Episode 5 - Embracing vulnerability

Hello and welcome to The Imperfect Clinician. My name is Mike.
And Yuen here.
In our discussion today, we explore the fears of opening up and what defence mechanisms or armours do we have in place that stop us from growing whilst accept those we created in the first place to protect us.
We notice how these are so fully developed that it seeps into our personal and work life.
And so what can we do to be more aware of them and how do we actually address it?
We talk about the benefits of introspection in solitude, but remember you can and should always seek help from professionals such as counsellors or therapists when you need to. Cue the music.
In this episode, we're talking about embracing vulnerability.
Yes. Today, The Imperfect Clinician is going to discuss what vulnerability is, is it worth embracing, what's the purpose of it and how it could be beneficial to us.
So now, what is vulnerability for you?
For me, when I think about vulnerability, I think about what I'm scared of.
I think about what I am not good at or what I would like myself to be better at.
What about you?
When I was thinking about vulnerability, I thought that it's a bit like reaching for the feelings and scares we wouldn't normally reach for.
It's not something that we want to dwell on on a daily basis. However, it's necessary to do so if you want to understand yourself a bit better.
And it does require effort to deal with those personal feelings, often considered as flaws or traumas that we might carry with us.
Have you thought about it as weakness?
Well, these are things that make us imperfect in a way, things that we want to not necessarily bring to light on a daily basis because these are the things that can upset us.
So you could consider that in part it could be weakness.
Could be perceived as weakness.
Could be perceived as weakness.
Could be perceived as something that's something or a few things that might be holding us back.
Would you agree?
I agree. I mean, everybody probably has a different version of vulnerability and it is such a personal idea that we all have our own way of dealing with our own vulnerabilities.
I think the biggest vulnerability for a lot of people is not being able or not wanting to look at what the true vulnerabilities are.
And that's something that I believe…
We're going to talk about today.
We're going to talk about today. Exactly, exactly.
So yeah, if we stand in a position that it's something that is holding us back, why is it worth embracing it?
I think I'll share some few examples in both personal and work setting for me.
So when I started this journey, I noticed that without embracing vulnerability, I struggled to find the cause of it.
So for me, it is at the start was setting boundaries.
So I was struggling to set boundaries without, in some ways, giving some part of myself away.
So essentially, I'm saying yes to everything and trying to help everyone.
So in a personal setting, I would try to make sure everyone's okay.
Me, you, children, parents, and then not really putting myself as priority.
That's fitting in.
It feels like you're trying to fit in by agreeing to most of the things.
I wouldn't use the word fitting in in this circumstance because it's not…
In the era of fitting in, I think about an environment where I have to observe other people and see how they're acting for me to fit in.
So I wouldn't put fitting in in the family in a personal setting.
This is when I'm not able to set boundaries clearly for myself to say,
I need an hour for my own well-being. I need an hour for self-care.
This is, for me, saying to the children, this is my time for meditation and I need some quiet time and setting boundaries like this.
And I think when I notice, as a reflection, when I struggle to set boundaries in the personal setting,
I also struggle to set boundaries in the professional setting.
So I would want to say yes to whatever that's offered on the table because I see it as,
if I don't do it, then people might not think I'm good enough.
People might not think I can contribute.
People might not think I'm stretching myself enough.
And in essence, when I get to the point, I've already been overstretched.
And so when I look at how to set boundaries healthily for myself and for the people around me,
because it's a two-way street one, when I can set the boundaries clearly for myself,
I can be a better person and I can present myself as a better person to the family, to people at work,
and I react less.
And so when I look into why I find it difficult to set boundaries for myself,
I realise then I have to address my fears, I have to delve into my own vulnerability.
Okay, so would you say that vulnerability is a fear of inadequacy, especially in a work setting?
I think, yes, this is very commonly one of it.
Sometimes it's fear that I'm less than, fear that I'm irrelevant, fear that I'm not good enough.
Fear that I am not relatable, fear that I am just small.
And so, hence, I feel the need to prove my worth.
I need to prove when I say yes to you, I'm proving myself to you.
When I say yes to other people, I'm proving myself to other people.
