Episode 8 - Self-compassion

In this episode, we talk about self-compassion, but before we start, reflect on the times
where you have put yourself at the bottom of the priority list.
I have to put my hands up several times where I put someone else's priority over myself,
such as children, family or work.
And then how did you feel when you react when you are not the best version of yourself?
Glad you could join us today.
Welcome to The Imperfect Clinician.
Welcome to The Imperfect Clinician.
Last episode, we talk about authentic self, about being honest and open with ourselves.
And today, we will talk about the importance of being compassionate with ourselves and
the way and how we can do it.
So what does it mean to you, Mike?
Self-compassion, as such, because that's what we want to focus on.
For me, it means being happy with ourselves.
It's just enjoying being with myself in my company, being comfortable and also how do
I personally make sure of it, that I stay level, that I become happy and I retain it.
And how do I find peace with myself?
Because with all the struggles that we have around us, this allows us to breathe and to
stay content.
But when I looked a bit further and I read a little bit more, I came across a clinical
psychology review which mentioned three facets of compassion and it defines it as like a
sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.
In this context, it would be ourselves as well.
And those three facets of compassion is noticing, feeling and responding.
And compassion itself, not the self-compassion, involves feeling for another.
And it's like a starter to discussion about empathy, which empathy can be described as
feeling as another.
It's opposing the sympathy where you have feelings towards another.
And in general, the compassion is the desire to alleviate the suffering.
So that goes by encyclopedia of positive psychology.
So when you talk about the three facets, when you talk about noticing as the first thing,
that reminds me of being mindful, is how I would see it.
Yeah, it's just to identify yourself, your position, where we are.
You identify the suffering you can be going through or the problems, the issues, yeah?
You're mindful of it.
Yeah, and you said feeling, and that for me means experiencing and accepting my feelings.
Because a lot of the time when I feel positively or negatively, a lot of the time negatively,
that I want to push that feeling away.
I don't want to address it or I don't want to accept that feeling.
And what you mentioned about responding is what I have been trying to do and still trying
to do, is to respond to my feelings with kindness and warmth.
And when I was reading a bit more for my own journey, I noticed Pema Chodron, the Buddhist
nun, talks about compassion.
She says, only when we know our own darkness well, can we be present with the darkness
of others.
So it becomes real when we recognise our shared humanity and in some ways understanding that
we are not suffering in isolation.
A lot of the people will share similar feelings.
So I wonder, have you always enjoyed being yourself, especially with your thoughts?
What do you mean with your thoughts?
I think myself sometimes, and I know a lot of people will try to, so let's say I've had
a really hard day today, I'm trying to avoid the thoughts in my head because I'm too tired
to deal with it, so I choose snubbing, whether it's snubbing when I scroll on social media
or on YouTube or sometimes snubbing with food, some people use alcohol and a few other things.
And it took me some time and a lot of practice, continuous practice, to be at peace with the
thoughts and accepting the thoughts as they are instead of letting it define me.
Because I heard this quote from Dr. Susan David in her book Emotional Agility.
She said before we go through our emotions, we need to go to our emotions and I think
a lot of the time I am going away from it because I am avoiding it and it takes a lot
of courage to go to it.
Okay, so in my case that was numbing initially.
I mean, I think it's quite important to distinguish numbing as a practice of distracting yourself
rather than diverting your attention to something that's more nourishing for the brain.
And I think that there is a significant difference between numbing and being self-compassionate
in that respect.
When I had thought about it, I thought that it's more of a conscious choice to do good
things for us, to take positive steps for our mental well-being.
And it feels to me like being self-compassionate.
It's a bit like escapism that is conscious, that you choose to do something for yourself
to nourish yourself.
And escapism as such, not defined by numbing where you just do things just to switch off
and completely distract yourself.
I would rather be diverted into something that is a bit more brain nourishing.
So in that context, I feel that escapism can be a useful tool for ourselves.
So would you say the difference in this situation is I've had a stressful day at work, I came
back and I go, oh, I really don't want to think about it, so I'm just going to watch
the TV, compared to I came back, addressed how I'm feeling, I'm feeling really tired,
what do I need tonight, an early night, some relaxation time, and perhaps writing how I'm
feeling down, and how do I define my relaxation this time, today I'm picking watching TV.
So I'm doing it in the conscious way, rather than with the intention of avoidance.
