Okay. There have been some updates to my journey. In some ways, it doesn’t seem to amount to a lot, but each little step is part of it, and I decided it was worth sharing. The latest development is that I am deciding to continue working at the clinic. Over the last few weeks, I had been having thoughts that I would be ready to exit and make room for something new. I was feeling that the job was taking so much from me despite the modest commitment of only 15 hours a week. I thought of it in spiritual terms, and how perhaps my soul was ready for a leap of faith into a new path that would have better alignment.

And honestly, because I was considering this route, all sorts of old baggage that had previously been shelved and forgotten came roaring back in a way that zapped my energy and sent my emotional body and thinking into the gutter. How overwhelming it feels to walk away from the livelihood where I had invested so many years and educational dollars? The unsolved question of how I would make my mortgage payments once the clinic paychecks stopped? The shedding of a professional identity that may not be my primary form, but it is a significant one, and it would be missed.

So I’m not doing it. Not yet. I don’t think the path is for me to intentionally overwhelm myself. I checked it out, and I need to unpack several issues and heal towards a more stable foundation for when I take on that life-shifting transition. And that feels clear and good and easy.

And while work has been challenging, and exhausting and overwhelming, I can re-frame how there is still a lot for me to learn and experience there rather than just feeling pummeled and abused. I don’t know how long that will continue to be true, but it is for right now.

The last few weeks have taxed me. My sense of this human journey is ever shifting. I’m not sure that I can tell the story. There is an audience in mind that might be blocking the narrator from telling the real story. How is the body and the mind and the spirit connected? What is my relationship to healing and to health? What am I trying to do for clients? Who is reading this and what purpose does it serve for them?

Well, what feels unique about my experience is that I chose to go to medical school and I even completed residency to work in a system that I have always been disillusioned by. And yet, my criticism grows stronger still as time goes by to now reach this critical threshold where I see that I am not supposed to stay in this system.

It benefits me to go to work 3 days a week and support my life financially with the professional work that I have made a big commitment to attain. There are times where I feel confident that I am doing the best I can within a broken system to treat people seeking care with compassion.

But, there is a significant limitation which is that I am playing into the legitimacy of the system by being there. And the system has a faulty foundation. This can be felt on a gestalt level, but it is hard to succinctly explain what the problem is. And there is the complication of the reality that the medical system still does serve some purpose. So can it be enough to say that it does not suit my purposes, and so I am moving on?

What does it mean to be a human being on this planet? More and more I am coming to see that this is a spiritual journey and that God is the source and that within our world, that the fall is real and that many are living under the control of the enemy. The enemy to our souls, to our freedom. And I am self-conscious that this reasoning will appear absurd to many who may criticize me. But it is my view that human life is a gift and that we have to grow by listening to our soul. And in my case, I see that there is work to do in supporting human beings with all that I know, and not to be bound by the limits of the medical system, which increasingly is asking practitioners to violate their consciousnesses. 

The issue is the COVID-19 vaccine for kids. We have to see that the efforts to promote that shot came from the same coercive, powerful institutions that have been pulling strings for so long. An individual physician who would criticize the groupthink becomes ostracized culturally and professionally. Mattias Desmet has done a brilliant job analyzing the elements of mass delusional psychosis, the warnings of totalitarianism, and even offered concrete ways of pushing back.

For me, as a physician, to see that I cannot continue to work in the job that is currently supporting me, causes me to feel overwhelmed. I feel exhausted, mentally unfocused, sad, unmotivated and afraid. Those feelings cause my thinking to warp into negative territory where any lofty dreams or ambitions I might have had become an absurdity to me. It is a lousy place, and it feels awfully lonely or isolating.

But I know (KNOW) that there are so many other healthcare workers out there who share a similar fear, and that if I might move through it, that I can help others too. The skills I am most interested in relate to calming down the autonomic nervous system and building an inner capacity for metabolizing stressful situations. These skills are often free and they can be taught in a group format. A group that has the capacity to hold challenges has many benefits for all members.

So what I am going to do is host a weekly MBSG. I’m going to host it for members of NAAS, and anyone who is interested in learning more about how we can mindfully be with the body and more successfully navigate challenging situations.

It feels perhaps ironic that I have been facing what may be the biggest obstacles I have experienced in this current process. When I am feeling overwhelmed, I wonder how I can lead others in this process that is designed to lead us back into balance. For me, I think part of the answer is being honest. I am not inviting participants in because I have it all figured out and I’m in bliss. I have been in the lower realms and I am not afraid to share that too.

Hello again. It feels like this blog is being reborn (again), and it may be unclear at first where I am going with this. At this time, I have been feeling a lot of challenge with continuing to work at the community health center clinic. They approved my religious exemption to receiving the COVID-19 vaccines, which is a topic I may share more about on a future post.

I have been revisiting the idea of leaving the clinic anyways. Mostly, it feels like an energy drain for me, on account of how the work feels out of alignment with my values. I have maybe denied that, or justified that for too long, and maybe it is past time, and that is what I am feeling. I’m feeling that as exhaustion: an inability to focus, especially on reading or organizing the house or my room. But when I’m looking at my paystubs, and imagining how I would find clients and complete all the steps of starting the business that replaces the dollars of my income as an entrepreneur, the vision quickly dissolves into a seeming fantasy.

I do earn a comfortable living working 3 days a week in the system. It was enough to qualify for a mortgage on a new home that I now live in with 4 housemates. And it was enough to travel to Hawaii on two occasions for a dance festival, and to North Carolina for an important community gathering.

So for now, a real confession is that I have been exhausted, and that I need to clean up my self-care routines and boundaries first. When I have more room and energy, I plan to share more thoughts on the unfolding current events and about my own journey. There is more to come, to be sure!