Description:
Please note that this episode carries a trigger warning, as it covers topics related to death and suicidal thoughts. Please listen with care.
Whether or not we are aware of them, mental health issues exist within our families, workplaces, and communities and have a profound impact on nearly everyone we know.
In this episode, I’m opening up and being completely vulnerable as I share my own mental health story in the hopes that it will shed some light on these issues, normalize the experiences that so many of us are having, and perhaps most importantly, help someone who is struggling to feel a little less alone.
There were some hard-earned lessons I learned during the early days of navigating the trauma and loss of COVID. And I want to share those life-saving lessons with you in this episode, so you too can feel comfortable asking for help when you need it.
Just remember, it’s OKAY not to be okay!
In fact, it’s possible for you to turn your worst pain into your greatest source of power. Tuning in today could be the first step.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- The soul-sucking demands of being an early career physician
- Why it’s okay to not be okay
- Tragic stories from the early days of COVID in New York
- The importance of seeking professional mental health support
- Why your emotional well-being should be a top priority
- Allowing yourself to feel your feelings
- A reminder that you are not alone
- How to turn your deepest pain into a source of power
- The immense value of therapy and coaching
Want to invest in your future? Head to luyikathyzhang.com to book a free consultation call to help you live on YOUR terms, not anyone else’s.
Transcript
Teaser:
I think I cried nine times that day. Like even for me as a highly sensitive person and empath, that’s like a lot. My max is usually one or two and I just, I couldn’t see a way. Like everything was caving in on me. Nothing was within my control. And I just think like if I only knew then what I know now about how to relate to my emotions, how to regulate them, how to be kind to myself, that it was okay to ask for help, when to ask for help.
A lot of elements, which I mention on this podcast. Then what would my experience have been? And I realize now, looking back at the most psychologically traumatic experience of my life thus far, I can see now that I had to go through that to become the person that I am today. Like I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy in a million years, and this version of me does not exist if that didn’t happen.
Intro music:
You’re listening to the Purpose Filter, the show that helps living people apply dying lessons before it’s too late. My name is Dr. Luyi Kathy Zhang, a palliative. My name is Dr. . I’m a palliative care and hospice doctor, mindset and life coach, and I’m here to remind you that you’ve one extraordinary opportunity to live your best life on earth, and together we’re gonna help you do it your way.
The question I want you to keep in mind for this week is what is your mental health worth. Look, burnout is rampant. People are exhausted from work, covid, childcare, and just living. And maybe you haven’t been feeling a hundred percent, but everyone around you seems like they have it all together and you feel like something’s wrong with you because you haven’t felt like yourself in a while.
So I wanna share with you that you’re not alone. That two years ago I was facing the most painful and challenging time of my life, and I know I wouldn’t have felt so alone or as broken, if more people I knew openly shared what they were going through without the bullshit, just the real raw experience of being human from all the highs to certainly all of the lows.
And I just wanna put a trigger warning here. I do mention some suicidal thoughts and probably more death than usual, and I hope you’ll find some solace in these words. I’ll also share the four biggest lessons, the most transformational ones I learned during that time from therapy and afterwards that can help you or someone you love get through a similar situation.
So let’s get to it.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Purpose Filter. Let’s jump straight into it. Okay. Earlier this week was Mental Health Day, and I’m recording it A few days afterwards, I didn’t realize it was my bad, and I still see so much emotional anguish, distress, and anxiety in my healthcare colleagues, in people outside of healthcare in different industries, my friends, family, and beyond that.
Wanted to share the story in hopes that it would make someone feel a little bit less alone in hopes that it would normalize this experience that we’re all going through and not in a woe is me kind of way. But really to show you that we all have problems. We all go through some really tough shit, and hopefully if there’s anyone listening who’s going through the same thing, suffering in silence.
Maybe it’ll help, and that’s the best that I can hope at this point. I had brunch with one of my friends a few months ago. She is one of my best friends and she didn’t even know what I went through to this detail that I’m gonna share here. And through the story, you’ll also understand a bit more of how this podcast came to be.
