The Worthy Physician Podcast
Reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine.
The Worthy Physician Podcast
The Hidden Struggles of Physicians: Dr. Megan Melo, MD on Perfectionism, Burnout, and Self-Care
What happens when a driven physician realizes that years of hard work and dedication still leave her feeling inadequate? Join us as Dr. Megan Melo shares her journey through medical school, residency, and beyond, shedding light on the hidden struggles of perfectionism and burnout that many in her profession face. Through candid storytelling, Dr. Melo reveals the toll that relentless pressure and systemic issues in healthcare take on those who dedicate their lives to helping others.
In our conversation, Dr. Melo discusses the critical, yet often overlooked, topic of self-care in the medical field. She recounts the sacrifices made during her 20s and the unrealistic expectations that can lead to disillusionment with the profession. Importantly, she shares her strategies for prioritizing mental and emotional health, such as setting personal boundaries and seeking life coaching. By advocating for self-care, Dr. Melo hopes to inspire fellow physicians to prioritize their well-being and contribute to systemic change that benefits everyone in the healthcare industry.
Navigating emotions and setting boundaries are essential for healthcare providers, and Dr. Melo provides valuable insights into these complex challenges. She discusses the ethical dilemmas of patient demands and the importance of acknowledging and processing negative emotions rather than suppressing them. By reframing thoughts and understanding that one's worth isn't tied to pleasing others, Dr. Melo offers a pathway to maintaining both professional integrity and personal well-being. This episode is a must-listen for anyone in healthcare looking to foster healthier emotional well-being and establish stronger professional boundaries.
What You'll Learn:
- The importance of self-care
- The importance of boundaries
- Feel the feelings and why it is important
Connect with Dr. Melo:
Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.
Learn more about female physicians' journey through burnout to thriving!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/books
Let's connect for speaking opportunities!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/dr-shahhaque-md-as-a-speaker
Check out the free resources from The Worthy Physician:
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/freebie-downloads
Battle of the Boxes
21 Day Self Focus Journal
Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, Dr Sapna Shah-Haque, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. Today I have Dr Megan Melo, so thank you very much for your time and being here.
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk more with you.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:I appreciate that. So what has your journey of being a physician look like?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, I'm somebody who went straight through. So I went from college to medical school and followed what I thought was the quote unquote right. Looking back, I can. Part of the work that I do now involves people pleading imperfectionism and working with physicians around that. Looking back, I can very much reflect how early those two habits got started in me. They definitely supported my journey all along that path, right when I told people I wanted to be a physician great, you'll be helping so many people and just a lot of reinforcement. I think that's true for many people. But I think it's important that we really recognize it. But again, followed that traditional path and went straight through, didn't have a real job or a real youth before going to medical school and later found out that many of my colleagues had been out doing life stuff not just to help with, but got into Stanley Medicine for my residency and did that three-year program and then stayed at the institution where I was surrounded by a lot of model of physicians who had been in one place for a very long time in their career.
Dr. Melo, MD:From the outside, I appeared to be very happy and content with what they were doing. Yet I saw them working very long hours. I saw them not spending a lot of time with family. I found it really hard to put in those long hours and to feel like I was doing enough. I kept searching for a time when I could feel that I was enough, I had done enough, that I had gotten to a place where I was good enough and I could take a break.
Dr. Melo, MD:What I found is that never came that sensation of being good enough in I could take a break. What I found is that never came that sensation of being good enough in my job. Never came that break I was looking for and I think a lot of us are searching for that time right where we feel like we have accomplished enough and we can finally feel good about the work that we, you know, have done. I see this, as you know, something that many of us struggle with, and we could talk more about that, but it's a real limitation. So it's a really important part of my journey just to come out of really struggling to feel like a worthy physician.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Yeah, it's one of those things where the arrival fell asleep. I've arrived at being an attending.
Dr. Melo, MD:Now what? This felt good for a hot minute. Now what? Yeah?
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:exactly. How did you deal with that?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, not well for a while. To be honest, I think I would come into periods of burnout and just feel really overwhelmed, really exhausted, really down. Sometimes I would take a break. I ended up taking a leave of absence, for it was about a month at one point in 2019. But every time I would come through a period like that, my response was always to armor up.