Whereas it takes a lot of grounded confidence to say, this is the time that I need for me to have the courage to say no
to family or to work or to any commitment or to any questions asked or to stop myself from volunteering for every single thing that's on the table.
Okay, so setting boundaries, how do you do it?
Because I think initially as you go into your first family life and then into work, setting boundaries is quite difficult to start with.
How do you learn it?
I mean, you assume that everybody knows more if you start in a new workplace and you feel a bit inadequate
and you feel that you're all, what if I do something wrong?
What if people are going to be annoyed because I ask too many questions?
Do you think that it comes from the time when we were children and the parents were setting their boundaries not skillfully?
So for me, from what I have seen when I was growing up, I was raised not to respect boundaries or consistency.
I was raised to respect intensity.
So with that, I mean I would see my mum going all in, all in for everyone at the expense of her wellbeing.
And it's not just her, it's the society's expectation.
And I want to say it's not completely gone now for a mum to be committed to her children, her family, to her parents, to work and almost having to balance everything and the picture of perfection.
Is it because she sets her expectations so high towards herself or is it something that's coming from elsewhere?
I think it's own expectation, but I would argue that your own expectation that you are now has been nurtured.
And you have seen this seeped in through all parts of your life without even realising it.
But the thing I found quite strange looking at me growing up, yes, the parents were setting up the borders, the boundaries, the rules, to some extent more or less skillfully.
But you often with your own brain were thinking, well, this doesn't make sense.
This is just pure rubbish.
And you just don't obey.
Or if you obey, you do the bare minimum and you try to find a way around the rules.
So I want to clarify the boundaries are not what parents set for the children or the child, it's the boundaries they set for themselves.
Okay, but what about they set boundaries for us and we have to work within those.
So then when we grow up and we go into our family life, if we go into our work, we sort of obey or expect to obey.
So what I'm trying to talk about here, it's because I don't see the model that I have growing up setting boundaries for herself.
In order to preserve her own wellbeing, I struggle to set that boundaries on myself for the personal setting.
And so I struggle to set the boundaries on a professional setting for myself.
Okay, so we have the boundaries that we set by ourselves.
So I'll give you an example.
You were asking about how do I set it.
So it takes a lot of trial and error.
For me, how well I have done it now depends on how much I failed in the past.
And what James Clear said in his book Atomic Habits about, along the line of you don't rise to the highest of your goals, you fall back to your system.
And so I look at how I can improve my system on a day-to-day basis.
So I'm looking at daily habits, I'm looking at daily behaviours.
So for me, when the children are really young, I try to schedule in 20 minutes of movement.
Either in front of them when they can't really move around and then I start, that might not work, might work less because they're breastfeeding, might work less because they're teething.
But I keep amending the everyday system.
Now I've got to the system where I do any type of movement practice, whether it's vinyasa or whether it's yoga or meditation, something every single day.
And because it becomes part and parcel of my day.
And so when we look at improving the daily system, do you remember when we talk about you really enjoy biking?
Yes, I do.
How do you find putting it into a system has helped you achieve a more regular consistency with biking?
Scheduling any activity that you have planned is always increasing the risk of actually committing to it and doing it.
Decreasing the risk.
It's increasing the chance of fulfilling, of completing and I think it gives you a good outlook for the future because you have something to look forward to.
Or something that you can prepare for because it doesn't necessarily have to be an enjoyable thing.
Sometimes you have to do things at work, at home that you don't particularly like, enjoy.
But by scheduling it, it's just part of the routine that you want to fulfil.
You can prepare for it, you can try to forget about it, but it's coming.
If you agree that it's good or bad for you or whatever, you can schedule it in or kick it out.
And so when I talk about scheduling self-care time to help nurture my own wellbeing, I notice that when I do that at home, I have more practice to be more in tune with how I am for the day.
Because if I set up to have any movement and any breathing activity in the morning, then I am starting the day with a clearer head.
So then, because I've been practising every morning, I go into work with that practice.
So I go into work assessing how I am feeling, assessing the workload, assessing how my boundaries can be stretched or pulled and how I can manage it better.
