In this episode of the podcast, Rachel is joined again by Dr Caroline Walker – The Joyful Doctor. Caroline is a Psychiatrist, therapist, specialist in the wellbeing of doctors and host of The Joyful Doctor Podcast.
This is the fourth in a new series of podcast episodes and videos – COVID-19 Supporting Doctors.
In these very difficult times, Caroline and Rachel are working together to bring you as much support as they can. We’ll be tackling various different topics as they emerge in order to help doctors keep their head in the game and stay focussed and resilient.
In this episode, we talk about the unrealistic expectations we have of ourselves right now. Perhaps we think we should be doing more to help? Improving ourselves? Doing that CPD we’ve never got round to doing? Spring cleaning the house or making our garden perfect? Yet many of us are finding that we’re just not able to do all this right now and our productivity seems to be lower than we’d like.
This is OK.
We need to adjust our expectations of ourselves (rather than ‘lower’ them)
As doctors, we are so often driven by our need to ‘do’ and our need to help. We judge our worth by what we’ve achieved and so when we feel uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety or sadness we turn quickly to action to ‘fix’ the problem.
Caroline and Rachel chat about the need for self-compassion and about how to recognise the emotions we are feeling. We discuss the vital question we need to ask ourselves ‘What do I need right now’ and also chat about how we can find it hard to receive help and compassion from others.
Doctors – we need you more than ever. Keep up the good work. Keep your heads. Keep caring.
Contact Rachel – <rachel@wildmonday.co.uk> Twitter – @DrRachel Morris
Contact Caroline – <caroline@joyfuldoctor.com> Twitter @joyful_doctor
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You can watch this podcast episode on YouTube here