And last episode, episode 56, I talked about how we really get a glimpse into the inner psyche of a person based on the stories that they share and the stories that are told about them. And so, you know that I love hospice and palliative care, I’ve talked about it before, the stories, helping people to relieve suffering, to improve the quality of their lives.
Talking with family, conversations that matter, right? Real raw emotions. No fluff, no pretenses. And so I had worked for four years as a hospitalist, meaning a physician that takes care of people who are sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, and I loved it. I enjoyed. But the schedule was so rough. My first job at a residency, I worked 10 weeks of nights and each week of nights was seven nights in a row, 13 hour nights.
And then you had the, the rest, you know, the second week after to recover. But you know, it would take you until Wednesday or Thursday to really recover from that. And I was commuting and I was like, why am I working more hours than I was in residency? At some point, the schedule, the demands, everything started to feel soul-sucking.
And if you’ve ever felt what it’s like to have your work or something, or someone be soul-sucking, it is just like totally demoralizing. I went to work with a fever a couple of times. I told you before about the viral illness and working through that. You know, having to get fluids in the hospital and so I made the scary decision to go back into fellowship when I decided, when I applied, I didn’t sleep.
For an entire month for the time that I submitted the application to the time that I got my first interview notification. That was about a month, and I probably slept maybe two, three hours for an entire month just because I was tossing and turning thinking like, is this the right decision? What have I done?
Why am I leaving this cushy job to go back into training and I don’t know what’s gonna happen? And. Fellowship was super challenging and rewarding, and I loved it. I felt like for the first time my life was on track, that this was the culmination of my medical career, everything that I had been doing my entire life up until then, and things were finally clicking into place.
And so seven months into my first job as a palliative care and hospice physician, the pandemic hit.
It was almost like the universe was saying, Oh, you, you like taking care of sick and dying patients. All right, hold my beer. We’ve got a worldwide global pandemic for you. And so I remember this very clearly. We were supposed to go to San Diego. We had flight booked and everything to, um, go to a national conference, our academy, our society’s national conference, and they called a meeting in the big auditorium.
They’re like, No one can go on work sponsored trips, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember we got really pissed. Were all of us in, you know, physicians, healthcare practitioners, all of us we’re like, This is not a big deal, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, me and my colleagues were like, We’re supposed to be in sunny California right now.
Like seriously. And obviously that. You know, funny now looking back on it. And so I wanted to share some lessons from that time period from what I learned during covid, during therapy, during coaching that I hope will help you a little bit if you are ever going through something similar. And so the first lesson, lesson number one, is it is okay to not be.
Like it’s okay to just not have it together at all to just be a mess. When, when the surge started, we were in New York. That was the first one in the country. I told myself like, This is what I signed up for. Right? I, I signed up for lots of death, lots of dying. This is what I literally applied to Fellowship for, and there were just, you know, I remember.
there was, um, I recently saw a interview, it’s called the the Real, it’s a daytime talk show, and one of the host is Tamara Mowry from Sister. Sister. And I think she had just, the clip was she had just come back from some time off, I think her niece had died. And one of the co-host was like, We’re so happy that you’re back.
And she goes, How are you? And she says, I’m ok. And then she paused and she just burst into tears. And I, I just think of how many of us were not okay back then, but we told ourselves and told other people, like, How are you doing? Oh, I’m fine. You know, just, you know, make it, trying to make it through another day or, you know, we’re okay and we were not okay.
I was not okay. You know. We didn’t have any visitation. Families couldn’t come. We had to do all of this. Talking to them, counseling them, having just, you know, decision making conversations about life or death, taking them off the ventilator, all this stuff over the phone. And, you know, I did a couple of these myself where, and our social workers had to do it the most where we would set up video calls for the patients and their families, especially in the icu and you, we.
Cell phones. Some of us had iPads and you kind of had to hold it at the door, you know, with a camera facing the patient because you wanted to save PPE for the people who actually had to go into the room. And so you would stand there holding. The iPad, the iPhone, whatever it was, while these families were just sobbing and like begging for the patient to get better.
