It's about separating things inside your headspace to keep yourself functional. In operation, you manage to separate work, family, and personal business.
Because health care is a strenuous job where being caring is both punishing and rewarding, people who don't know how to compartmentalize their work here end up with poor coping habits.
I hear a sad sobby story, I empathize with my patient but it never came across my mind to get overly involved. By the end of the consult, I'm still going to see another person with a whole different story so whatever excess baggage I took from the previous person should've been left behind with a smile.
It's not that I don't care, it's just that I'm mindful about where to keep spending my mental and social battery on. You'll never run out of suffering in this line of work but mental health problems takes the burden to a different level. If people were just coming in for consult due to stomachaches, muscle spasms, and headache, this would relatively be easy to handle.
This is why health care isn't for everybody. And even with the best people skills in the line of work wouldn't last long if they have mismatched ideals on how to deal with long term patients. I know people who started meaning well but couldn't handle the pressure being placed upon them by patients seeking consult.
Some of the stories you hear would understandably make you lose faith in humanity. You have to let some feelings move you during the interview to get a glimpse of what goes on from someone else point of view but dwelling too much about it can make your objective judgments fail.
There are no quick fixes with mental health problems and it's a life long process of surveillance and treatment. As harsh as things sound, at the end of the day, it's not really my problem to deal with if people make their situations worse for them. Part of the process is having a partnership and a mutual interest to get get functionally better than better.
You'd be surprised about how many people acknowledge they have a problem and also recognize they actively refuse help. What's important for myself is not to be too engrossed with the world and mess up my inner peace. Don't want to make changes? sure, you do you, take some meds while you're at it.
It's not that I give up on helping, I'm probably doing more than expected given how some patients really request it has to be me that sees them and no one else. It's more like allocating my mental resources for those that have the greatest chance of recovery. There's only a limited amount of help one can do for people in an 8 hour work day.
I come home at night unbothered knowing that I did what I could for the day.
Thanks for your time.
