Garbage In, Garbage Out

This week, as I was sitting down to teach my team on the wards, one of my residents decided to spill her emotional garbage out on the table. She was tired and stressed and not in the mood to stop working and learn. I sat and listened with a polite smile on my face but on the inside I was burning. How dare she question the value of an attending wanting to teach their team! When I was a resident (there I said it, I'm officially old) I would never think about expressing a lack of interest in learning to an attending. At least not out loud. In front of the entire team. After this incident I found another one of my hospitalist colleagues to vent. She was appropriately incensed at that resident's behavior. "I'm not taking it personally" I said. And she said "of course you are." Yes, she was right. I took it as a personal attack. I took it to mean that I wasn't interesting enough. That what I had to say had a diminished value in the grand scheme of getting the work done and getting home in time for dinner. How fragile my ego is that a stressed resident can make me question my worth as a teacher!

I've thought about this a lot this week. About how I let her get under my skin. How I let her dampen my enthusiasm for teaching. How I let someone else's baggage become my own. There's a word for that you know. It's codependency. Codependency is defined in broad terms as: a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition; dependence on the needs of or control by another. I know this sounds dramatic, but in the most basic sense I let her dysfunction (pathological condition) manipulate me into thinking that I had my own dysfunction. How many times in the past week have you been codependent? Probably more than you think. It takes an enlightened person to stay focused on abiding by their own values in the face of dissent. But it can be done with awareness and discipline. Eleanor Roosevelt said "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." You always have control of your own feelings, no one else's.

That resident has since taken me aside and apologized for her actions. I empathize with her, I really do. I remember how hard residency was. But I stressed to her the need for professionalism at all times in our line of work and to remember that we are mentoring impressionable learners. What I didn't tell her was that she made my day with her apology. And that she forced me to come to terms with my own path towards interdependence and away from codependence.