And they’re like, Your kids are here. They miss you. You know, like you have to get better. You have to come home, like keep fighting, you know? And, and I think in Spanish it’s like, uh, maybe it’s luchar or lucha or something like that. Forgive me if I’m butchering the word or if it’s the wrong verb. Um, and then sometimes, you know, we’re, it’s outside the room, we had to stick our hands into the room so that we, the patient could hear, um,
Or we would ask the nurse to bring the phone inside and just have it at the patient’s, um, ear so that they could hear. And it was story after story, patient after patient. Like “they were fine. I don’t know what happened. They were fine. And now what do you mean there in the intensive care unit? What do you mean they can’t breathe? What do you mean? What is this? Like virus? What? What do you mean he’s dying? What do you mean you can’t do anything?”
You know, our list jumped from the twenties to the hot, I think 89 at, at its peak. And it was quadrupled in, I don’t know, a couple weeks maybe. I don’t, I honestly don’t even remember anymore.
You know, I had, um, one patient who was an MTA subway conductor, and, uh, the person I was talking to was his niece and He was like a father figure to him, and she was, Begging us, like, please do anything and everything that you can. Like, there was this one guy who was an Uber driver. He was in his forties.
Um, his wife had a young kid, maybe 3, 4, 5, and I was talking to her, um, and when he died I had to call her one to let her know, and two, to kind of also ask her usual things like, Do you want an autopsy? Et cetera, et cetera. And, um, I forgot to ask her the second question, so I had to ask. A second time after I told her that he had died, and she was like, Are you done?
And I was like, Yes, I think I’m done. And she’s like, I never want to get a phone call from this number. She recited the number of our hospital back to me. She’s like, I never ever want to get a phone call. From this number ever again. And I was like, Yeah, fair enough, ma’am. Um, my very, very first Covid patient, he was an older guy and uh, I was talking with his wife, They’ve been together for forever.
And she said that he had a PhD in thermal, nuclear dynamic physics, I believe. And I was like, Oh, cool. So what does he do? Is he a professor? She was like, No, he couldn’t find a job. So he works in finance , which I thought. Really interesting. She ended up sending me his obituary, um, after he passed. Uh, and it was just really touching like they had met because he put out a personal ad in like a magazine or a newspaper saying that he was, uh, seeking a partner to.
Um, I forget exactly what it was. I’ll find it and I will re recite it for you. Hopefully with her permission. But it was just so beautiful. Um, there was another dad, he had two young girls. Um, he was Asian and I was talking with a wife and she. Kept telling the girls that daddy was hibernating, kind of like a bear.
And I was like, You know, he’s really sick. You should probably tell them like, they should come in. She’s like, No, I don’t wanna worry them. All this stuff. And you know, he didn’t make it either and so many people didn’t make it. Um,
It got to the point where my colleague and I would joke about crying in the shower. Like if you were standing and crying in the shower, like, that’s normal. You’re just being efficient, you know, you’re, it’s gonna wipe away the tears.
Anyway, we have a very morbid, um, sense of humor in palliative care in hospice if you couldn’t tell already. Uh, but I swear we’re lovely people. Uh, and then the next step was sitting. It’s like, Oh, you couldn’t, you didn’t even have the strength to stand for your shower cry. You were sitting like, That’s a bad day.
And then I found another level I didn’t even realize was kneeling. Uh, and I, and I told her that, uh, one day I was like, you know, I, I knelt down in the shower last night to cry. And she was like, Oh, shit. Are you okay? And I just, I just think how. I don’t know how ridiculous and needed that was, and I, I can’t even really describe it, and I apologize for being kind of at a loss for words, but that’s what we were feeling.
Like there were days where I just did not wanna wake up like I wanted sedatives. I was really happy that I didn’t have any in my house. I thought about prescribing them for myself, but the thought of losing my license actually held me back. Um, I avoided sharp objects in my kitchen, um, and not because, and partially because I didn’t trust myself, but also I just wanted to feel something other than pain other than.