I think there's also one more element thinking about it, because when you just switch on
TV and you do things, you have to remember that you're coming from usually a busy environment,
working as a clinician can be quite stressful and you have your mind completely going.
So all of a sudden, switching it off and doing things subconsciously in a way, you just switch
on TV, YouTube, whatever your medium that you enjoy, is not allowing your brain to be
slowly extinguished in a way, the unwinding doesn't seem to be conscious, and you have
to divert yourself into this mode of, right, I'm going to do something as you mentioned
warm and good for ourselves, to be able to use the time effectively and efficiently.
I mean, if you're at work for 6, 8, 10 hours, and you're focused on that pretty much most
of the time, it's very difficult for your brain to stop immediately, and I feel that
if you go into the mode of numbing, so just subconsciously doing things that don't have
a lot of meaning, you just waste an opportunity to choose how to nourish yourself.
And I think I noticed a difference after trialling it, is when I choose numbing, so when I choose
right, I don't think about it, I am too tired, I'm just going to watch something to take
my mind off things, when I finish watching TV or just scrolling mindlessly, that self-critical
voice comes in and it makes me feel really guilty, sometimes it's shaming me, sometimes
it's judging me, and the difference when I say right, let me evaluate what I need today,
let me address how I feel, and even if the end result is the same, I'm still choosing
to scroll through social media but set a time limit for myself, that self-critical voice
or that defensive mechanism doesn't come up because I felt that I was able to deal
with the feelings and then manage or try to manoeuvre around my emotions with a bit more
rational state of mind, because a lot of the time my ability or inability to make a conscious
effort, like you said before, is based on how full my cup is. And I notice how full
my cup is also affects how I respond to things, so this is my biggest mantra at the moment
that I've heard. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, said between stimulus and response
there is a space, and in that space is the power to choose our response, and in our response
lies our growth and our freedom. So I wonder what do you like to do that nourishes you?
That varies, I think in different episodes of our lives, in different periods we reach
for different things that we can find fulfilling in a way, but also we feel like we are moving
forward, so trying to find something that makes you creative is always a good choice.
Making music, drawing, painting, colouring, whatever you might find useful. When we were
doing a sketching of this episode, we pointed out a few terms that we listed one after another,
so there's self-love, play, meditation, stillness, sleep, rest, self-care, eating well, and I
added something that I think is quite important for self-compassion, which is boredom, also
can be classed as unplanned time, and whereas you can see, I could see a lot of value in,
for example, gaming, well, a lot of value, people see it differently depending on how
you approach it, if it's a no-main-exercise, you're not going to come out richer out of it,
but it could be a positive experience as well, if you have some sort of target or whatever
you want to do with it, but when it comes to now, for example, I do spend some time on a bike,
bike keeps your brain refreshed, and by focusing and putting conscious effort into the physical
activity, it allows you to take your brain off, and with all the release of endorphins during
the exercising, it makes me happy. Picking up a guitar, it's always time well spent,
you don't have to write a top, you know, song or whatever, but even just fiddling with it,
learning something new always is appreciated. So talk me through about the guitar, because I
know that you really enjoy playing guitar and it relaxes you, is it something that you picked up
recently, is it something that you've always done? Well, I've been doing it on and off for a very
long time, I always describe it as not as playing, as using the guitar, because it's something that,
without putting a lot of effort into it, allows you to escape the world around you into all of a
sudden sounds and noises, and depending on your mood, you can create an environment around you
that exhibits some kind of feeling of, well, I wouldn't call it excitement as such, but feeling
of calmness and stillness, and it allows you to think clearer and be more in tune with your
emotional side, I think. I mean, you know, I have always been listening to quite heavy music and
talking about emotional feelings may not necessarily be that relevant, but still in that
you can find expression that allows you to react to the world around you, where how you're going
to do it is entirely up to you, but in my case, just spending time doesn't have to be long,
it doesn't have to be hopefully eventful or fruitful, I'm not recording it, just spending
time for myself playing the guitar gives me a lot of joy, but I want to go back into this boredom.