And so I see that when I am really stretched at home, I would also be stretched at work.
And when you stretch both ends, I feel very close to burnout because there's only so much surge capacity I can have before it tapers off.
Okay. Is that, going back to vulnerability, is that something that you consider as your vulnerability?
Yes, I want to say it used to be because I want to, first of all, I want to feel better because I say yes. It's much harder to say no.
I can be self-critical when I say no. I can feel guilty if I say no. Sometimes I might get shamed by myself or others when I say no.
And so without delving into my own fears and my own vulnerability, it's very hard then to think about what system do I need to build in place to help me manage the vulnerabilities better.
Because it doesn't go away, even with regular practice. It just affects me less so, or I want to say less sticky. So it doesn't stay with me that long.
Okay. So we're talking about fear, fear of inadequacy, fear of not being the best, fear of, well, not fulfilling your own expectations. Why are we scared?
I think we're scared because there is an element that I feel that I've lost sense of control. So this is how you can define trauma.
A lot of people think trauma is when you have the big words, either sexual abuse or domestic abuse. But I've had a presentation where the presenter said, we're going to talk about trauma today.
And then people in the audience was like, okay, what is trauma? So she took out a balloon and she popped it in front of everyone and everyone gasped.
And then they're like, okay, is that trauma? And she said, no. And she picked somebody in the audience to come on stage, tied her hands and feet and say, what if I pop this balloon next to your ear, but you can't move?
And the lady started crying and she said, this, where you don't feel like you have control of the situation in repetition, small or big dose, is trauma.
And so for me, we all have situations in our childhood growing up that we feel that we don't have a sense of control.
How the adults are speaking to us, how we've been treated in school, whether we've been bullied, relationship in school, social circle, family expectation.
How, even if the intention is not to hurt, how you feel after somebody said something or a culture that's been built, that will form our own trauma and packages, like we mentioned in our previous episode, growing up.
And so when we have those trauma, it will come with a lot of fears and a lot of our current fears would stem from our previous fears.
Might not be the same story, but similar overlapping concept of fear.
In my case, if somebody had a parent that was micromanaging every single part of children's life, that takes the sense of control out of you.
Like in my case, I had very little to say in a lot of cases, but it didn't stop me thinking about it and deciding what was good, what's bad.
I tried to preserve this sanity, but it's hard.
It's hard to justify your parents' behavior if it directly impacts you.
I believe that if you are scared of crossing the line, that's where you have to start thinking, how can I go about it? What do I put up in order to protect myself?
So how do we protect ourselves from being scared, from fear?
We have armors, we have things that we built over the years that have slowly become second skin, that becomes our defense mechanism.
Everyone will have their own.
We touched on the barriers before. In my case, it's laughing things off, talking about it.
Sometimes other people might have closing in themselves and just becoming super quiet.
There are people who react by, I don't know, drinking, drugs, whatever. Do you think these could be considered armors?
Yes, of course. I think it's good to tap into our own version of armor, what we have noticed in ourselves.
So like you said, joking for you, getting defensive. For me, it's blame and resentment, your fault, not mine.
So I am not to blame here. And essentially when I blame you, I feel that I have a sense of control.
So similar to what you said, because of your dad micromanaging everything, you tried to get a sense of control by doing things differently or by coming to the UK.
So with regards to the armor that we put up in front of ourselves, what is its relationship to vulnerability?
Does it help us? Can the armor block us from reaching out to our own vulnerability to try to recognize it?
Yes, definitely. I've got loads of examples. I'll share one that comes directly into my head because I will still come to it with times and people might relate to this.
So when I'm overstretched, when even with me doing all the well-being side of things, when the day gets too hard, I don't unwind properly and I use numbing by going on the phone.
I get very emotionally reactive. And when you say something, let's say you joke about something, I take it personally. And what do I do?
I argue. I blame you. And that's essentially me not being in my best self.
So the armor is me saying, in some way saying, I've had enough. I'm so stretched. I don't have capacity to take on what you're saying in any context.
So I'm just going to be overwhelmed and explode. And so I don't see it in me.
It will be slightly different, but in a professional setting as a clinician, because you work in a team with reception team, with multidisciplinary team, with other clinicians.