Numbness other than being wrecked. Uh, there was a, there was a day where I cried nine times that day. Nine, like even for me as a highly sensitive person, that’s, that’s a lot. I’m an empath, like I cry all the time. You know, life insurance, commercials, all that stuff. Uh, dog videos. My max is usually one or two a day and I just.
Could not see a way out. It like it felt like everything was caving in on me, that nothing was in my control. And I look back at the videos that I took during that time. Like so many other people you would not have known, you would not have known based on what I was posting on my personal Instagram.
Cause I hadn’t started any of this, um, until, you know, last year you would not have known because. You know, we went hiking, we were baking, we were making soap, we were going to Black Lives Matter marches, um, Airbnb trips to different states. I was learning how to do smokey eye tutorials on YouTube cuz I was like, Oh, eventually I’m gonna have to do my own makeup for my wedding.
And, I think it was the threat of having to do another surge around the fall, early fall, mid fall that I was like, I, I cannot do this anymore. And I was like, I have to, I have to get help.
And that is lesson number two, which is, please, please ask for help. I started therapy in October after my boards. I barely passed.
I, I don’t even know how I manage that. The intake was done by one physician of the group. I didn’t wanna work with someone in the hospital. I paid out of pocket because I was ashamed. And please do not be ashamed of seeking help getting therapy. It is the best thing that has ever, ever happened to me. And.
Uh, this intake person then gets your story and then matches you up with a person, and I could not make it through that intake. I think it was a 30 minute intake without crying. I think I cried four or five times in those 30 minutes because I could not recount my story and what I was feeling to her without breaking, totally breaking down.
And I paid out of pocket. I paid out of pocket. And I remember very distinctly when she told me what their hourly rate was. I was like, I can, I Can you do it for lower? I bargained them down by a hundred dollars and probably all told, maybe I saved two grand. 2500. I don’t know. Um, over the course of therapy, I had the money.
At that time I was saving up for a house. I had a lot of money in the bank, saving up for a down payment. I could have easily afforded therapy three times, five times over. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was, was that I did not believe that my mental health was worth an extra a hundred dollars an hour.
And that is, that really saddens me thinking back now because, I, I would not be here. Like I, this would not happen. None of this would happen. I would not be here. And so I hope that you, through this story, can recognize that if you’re gonna spend money on anything, your mental health, your emotional wellbeing has to be top of priority.
Absolute number one. Cuz without it, nothing else happens. Without it, nothing else. Matters.
And so during therapy, she taught me a lot of, My therapist was a trauma informed therapist. She’s wonderful. She taught me a lot of things. And the third lesson that I wanna share with you is to allow yourself to feel. I was, I had so many emotions and so many other people did during that time as well.
One was anger. I was so angry, you know. Even at, even at my friends, I didn’t even tell them, but I had friends who I’m like, You don’t understand what it’s like. And of course they couldn’t. But I was just so wrapped up in that I was angry at people who were like, This is a hoax. And I was like, Well, if this is a hoax, it’s a sick fucking joke.
Um, cuz it, it’s pretty awful. I was waiting for like a camera crew to come out and be like, Oh, okay. You know, this is a joke. Um, I’m so stressed. I felt so isolated, and I kept telling myself, my friends who aren’t in healthcare, my best friends, they don’t understand. I’m alone. I’m alone. And those thoughts just kept circulating in my head.
My husband reached out to them and was like, Hey, maybe can you like. Reach out or do something for her. They sent a, you know, bunch of food from Zabars because, you know, I wasn’t making lunch, I could barely get myself out of bed. And um, my husband filmed the moment where, you know, he brought me the food they had coordinated so he could send it to them cuz they don’t live near nearby.
And, um, you could tell, I, I go from one moment where he’s, I’m like, Oh my God, thank you so much. It’s so amazing. And then, I burst into tears, like I start sobbing immediately, and that’s how fragile emotionally I was. Um, and my therapist really worked on awareness and emotions with me because my coping mechanism was denial and intellectualization.