Before we go back to the boredom, I wanted to share, so I play the piano? Oh yes, what do you
do? I thought I was going to ask you. No, because I wanted to share how your pure
enjoyment with the guitar really was inspiring for me. So I played the piano ever since I was
young, but in some way kind of forced to do it because you have to do it, exams, grades,
and you have to move up the ladder, so it's quite a performative art instead of, I've never
experienced that playing just for the fun of it, playing without schedule, playing just because,
and I stopped playing for 10 years because it wasn't an enjoyable time for me, and you know,
when you're a child or when you're a teenager, the last thing you want is for people to tell
you what to do, and so I stopped playing for quite a while, and when I saw you playing the guitar,
just sometimes just plucking a few tunes, and it's like, okay, I feel better now, and then put the
guitar back. There is no obligation, that's just pure joy, and I can see how that really influenced
the children, and it started to encourage me to go back to the piano, and what you say at that point,
you said to me, which I still remember now, you said, don't worry if you don't play every single
day on the piano that we've got at home. If you play for a while, you play. If you don't play,
then you don't play, but it's there if you need it. It's always an option, it's always there for you.
Yes, and there's no, almost like no obligation, and you do this at your own leisure, nobody's going to
pressure you, you're not going to get judged, it's not performative. That releases me from all of my
fear, my trauma about how piano used to be, and now when I go and play, I just go and play based
on how I'm feeling, and I don't wait for a reaction, because usually when it's performative,
you wait for a praise, or you wait for a telling off, whereas when I just play, it's purely for me,
so whatever that people are saying or hearing, it does not matter, and it's such a liberating
feeling to be able to go back to an instrument with that freedom in my heart, and it really
impacted the children. They will come to me and they'll just ping a few keys, and then I'll just
keep playing, and sometimes they'll go on their little piano and then they'll just play, and we
don't, I am consciously not asking them to play or schedule in piano time at all for them, we just
encourage it by example, I guess. Being around instruments is always a bonus, you can do it,
but you're not for, you choose to do it, and this is the difference rather than being forced to do
it, I mean you can't force enjoyment, you can't make yourself happy with force, you know, or
others can't make you happy with force, there's got to be initiative, it's a bit like with love,
nobody can make you love things, it has to come from your inner self, otherwise it's just going
to be fake and it's not going to work for you. And so by sharing that story I want to say thank you.
Oh it's a pleasure, and the difference is that because you had lots of structured play,
you're just much better in the instrument, now you can enjoy what you've learned many many years
ago, whereas I'm not reading the notes like you do, I just get on with whatever I can do.
I still try to get better, but now I feel that it's more consciously, it's not like when you're
very young, say all right let's make a band together, and you know we of course we did
have a band and sending all the love to the other people who remember us playing,
but now it's more you're doing it more for yourself, you're not doing it for others,
for your mates, for being popular, known, or for fame, like some people have this idea that this
is going to make them great, and very very few succeed in it, but now you just do it for yourself
and it's yours, no one can take it away from you, so it's this protected time where you have to
escape from what you were doing and just focus on one thing, and the music always can soothe even
the most savage beast around you. Let me go back to this boredom, I keep going back to the boredom
because I think it's a very important part of being self-compassionate, ever since I can remember
I could lift my arm probably and leg, I just want to say I'm groaning because it's something I really
struggle with, and I think it's very important to have time where you, where it's completely unplanned,
where you get to stare at the ceiling, at the fire away, a tree, whatever, just to
in a way meditate with yourself, you're not doing it like a conscious meditation, but you're just
staring, it doesn't have to last long, what it allows, what it allows me to do, it's to
completely switch off and see how I function, trying not to do anything except from the obvious
breathing. I want to say that is a type of meditation, it is a type of meditation, because people
think meditations close eyes cross legs, but no, you can do that like you said, you can do walking
meditation, you can do any type of meditation. I feel that when I have this time where I catch
myself just staring into the far, far away, into the horizon, then you can come up very soon after
that, immediately after that, with some good idea or solution of the problem or something that you
were thinking, because it sort of releases the bandwidth of your brain and it allows you later
to focus better, and I think this is a very useful skill. Unfortunately, I don't have that much time
to, you know, just stare in the ceiling and I don't do it, it's not a common occurrence these days,
but occasionally it does give me a bit of, it's hard to say, it's not even reflection, it's not
grabbing perspective, it's just resting from the activities that are going on in the brain, I think,
and I think it's important in any creative process, in any decision-making process, that you release
the bandwidth, the thought process, to try to do nothing, it's very difficult not to do, and I'm
probably very experienced meditating, and people can confirm that, like yourself.
It feels like you're saying you're trying to distance yourself from the thoughts,
and just observe them.