It will either be yourself or other people in the team will have similar reaction, you know, being reactive in ways of working, not being proactive.
I don't have time. There is no space. I can't invest in myself or the people around you. And then it goes into the, what I notice really frequently, the Cartman triangle.
Have you heard about Cartman triangle? So it's a triangle of victim, persecutor, and rescuer.
So a victim will say, this has happened, but it's not my fault. I don't know what to do. It's out of my control.
The rescuer will go, don't worry about it all. I'll solve it all for you. That's the rescuer.
And the persecutor will go, why did you not do this? And telling you off, we can switch between three roles in one conversation.
And with reflection, I've been on those three in one conversation with you, with people at work, me on the receiving end, or me on the one who is doing it.
And so when I am not able to embrace my vulnerability and my fears, the armor is there.
And so I can't reflect and I can't move forward. I feel that I'm moving backwards.
Right. So we got to the point where we talked a bit about fears, vulnerability, and how do we reach inside our vulnerabilities?
How do we, how do we commit to opening ourselves to the true ourselves, to true weaknesses, true faults, flaws,
however you want to call it, things we don't want to deal with or something that is buried in our minds, behind our armor?
How are we, do you think it's better to open up to yourself, to others? Do we need both? How do we progress?
I feel the initial stage has to be done in solitude. I feel a lot of introspection has to be done by yourself.
Because I've tried it. I've heard people saying how they have tried it.
And the danger with opening up to others as the first step is I would go into the conversation expecting something from you.
So if I have something that I'm really struggling with, instead of me thinking about, right, I'm struggling with what they say.
Why? Because I feel that they don't take me seriously. Why? Because I am scared that what I'm saying is not important.
Because I'm scared that I am not good enough. Because I'm scared that I'm not respected.
And so when I delve into the why, I can go into the conversation with a clearer head.
Whereas if I go into the conversation without even delving into the why, and I go straight to you and say,
this person said this and that, and then you go, oh, maybe what if?
And then I just get very defensive because I don't even know what my fear is.
So my fear would still be driving my reaction when I'm talking to you.
And so I cannot gain clarity if I don't do the internal work myself first.
When after I've done it in my head, or if I'm writing it down, then I go and talk to you, then it's a completely different mindset when I come to you.
How is the confrontation between stripping yourself internally, looking at your issues in that wider context?
Do you feel more reserved, or do you feel that you can open up more to me about those points that you raised yourself?
I think delving into the points internally is very scary. It's very hard.
And it feels like I'm stepping into the unknown, and it feels like I have to peel down all my armor
because my armor is set up so perfectly that I don't even notice that they're there unless I make consistent, mindful effort to realize that they're there.
So they're just like gremlins in my head.
And so when I do the internal work, and I've tried a lot of different ways, and I think people should try different things that work for them,
it takes time for you to slowly adapt to the fears.
And when I then address my fears and then come and talk to you, I feel that I can take in whatever that you are saying with a clearer head.
It also makes me come in and talk to you a bit easier because I don't come with expectations, I don't come with anger,
and that doesn't lead to disappointment or frustration at the end of the conversation.
I come into the conversation with you more to share and more to learn rather than expecting you to...
You want support, not solutions?
Yes.
Is that right?
Not solutions, I would agree.
And there is also another element of when the other person's reacting, it might be their fears and their armor talking.
It might be, yeah.
It very often is because they want to relate and try to directly transpose your problems onto theirs.
It's like, oh, am I similar?
Is it something that affects me or is it completely irrelevant and you should just worry about things?
Yes.
And it can be a simple example of our daughter said to the neighbor, can we come over and play?
And then the neighbor's children said, no, you can't come and play.
And I heard that and I had to step away because, first of all, I know that intervening won't do any good.
Second of all, it triggered my own fear of being left out, not being part of, you know, not fitting in.
And so I had to consciously step away because if I reacted then, it would be my fear speaking and I am not addressing any of...
I am in some ways putting my fear onto our daughter.
I've shared a few of my examples and my own reflection and ongoing work because it's, you know, let's face it, it's not easy.
