I hit my rock bottom of burnout when I was on my Gyn-Onc rotation during my 2nd year of OBGYN residency. I started the rotation already unsure if I wanted to continue with medicine. Then, the brutal hours and a huge service full of sick patients pushed me over the edge. I could barely function. I would skip afternoon clinics with the Onc attendings to try and sneak in a nap, but even so, no amount of sleep made me feel more rested.
On the final day of the rotation, I met with my program director. We decided it would be best for me to take a 5 week leave of absence from the hospital. Partially to recharge and start to recover from burnout and partially to decide if medicine and OBGYN was still the right path for me.
When she suggested I take some time off, I felt relieved. But I also felt really low. I felt like a failure and that I just couldn’t “cut it” as a doctor. Why couldn’t I work as hard as everyone else? Why couldn’t I just power through?
This letter is what I wished I knew when I was in that rock bottom place.
The letter to my past self:
Dearest Chelsea,
First of all I want to tell you everything is going to be ok. I know it feels pretty far from OK right now.
You are exhausted from working 80 hours a week in the hospital and then coming home to play catch up on your clinic notes and discharge summaries. All you can think about when your alarm goes off in the morning is… “when can I sneak in a nap?”
You feel saddened and disenchanted with the healthcare system entirely. It all feels so heavy. You spend your days in the clinic with attendings who joke about when they can retire. You’ve started to lose hope that you will ever be happy in medicine.
You feel resentful of your career choices up until this point and wish that you could take it all back. That you could go back in time to the day your 20 year old self got accepted into medical school and tell her “NOOO don’t do it”.
You are resentful of how much you have to sacrifice for a job you don’t even like. That you don’t get to enjoy your weekends like a “normal person”. That you have to miss weddings, bachelorette parties and vacations with friends.
All for what? What is all the sacrifice for? Because it doesn’t feel worth it.
I hear you. I see you. I feel for you.
And I have some things to share that may help you find your way out of what feels like an impossible situation.
There IS a way out.
You are not trapped and you are not stuck. I know it feels like you are on a high speed conveyor belt with no off ramps, but it’s not true. The door is wide open and you can walk out at any time. I know you’ve played through it over and over again in your head and you feel like you can’t leave because …”how are you going to pay back your student loans without a doctor’s salary”.
That heavy financial burden makes you feel trapped, but you are not trapped.
Yes, you need to continue paying back your loans.Yes, you need to make money. But being a doctor is not the only way to do that. You are resourceful and brilliant and you can find a way to make a significant income outside of medicine. You don’t have to stay in a soul sucking career because of money concerns.You simply do NOT have to stay.
You can choose to stay if you want to, but know that there is a way out. There are many ways out.
It’s OK to walk away.
Not only is there a way out, but it’s OK to take it. It’s ok to walk away from this career path that you’ve spent all of your adult life training for and working towards. It doesn’t mean anything about you if you walk away. It doesn’t mean that you are a failure or a quitter or that you just “couldn’t cut it” as a doctor.
It doesn’t mean any of that.
It simply means that medicine was never the right path for you and you are finally waking up to that fact. You don’t have to keep trying to force yourself to fit in. It’s ok to admit that you do not enjoy medicine. It’s ok to admit that working in medicine is not serving you.
And it’s ok to walk away.
Your gifts and talents are not being utilized in medicine.
Let’s stop for a minute and think about who you are and what you are best at.
You are naturally a highly positive, energetic person. You love to inspire people and to use your creativity. You love reading personal growth books, learning about human psychology and sharing what you’ve learned. You love being happy and goofy and finding the humor in serious situations. You love having deep meaningful conversations about life and how to do life better. You love reading and writing and deep, introspective thinking. You like to come up with your own way of doing things and you hate being told what to do.
The things you love most and the things you are best at… those are not medicine.
You are withering away in medicine, because you are not using your natural gifts and talents to their fullest potential.
Think of how much more you can serve the world when you are sharing your authentic self and using your true gifts and talents.
And speaking of serving the world…. let’s clear something up right now.
You do NOT have to suffer to serve the world.
Your goodness as a human being is not proportional to the amount that you suffer in service of others. Being a martyr and sacrificing your own well-being to work long hours and care for others doesn’t make you a good person. It makes you complicit in a really messed up system, and ultimately, it just makes you miserable.
Helping others and finding a way to be of service is an excellent ambition, but it does not have to come at the expense of yourself. In fact, you are able to make a much greater impact on others when you are coming from a place of feeling whole and complete yourself, not from a place of feeling drained, bitter and resentful. There are ways for you to serve the world that don’t leave you feeling so drained and depleted.
There is no length of time when it’s OK to feel truly miserable in your career.
In any career, there are going to be hard times, but there is no length of time where it’s ok to feel truly miserable.
The kind of miserable where you wake up dreading the day and go to bed at night exhausted and depleted. Where day in and day out you are wondering “why am I even doing this” and “what is the point?”. Where you are just trying to “hang on” or “make it through” until the next vacation, the next phase of your training, or until retirement.
That is no way to live, and this type of misery is not something that should be normalized.
I don’t mean that everything is always going to be easy and breezy or that things won’t suck sometimes. It’s ok for things to suck sometimes. It’s ok for things to be hard and for you to feel the whole range of human emotions.
But if you are truly unhappy in your daily routine… there is no length of time where that is ok or acceptable. It means something needs to change. I know that is scary to hear because oftentimes we prefer misery that we know over anything unfamiliar.
But I promise you that you were not put on this earth to suffer. You were put on this earth to laugh and thrive and be joyful and prosperous and to help others do the same.
This is a turning point for you and a chance for you to make some hard decisions to change the trajectory of your future.
A better life is waiting for you on the other side of all this burnout and misery, if you can be brave enough to take it.
All my love,
Chelsea
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I share this with you, in case you are in that same place that I was, because I know those feelings are all too common in the medical field.
Please know that all of those things in my letter to my past self, also apply to you too.
There is a way out. It’s ok to take it. If you are feeling burnt out and unfulfilled it may be because your gifts and talents aren’t being utilized in medicine. You don’t have to suffer to serve the world. There is no length of time where it’s OK to feel truly miserable in your career. It means something needs to change.
If you are struggling in your current career and know deep down that something needs to change, I am HERE for you. Please feel free to send me an email hello@coachchelsmd.com or you can apply for my 1:1 coaching program The Career Fulfillment Formula.
A better life is absolutely waiting for you on the other side of all this burnout and misery, and I would love to help you create it.
XO, Coach Chels