No, this is the thing, I'm not trying to do anything, there's a thing, I'm trying just to
make sure that my head just is let loose to not to think, to be free, not to perform any activity.
So you're just observing.
It can be minutes, but observing informs a conscious decision to do so, but this is just,
just happens, you just float away, and you have this time where you don't feel, don't think, don't
focus on anything, and then you go back.
This meditation, I've just realized, what you say is meditation.
You always said to re-stare at the ceiling, and I said I can't do it.
We just do it in a different way, I guess.
But I never meditated, I'm full of admiration to your time spent with yourself on meditation,
but that's not something that I ever considered.
But yeah, if we're looking at staring in the far distance as a meditation, it's a good idea.
Because I was sharing earlier on that I really struggle with staring at the ceiling,
or have things unplanned.
And we had a conversation about this perhaps several times already,
and you were asking me why?
Yes, I did, many times.
And I couldn't answer him at the start, but after doing a lot of reflection, I think
because I was used to being productive, so every five minutes have to be accounted for.
Okay.
And so not doing anything makes me feel like I'm wasting my time.
I'm feeling really guilty about this.
But that's the idea, that this is time for yourself to take a step back, to make it your own,
and not belonging to the environment, to your schedule.
Yeah, and I think now I know what you are saying is actually meditation.
It's, for me, more of an active practice, because if you are used to doing it,
you can just switch off.
You can just go so far away where your thoughts, your feelings, doesn't affect you.
You're just there.
You're just present, but there isn't anything else.
And for me, it takes a conscious effort to do that.
Yeah.
Obviously, we have many different difficulties during the day,
and problems to resolve in our clinical life, in work, at home.
And how do you start to overcome the difficulties?
And what helped you?
What didn't help?
Do you have any experience with that?
So, I tried a lot of things.
I've tried reading.
I love reading, always love to.
As a child, my mum would say,
I will put you somewhere, anywhere on the bed or somewhere on the floor,
surround you with books, and I'll just go and cook something,
and when I'm back, you're still in the same spot.
So reading has always been my thing.
But I wanted to try to find a few more outlets
to manage the day-to-day stresses, feelings, expectation, all the rest.
And when we had our discussion about how I really struggled to play,
because the definition of play is not planned.
So I actually read Dr. Schubert's round book about play.
And it was really eye-opening and fascinating for me,
because we could have a healthy conversation
where my version of play and Mike's version of play can be different,
but we see it as playing.
I found meditating helpful.
So there is Pema Chodron's book on how to meditate,
which I've recommended to a few other people,
which they find helpful as well.
But I think the biggest thing, especially with young children,
is I've sort of experienced, failed, learned from my mistakes.
And the biggest one was boundaries.
So I have to admit, I'm really poor at setting boundaries at the start.
Now I'm better, I wouldn't say I'm great at it.
Is it boundaries for yourself or for others?
Boundaries for myself.
So I set the boundaries in saying this is what I need
to make sure that I am not depleted in energy, in rest.
And the purpose of me doing it is because I don't want to present
a version of myself where I don't like or it's not aligned to my value.
So let's say if I am too tired,
I had really poor sleep for two, three days when something happened,
when the girls had a difficult day or when you had a stressful day,
and I am completely stretched, the girls might be arguing
and I might snap and shout at them.
And that's not aligned with my value.
So I don't want to present that version of myself
because after my reaction, because I'm reacting to it,
I won't be happy with it.
And so Brene Brown's research shows that compassionate people
have a sense of boundaries and how they allow themselves
to be treated by others and how they allow themselves
to talk to themselves.
And I think that has been really helpful for me
because in my ongoing journey, the biggest learning curve for me
is how do I talk to myself
and how do I say to anyone professionally and personally
or in a social setting,
no, no, I can't do this or no, I can't do this yet.
Because a lot of the time when we're in a stressful environment,
saying yes perhaps feels a bit easier.
Saying yes perhaps makes me feel that I'm more productive.
Saying yes perhaps feels more performative.
Saying yes perhaps makes me feel that I can be more helpful
so I have more worth, I have more value.
And it also puts you in a different perspective
from others' point of view,
and that puts you into a false thinking
that others perceive you better so you are a better person.
Yes, and I had to learn it the hard way
when I keep saying yes in the hope
that people will understand when to stop.
Get off your back.