Some days it will be hard, some days it will be easier, some days even very, very much harder when everything can go wrong.
What about you when you've done your own reflection and your own fears and vulnerabilities?
Well, I think that most of us have got plenty of fears and vulnerabilities.
It's when we try to look into them, that's where we think, well, is it actually a fear? Is it a trauma?
Or whatever it is, if it's something that we don't really want to delve into, that's where we should.
That's a sign.
That's a sign.
In my case, I mentioned that my dad was quite micromanaging and he wanted to have control of everything that's happening around him.
Not necessarily giving a good example of how things are supposed to be or how you're supposed to be as a person.
He was a great man, but there were some things that he could have done better as a parent.
I think that leaving your child a little bit more independence and free thinking can yield much better results.
Because if you are worried or scared of not fulfilling certain tasks, expectations or whatever you were doing,
it paralyzes you and you start to make mistakes and that leads to more mistakes.
And this is a vicious circle where you just don't feel like you're swimming anymore.
You think that you're drowning and my dad always told me that I had a very poor memory.
Well, that comes from a man who had a really brilliant memory in a lot of cases and circumstances.
So, you know, as a young person, I had lots of things to do, think about and focus on,
making sure that I get things right because if things are not done right, then it wouldn't be appreciated or approved.
And at the end of the day, no matter what I did, the result of it was, if I forget something, everything else was not really worth it in a way.
And this unknown of what is going to happen, what will I forget to do, what will I not do,
I've seen the expectations, got me to the point that my armor was trying to make sure that everything around me is rather organized
and my defense mechanism set me to be on the defensive side.
So I like to be protected, secured, knowing the routine to some extent and become the master of your own routine.
So you have something planned and you set yourself those expectations.
I think probably subconsciously thinking that those expectations are actually set by your parents
because they used to do it for you for many times and then you set yourself expectations to,
I don't know, have to do this, that and the other.
If you don't fulfill it, if you forget about something, you go back to where you were with your parents
and you can hear something in your head saying, right, you haven't done that again, and that drags you down.
And it makes you question yourself and doubt yourself to see whether you are worth it, whether you are.
Maybe you're just crap and you're just not worth the time spent with you and it can drag you down.
But I think it got to the point that I started to realize that my internal sort of compass and sense of direction
allowed me to see what is within my power to affect and what isn't.
And that allowed me to grab a bit of distance and I say, no, I have to put a bit of a hold on it
because it's going to impact me potentially irreversibly in a way, my mental health or my wellbeing.
So stepping away in my case was probably a good choice which improved, you know, relationship
and, you know, the dependence. It wasn't quite there, not the immediate one.
Of course, there was plenty of other things that were going on at the same time, so you can't completely,
but at least you had a little bit of brain space to think about yourself and trying to redirect yourself
and focus on, for example, work. And I think that working as a clinician, we are also trying to some extent,
trying to some extent work on our vulnerabilities by trying to help others with theirs.
When people are coming with, no matter what problems they have, it could be physical, it could be mental,
we want to feel wanted to improve, to make sure that people feel better after seeing you than before as clinician.
I mean, I've noticed that when you're working, especially when you start working, you try to obviously impress your bosses,
your colleagues to make sure that they see you as a worthy person and that sort of makes you more vulnerable in a way.
I think that in my case, what changed in my work as a clinician, I changed my focus.
I stopped being, I stopped the feel to be accountable by the managers and I started more to redirect it,
to be more accountable to the patients, to my staff and this allowed me to truly focus on what my work is about.
It's not about meeting targets. It's not about fulfilling all the criteria that are set, that are not really...
Well, I understand working in the environment that you need to deliver, but it shouldn't be your main purpose
because that's the first step to being burned out.
It can't be just that.
It can't be just that because as much as I strive to make sure that the organization I'm working in is doing well
because otherwise I wouldn't be in the organization. That's not my intention. Nobody comes to work to do a bad job.
I want to make sure that it succeeds because I am representing it and I want to make sure that I bring value to it.
But I think directing your focus on the patient allows you to have a little bit of a distance
and allows you to focus your priorities on where we are truly needed.
