well as usual and they will expect that, with time, help, and recovery, you’ll eventually get back to yourself. Meanwhile, they should be willing to give you the same support as if you were recovering from any illness.

Friends will also be relieved to know why you’ve been antisocial lately. Just as depression makes you feel like a failure, they’ve been thinking that you no longer value them as friends; your taking depression personally leads them to take your depression personally. When you let them know what’s really happening, you also block that infectious distortion, let them know you care and allow them to be helpful.

As a doctor you know that illness just happens and that it can be disabling, so use your professional experience to accept your depression as just an illness like any other. Learn to fight the feelings of failure and set up procedures and a group of helpers that will speed your recovery.

Depression hurts and disables, but it can’t do nearly as much damage as the false thoughts it creates if you start to believe them. So remember who you are and use your experience to reject false thoughts. Eventually, they’ve been so trivial and inconsequential that you’ll be able to move on in your career and from the pain of your father’s death without depression getting in your way.

STATEMENT:

“I may be performing poorly, but I know I’m impaired by depression and grief. As a matter of fact, for someone who’s as impaired as I am, I’m doing an impressive job just showing up and trying hard to get a tough job done. I can feel nothing but self-criticism, but I have good reason to be proud. I need to take good care of myself and let others know what’s happening, so they can help me get through this tough time.”