Yeah, but in essence, nobody knows your boundary.
Nobody knows my boundary.
I certainly wouldn't know anybody else's boundaries,
let alone somebody that I see every single day
because it's something that you have to learn to gauge for yourself
and it's something that you have to try throughout the years
for me to get to now an equilibrium point where I go,
okay, this is what I need in the morning,
this is what I need in the evening for me to reset.
Sometimes I need more, sometimes I need less.
What is the minimum almost daily requirement for me?
Okay, so what is the right amount of time
that you spend on self-compassion?
Can we overdo it?
I don't think so.
I think we are doing it less than we should.
When are we going to do the work?
When are we going to do the things that need to be done?
So I think if you look at it from a professional setting
or any work setting really, whether you're in university studying
or when you're doing work or when you're doing something
that is to be expected, day-to-day job,
being self-compassion doesn't have to be time-consuming.
Being self-compassion can be you fail to achieve what you want to do
and instead of saying to yourself,
oh crap, I'm useless, like we talked about shaming before,
instead we say, right, I'm acknowledging how I feel,
I feel that I am less than, but how do I respond with kindness?
To yourself.
To yourself, in how you speak to yourself.
Can you feel bad about spending too much time on looking after yourself?
Yes, that's guilt.
Yes, that's guilt.
Okay, so tell me more about where does the guilt fit into self-compassion.
So why do you think we feel guilty when we take time for ourselves?
Because we don't see ourselves as important.
Because usually in our priority we are not the first one.
It's usually family, other half, work, children, partner,
other relationship, mother, daughter, dad,
you know, any connection that you have a lot of the time for us as parents,
children, that is the priority.
It's really, really hard, both as mums and dads,
but especially for mums to put yourself first,
because for me it's battling the society's expectation
that you have to be a good mum and you have to,
I want to be good at what I'm doing as a clinician.
And this image of perfection that is unachievable
and outside of that a lot of the time what I've heard growing up
has always been everybody else first, I am last.
It takes a lot of re-learning to rewire my neural pathway in a way.
Because I have to tell myself, so initially it goes to,
I need 30 minutes because I need some time to exercise.
And then you're overcome with so much guilt because you're asking
some time out for yourself, and then with time that volume or the intensity is much less.
And you have, I'm lucky enough to have a partnership with you,
because some people don't, some people are single parents,
so then they have to take everything on themselves.
People who have support network can then say,
right I am handing over let's say my children over to family so we can have some self-care time.
From a work perspective it's very easy to say yes I can do this,
somebody asked me again yes I can do this and yes I can do this,
but then it's draining me so much that I can't give 100% to everything that I want to put in.
Okay, so in the professional setting as a leader, how do you ensure that people,
maybe you don't, that people should practice self-compassion, work, create stress,
you work with your bosses, colleagues, everybody, your patients, customers, whoever you're dealing with.
And how do you ensure as a leader in the organization,
especially around dealing with health, around clinical issues, how do you ensure your staff,
your team has right approach and right tools to practicing self-compassion?
I think for me the first thing that I always, two things perhaps, one curiosity.
So I would always like to find out how are they as a person because if you can't
practice self-compassion on a personal level in terms of how you speak to yourself in your head,
it's really hard because you don't have that transferable skills to a professional level.
And so my way as a leader, and I hope I want to say this is a strength for me as a leader, I
understand, try to gain an understanding by speaking to members in my team,
talking about how they are, and this is where the second point comes in, vulnerability.
And when I share my own struggles, I find that others are more likely to share their
own struggles and from how they're sharing their struggles, a lot of the time how they
speak to themselves are then reflected in their words. Okay, so how do people in your team
can determine that you are or want to be or aspire to be a self-compassionate person yourself
in order to present it, give an example? I'll give an example when somebody new
came to join the team, like any new people, you would find that it's a steep learning curve
and depending on where you are, so in where we are, I provide a very, I want to say I provide a
very good training and support in place for people who are new in the team and for ongoing
team members. And when there is some difficulties, like you would in any work setting,
instead of telling them what to do, I tend to ask them the question,
right, what are you struggling with? Because I think in clinical setting you will have the
two different ways of dealing with things. One where it's a clinical straightforward
patient safety type of thing, where it has to be a straightforward this is what I'm telling you to
do because I'm more experienced and this is involving patient safety. But it can be
something that is completely different. So I sent one of the newer team members
to be a representative of me in one of the meetings which we co-attended last time and she
went this time and she came back with summaries, pointers of the meeting, what actions needed going
forward. And instead of telling her, right, this is what I want you to do next, what I said to her
was what do you think? What do you think we should do? What do you think you would struggle with?