All the other things will come with it. If you focus on your patient, on your environment,
it will deliver much better results even in the target form or however you want to measure it.
Yes, I would agree with the last point and I want to go back to what you've said and a few things that I've picked up.
I would agree in what you said. So for me, I notice if I focus on people, if I focus on my team,
if I focus on their growth, they will automatically do a good job and they automatically the patient safety come with.
So I wanted to pick up a few things that you said earlier on.
So I noticed there is a trend in what you said about your dad growing up and also how you are as a clinician now
or when you were starting off as a clinician. So you mentioned about your self-worth as productivity.
So it's almost very performative. Like you said, if you're not…
Because you want to deliver your expectations set by others.
And with what you said, it feels like there is no sense of control because you said you never know what's going to happen.
You never know what is going to be the outcome. You never know how he's going to react.
You never know what's not going to be good enough next.
And also I realised the language that has been used, which I've heard similarly myself growing up,
it's a lot of shaming language. So I think we spoke about this before with Brene Brown's definition of shame and guilt.
So shame is when you let it define that person. So like you said, you have poor memory.
It's as if whatever that you do, you cannot improve.
Rather than the guilt of, you didn't remember this incident, but you can build on it.
You can work on it rather than you have a poor memory full stop.
Even you said to me now, I have a poor memory.
The self-critical word stays with you, that defining sentence stays with you.
And you perpetuate that self-critical thinking in your head, either to me or to the children or to people that you speak to.
Because you almost let it be a sentence that sticks to you.
And sometimes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you really do forget something, you go, actually, yes, I do have a poor memory.
Yeah. Well, my dad always used to say, I have a very good memory, but very short.
I remember when I mentioned this joke to, I can't remember that was, I think a patient.
We were discussing something about something completely unrelated.
And I said, oh, I always say that I have very good memory, but very short.
And she was standing there with her daughter and her daughter didn't quite, she wasn't quite focused.
And what did he say? He said, this man has poor short-term memory.
And I would disagree with that.
I think you have good memories for things short-term and long-term.
Some dates you remember better than I do and you remember different things.
And I have things that I choose to remember in a different area.
That's the adaptation mechanism.
You have to work on your memory if you're being judged as someone who has poor memory.
Then you want to do everything to make sure that you compensate for it.
Yes.
But how much are you letting the sentence or the shaming language define you?
Because yes, we can compensate for it.
But what's the driver?
If the driver is to better myself, or is the driver not to be judged?
Is the driver of the fear of being less than?
Probably all of those are the drivers in some extent.
I think initially it's yet to be less judged or considered as less faulty in a way.
But also to make yourself better.
But I think it comes up later.
Then you try to work on those qualities that can really empower you to be a better person and therefore clinician.
And there you said it, the difference between after you've worked on it, it's not a fear-driven action.
It's an action for development.
It is, yeah.
And so you're not driven by emotional reactivity, you're not driven by fear.
You are driven from a place of grounded confidence to say, this is where I am now.
Where I am now is good enough currently, and I want to move forward.
And not shaming myself for being where I am now to move forward.
So you can see the end result is we want to move forward, but how we speak to ourselves is different.
Yeah, and the language is very important.
We need to give ourselves credit.
I mean, it's very easy to see a complaint about your behaviour or addressing your inadequacies in a way at work,
or some problems that you've done, rather than get praise.
And I think it's quite important to make a point of praising people.
I think dealing with the fears allowed me to reflect on my communication with my wife and with my children.
I think that trying to be open with yourself about the misgivings of your childhood or adolescent life,
and all the issues that you've come across, make you a bit more aware of things you want to avoid as a partner and as a parent.
And that directly has the transcription to how you are at work with your teams, with the patients,
and even dealing with other clinicians on a daily basis.
You start to realise that if you're driven by fear, by your inadequacies,
you never will be able to speak like equals with other clinicians or with a patient.
There was a lot of talk about consultation between clinicians and the patient, father and child relationship,
or the very authoritative approach.
And obviously now we're heading towards the partnership relationship,
because if we realise that if we talk to the patient like equals, we can get much better results.
And the patient can get much better results for themselves comparing to any other approach.
