Why I Quit Being a Doctor

Welcome to the very first episode of Life After Medicine. Today, Chelsea shares her story about leaving medicine during her OBGYN residency.

During the episode, Chelsea discusses the right kind of hard vs the wrong kind of hard, how she got into a toxic pattern of overachieving, and how she listened to her intuition to make her career decision. She also describes the powerful shift she made which caused staying in medicine to actually become SCARIER than leaving medicine.

Tune in to learn more about how to leave medicine.

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I wasn’t leaving medicine because of this….

Here is something I want to make very clear. I did not quit my medical career because it was hard, I quit because it was the wrong kind of hard. Mark Manson has famously talked about the fact that “everything sucks some of the time”. He advises that instead of trying to avoid things that suck, it’s more about choosing “the suck” that is worth it for you. Aka it’s about “choosing your favorite flavor of shit sandwich”.

I think of this as the right kind of hard vs the wrong kind of hard. Here are some distinctions that have helped me understand this concept. For me, the right kind of hard has to be at least one of three things

It is in the service of something that you believe in

It’s bringing you closer to the kind of person you want to be

It energizes and excites you even though it’s challenging.

Medicine was the wrong kind of hard for me. When I was working as a doctor, I didn’t feel like I was becoming the person I wanted to be. I also didn’t feel emotionally connected to the way I was helping and serving people.

I left my medical career for two main reasons.

I realized I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore, and I decided to listen to my intuition and take a leap of faith.

Overachieving was not getting me anywhere

I was one of those classic overachievers, growing up. I was a straight A student, on the honor roll, got a full scholarship to college- you get the picture. Achieving was one of the ways I learned how to “earn love” as a child.

Whenever I achieved academically, I would get all kinds of praise and external validation. Gradually, I created this unconscious association between achievement and my worth. I began to think that if I achieve, then I can feel good about myself.

Of course, I wasn’t aware of any of this at the time. All of these thoughts and beliefs were just below the surface of my conscious awareness, but they were driving so much of my behavior.

I believe I ended up pursuing medical school from this place of wounding, as a natural extension of my overachieving ways.

I cared more about how my life looked on the outside than how my life felt on the inside. But eventually, I got to this place where I had achieved everything I thought I wanted, and it felt empty. I started to question and wonder if all of this hustling and striving was actually going to change the way I felt on the inside.

Experiencing burnout

During my residency, I ended up experiencing a pretty severe case of physician burnout. I think it was a combination of doing work that I wasn’t excited about coupled with the long hours and demanding job requirements.

I realized I wasn’t excited by the research or the science of medicine. I also wasn’t inspired by the people I worked with or the career path I was on. I looked around at my attendings and did not want to be like them.

At the same time, I was excited by this world of spirituality and psychology that I was starting to discover. I was spending all my time at work doing things I didn’t want to do (aka like being at work), and I didn’t have the time or energy to explore all of my actual interests and passions.

This led me to a place of physician burnout. I felt so much resentment, bitterness and exhaustion. I was struggling to keep it together at work and could hardly do the bare minimum. This is when I took a 5 week leave of absence from my residency program.

My intuition wanted me to leave medicine

During my 5 week leave of absence from residency, I turned inward to listen to my intuition and figure out what I truly wanted. I journaled, meditated, and spent a lot of time in nature. I even took a solo campervan trip around Utah‘s national parks.

Being in nature helped me connect to the wisdom of my body. When I thought about going back to residency, I started to feel constricted, like walls were closing in around me. My body felt heavy and like it was suffocating a the thought of returning to residency.

When I thought about leaving medicine and going on a crazy journey around the world, it felt exciting and so expansive, like a breath of fresh air.

Fears about leaving medicine

Even though I knew leaving medicine felt like the right decision, I still had a lot of fears that I had to address. I asked myself this question to get to the root of my fears:

“What are all the stories I’m telling myself about why I can’t leave medicine?”

So many things came up for me. I was worried about finding a way to make money outside of medicine. I was worried about getting homesick when living abroad. I was also worried that I would leave my medical career and STILL wouldn’t be happy. That I was constantly chasing happiness and it would continue to elude me.

Finally, after I wrote out all my fears, something else came up. I wrote this question in my journal.

“But what if I never go? What if I spend the rest of my life in a freezing OR or under the fluorescent lights of a clinic room and I never actually see the world. “

That to me, was so much scarier than all the other fears combined.

This was one of the moments I knew I couldn’t go back, because going back to the hospital and continuing my residency actually started to feel scarier than leaving medicine