Emotions would bubble up, and I would squash it down. I’d be like, Nope, not now. Not me. I’m better than this. Not today. I’m a doctor, I’m a professional. This is what I signed up for. No, no. And it was just, I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine. Even though clearly I was not fine. I took Christmas Eve off and I was watching Kelly Clarkson video.
She was singing me Shallow, I think with Garth Brooks and I just, I lost it and I took a video of myself because I was like, I, maybe I should, you know, learn and see how I’m processing my emotions in real time. Cuz I was doing the work with my therapist and I was talking about how lucky I felt. Take Christmas Eve off from work to be at home, to be warm, to have a Christmas tree, to have gifts under it, and how so many people that I had encountered earlier that year were not able to do that.
And if there’s anything that I can tell you, again, it’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to have feelings. It’s okay to just be a total mess and cry all the time and not feel like you’re gonna be able to make it through. But you will, that it’s not gonna be easy, and you may not be able to do it alone.
You’re probably not gonna be able to do it alone, and you’re gonna have to tell people and ask for help. And I, I just think if I only. Then what I know now about how to relate to my emotions, how to regulate them, how to be kind to myself, that it was okay to ask for help and when to ask for help. A lot of elements, which I mentioned just in general on this podcast, I feel like I would’ve had a totally different experience.
I don’t know if I would’ve been as traumatized. I don’t know if I would’ve had the experience that I did.
And the fourth lesson that I wanna share with you is that it is possible for you to turn your worst pain into your greatest source of power. I always like to say that therapy got me back to normal, got me back to feeling like a little bit more like myself, or I wasn’t so emotionally laid by, I wasn’t crying all the time.
And coaching got me to see what was possible. I think I overlapped them maybe by about one or two months. And you know, I’m still getting coached now. So that is an ongoing thing that I will continue for the rest of my life. But now looking back at the most psychologically traumatic experience of my life thus far, I can see now that I had to go through that to become the person that I am today.
Like I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy in a million years, and I a hundred a thousand percent recognize that this version of me does not exist. If that didn’t happen to me, this podcast doesn’t exist. If that didn’t happen, My business being on Instagram, trying to write and trying to do all these things, none of that would’ve happened if I had not been so traumatized by Covid if I had not been on the brink of like, maybe I don’t wake up tomorrow.
You know? So life is hard, man. Life is so hard. There is so much shit that happens to us and. You know, it’s not all good. That’s just the simple fact of it.
Am I sharing this story with you in the most intimate details that I probably haven’t told? Um, beyond. Maybe the three people that are closest to me. I hope that it gives you an example of what’s possible when you ask for help, when you tell people how you’re feeling, when you allow yourself to feel all the bad emotions and work with someone, a therapist, a coach, to help you through.
Because we’re not meant to live this life alone. We’re not meant to go through this alone. You do not need to feel like no one understands you because not nearly enough of us talk about it. It’s happening more and more and more, and I love that. You know, um, like Constance Wu, just put out a book about how she literally had pulled herself over the balcony of her apartment.
She was ready to jump. And you know how important it is for us to be like, Yeah, I was in the shit two years ago and I got help, and it’s possible to be even better. Like, I am so good now. Like I feel so good about my life and where it’s going and what I’m trying to do, and it would not have been possible without all of.
So I hope that you get to see that it is possible that from me to you, if I was able to do that, you’re able to do that. And I know it always sounds really trite. Like if I could do it, you could do it. No, but seriously, it is possible. And so if you’ve gotten to this far, I just, I thank you. I am eternally grateful for you.
And if. Helped you. If it helps someone else. If anyone can just derive a little bit of something from this episode, then it will have served its purpose.
and so that’s how the podcast and the business was born. I am here simply to pay it forward, to help you see what’s possible in your own life, to feel even more joy and fulfillment, and passion and gratitude, all the things. So I’m here to help. As always, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. I will see you next week.