And this, I think, allows me personally, addressing my own personal fears, addressing my own vulnerabilities,
and dealing with the things that could have been better in my life, allowed me to focus on a patient better,
allowed me to find a common language and not to talk to patients from a privileged position.
I think it's important to understand that where we are privileged in a way that we have knowledge
and we invested a lot of time to make sure that we can provide the advice,
we are just like any other people, we have got better, worse moments,
but we are able to control it better for the benefit of our people who rely on us
and who trust us in the advice, in the opinions that we form.
So it's important to look at your past and start there, start looking at yourself,
talk to yourself, talk to others and be better.
What you've mentioned there reminded me about something about the communication skills.
So we had arguments, plenty of them, about using the phone.
No, yes, we did.
I used to get really, really upset when, mid-conversation, and you would just pull out a phone and start scrolling.
I used to armour up and get very defensive and I start blaming you
and use words like, why did you use your phone midway through?
Why are you not paying attention?
This argument was just ongoing.
We didn't really get anywhere.
We tried setting very clear boundaries to see no phone on the table,
no phone before the kids go to see, but it's still ongoing.
You would sometimes joke and say, you always catch me when I'm just taking my phone out.
It's just that minute of me scrolling through.
And we still didn't really get anywhere.
And I heard a podcast where Dax Shepard was talking about his wife,
Kristen Bell's charity, and every month she has to go to this charity.
And he realised that every month before she goes to the charity,
he would start an argument with her, saying along the line of, is this charity reliable?
Are they doing their work properly?
And every time there is an argument.
And so when he delved into his fear, he realised, actually, what am I scared of?
I am scared of my wife picking the charity over me.
The competition.
Yes.
Or I feel I'm scared that my wife is saying the charity is more important than me.
So I'm less important.
So it's jealousy or envy.
In some ways, because I think we need to define those words properly,
which we will in the next few episodes, but he felt inadequate in comparison to the charity.
And so he asked his wife directly and addressed his fear.
And his wife said, I will never pick any charity over you.
And ever since then, she still continues going to the charity.
And he's been okay since.
And so that gave me a very big light bulb moment thinking,
is it because I feel that you are choosing the phone over having a conversation with me,
over being present to me?
And we had a conversation about it.
And you said to me, I would never.
However important the phone is, work, whoever it is, friends, or whatever that I'm reading,
nothing will be as important as what you want to say to me.
And ever since then, I want to say I've been much calmer about it.
For me, it wouldn't even occur to be a race, any choice.
That's not the choice.
But the fear is, because the fear is driving it, I am reacting even without thinking about it.
So when I'm addressing the fear, I can then talk to you about the fear, however irrational it might be.
And I'll go, actually, I know why I'm reacting this way.
And now, when I see you looking at the phone, I just have to remind myself what you said.
And the fear is then toned down, or it's not as loud, and my armor is not up as quick as 0.01 second.
So it's good to think about talking to yourself.
Yes, and finding out why.
And talking to others.
And talking about it this way.
And in this case, I have to do a lot of deep diving myself to get to this point
with the help of other people's shared experience and lived experience.
And so when you talk about being self-critical, or having that critical voice around you,
you can automatically become self-critical to be better.
I realized that when I identify the self-critical voice in myself,
I can also help identify self-critical voice in my team.
And how that acts as barriers for them to reach their full potential.
So I think as clinicians, we do that with patients,
and we do that with people that we interact with on a day-to-day basis because we are leaders.
And so when we can tap into growing ourselves as a person,
we can tap into growing others and to coach them to be a better person for our role as leaders.
Amen to that.
I think dealing with the team and the leadership amongst the team requires a lot of self-work.
And we can manage people.
We can manage the tasks that they have to do.
We can develop people, teach them skills,
but we can't lead them if we don't look at ourselves
and try to uncover the things that are stopping us from becoming better.
I've got two thumbs up because you guys can't see me.
Yes, absolutely, absolutely agree with that.
And I hope with our shared experiences today, you're able to relate, reflect and rise.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
It's been Yuen and Mike and you have been listening to the Imperfect Clinician podcast.
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