And what support do you need from me? And she came up with a few ideas on her own. We discussed
about pros and cons of each, discussed about the potential struggles that she has
and we talked about how I can support her and then she started doing it. So this
empowered her to do something that is new, out of the norm and she felt great after doing it.
So this is one part of it. The other part is we have ongoing work and we use
Brene Brown's inventory, which we mentioned earlier on in the podcast, to identify areas of
personal development that everyone would like to work on, myself including. And I share my report
with everybody, everyone shares it and we talk about how we can get there. And so by showing ways
where practicing self-compassion, checking in how they're doing it to themselves,
how they're speaking to themselves and then using that transferable skills to a professional setting,
it's empowering based on the feedback. So if you were leaders or clinicians,
make sure that you pay attention to the concern for struggles and problems of others
and don't be afraid of showing those yourself as well as an example, to make sure that
the struggles, we have to understand at some point that struggles, it's a thing of a society,
it doesn't just affect us, there are other people that have got struggles
and we're not with them ourselves. So leaders, pay attention to concern for the suffering of others
and make sure that you can respond to them. Would you agree with that?
Yeah. And I wanted to share a conversation with a patient because we were talking about how
she was saying yes to everybody and it was really affecting her mental health
and I had a follow-up conversation with her and she said, what you said to me last month really
made me think and what I said to her was saying yes to others means saying no to yourself
because she was struggling to say no to other people so she was saying yes,
not much difference from me saying yes to everybody at work because people do that to
some extent in different parts of their life and she said, I realise I've been saying no to myself
all these while so I've started saying no to other people but because I can't do it face to face,
I'm texting at the moment, I feel really guilty but then I try not to look at my phone and then
after a while it goes. So now I'm saying no more, I'm setting boundaries, that's what she said
and I feel so much better without making any changes to my medication and that was
really, I was really pleased to hear that. Another example I want to share
is about how I can see the practice of self-compassion reflects a team member at work.
It's a relatively new team member and she was great at what she's doing but she
was feeling out of place when there is something new but she would take it on and take it on her
stride. There was once where she had to pull herself out there and discuss about something
and she was bombarded with criticism, not a supportive or constructive feedback
as I would like to say. After that incident and all the emotions running high and the
feelings, I noticed there was a lot of shaming, self-critical voice going on that was verbalised
and we talked through how we can practice self-compassion
words in our head and we practiced the mantra of I'm good enough, this doesn't define my self-worth
and so after some work on that together and for that individual team member to do,
she went on another setting and then realised the person that gave her really
to the face criticism was also one of the speakers in that setting. When feedback was requested from
the group, nobody really wanted to do it because they didn't want to be vulnerable and put
themselves out there. They did not feel psychologically safe in that environment
and this particular team member practiced the self-compassion voice in her head
and said I will do it even if I don't do it right, it doesn't define me as a person and she did
give the feedback. She got a thank from the speaker, she felt really empowered,
she came back and told me about it because that wasn't asked by me or by anybody. She felt that
she could do it and it was how the self-compassion practice on a daily basis or the trigger of it
started the awareness, the mindfulness and then empower a friend in the workplace to step up
and rise above what she would have done before. Yeah and I think it's important for us to
understand that we all have struggles and we all need to look into them, be mindful of them
and Kristin Neff defines or puts self-compassion into three elements as self-kindness,
common humanity and mindfulness and I think self-kindness is yeah we have to be good to
ourselves, we need to find time to be warm and nice with ourselves, that we take care of us.
The common humanity comes down to realizing that everybody has struggles, we're not the only people
in the world that have got troubles and by sharing it we realize that we are part of
greater puzzle of mixture of people and their experiences and I also think that the last part
the mindfulness so being able to realize what can trigger the suffering in a way allows us to
identify it, feel it and then do something about it and then respond to it, action it in a way.
I hope our experiences both personal and professional ones
is something that you can relate to and also allow you to reflect on your day-to-day and
let's hope we can all rise together. Thank you all for listening.
Thank you. It's been Yuen and Mike and you have been listening to the Imperfect Clinician podcast.
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