Dr. Melo, MD:As Brene Brown says, right to try and get harder. I just need to stop caring about resting and stop thinking that I or stop trying to be so soft, right, like I should just love the work so much. That's enough. That didn't work. It didn't solve the problem, because that's just not how humans operate.
Dr. Melo, MD:We need a balance of work that engages us and rest. Yes, there's, of course, a certain amount of putting in work time that we don't love, but we also have to choose at some point to value ourselves, to decide okay, I need a boundary here, I'm going to take some time off, I'm going to not respond to my phone, I'm going to really disengage and rest. Those lessons, I would say, are much more recent in my journey, but what really made a difference for me was a few years ago, in learning some of the coaching tools that I use now and really learning how important it is to be aware of my thoughts and how that influences the emotions that I have, the action that I take. That really made the most difference for me in recognizing how I was contributing to my burnout.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:You dive into that a little bit more. You're a life coach, correct? That's correct. How did you make that choice to become a life coach and what have you learned from being a life coach that maybe has added more of different lenses to life and medicine?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, I came into life coaching like many of us thinking I wanted help for myself. But often I think we as physicians with high achievers not enough to get help. We have to decide we like the tool or like a framework, and we're going to get certified and teach it. I'm certified in the work of Renee Brown. I'm a Daring Way facilitator in her work. I launched into that training never having actually done the work on my own, so that's a thing that I grew up with and I find that a lot in people, in other physicians that I talk to. But the tools that I learned in getting trained as a life coach made a really big difference in my life, in not feeling like a victim anymore, in learning to see how conditioned ways of thinking led to the experience that I was having.
Dr. Melo, MD:And I don't take the healthcare system off the hook. The healthcare system that we work in, the insurance companies, the employers, the way that American healthcare in particular is structured, was very toxic to the humans doing the work. I would argue that in American medicine and probably other things, that the business of medicine profits off us being hardworking, driven people who never feel like we're enough Because we will always go that extra mile. It's very easy for us to to some extent, be manipulated, but Mrs Jones is here. She really looks like she needs help, but no one's looking at my specialty and I have a completely full day. They're just tapping into that empathy part of myself, making me feel like a bad person if I can't squeeze her in and intervene every other human. So we don't have to let this system off the hook and decide that the system is not also a problem.
Dr. Melo, MD:But naturally, as part of our training, many of us learn perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that get reinforced over and over again, keeping us feeling like we're not enough, and so then we're always striving to do more. When I learned the coaching tools, when I started to apply that in my own life, I could see the impact of that. I could see how I was contributing to my own suffering and I was able to look at the situation that I was in very differently and see okay, if this is the circumstances that I'm working in, if I have this many patients to see, if I have these responsibilities, how do I need to start setting boundaries? How do I need to start taking care of myself? How do I need to start thinking about this differently so that my experience can be better.
Dr. Melo, MD:I can stay in this work undergrad, it's not just taking the rigorous course schedule it is trying to do research or trying to get hands-on experience.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:That's like an 18, 19, 20-year-old and really you're asking them to say okay, what are you going to dedicate the rest of your life to? And then we get into medical school and we're at a very impressionable age yeah, 22, 23, 24, maybe there are some of the nontraditional students that maybe have a better grasp, but we typically give up our 20s in order to do what we're doing, not knowing that the way that we're structured and conditioned is completely different than the actual world of medicine.
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, so many of us give up our 20s with this idea that the promise of our 30s and 40s isn't so much better. I definitely gave up my 20s and then, like I had my 30s, when I started having kids and I was attending, like where did that decade go? That decade was completely in service, right my patients, my kids, my family, and there was very little in my 30s that was for me. I'm just, I'm not just. I'm almost 43. Right, so I'm solidly in my 40s now. But trying to figure out now, okay, how do I create space for me in my life where, yes, I can take care of patients.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Yes, I can work with my physician clients. That I. I appreciate that, again, we're just conditioned to put ourselves last, especially with the theory of being the all smiling, never upset female. Then our male counterparts don't always have to face the double standards.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:The label that we get if we're not nice and I'm going to wear that crown because that helps me keep boundaries and if that helps me just going back to, let's go circle back to. You really distinctly pointed out the system in which we operate, in which we practice medicine, is the driver of the burnout and the overwhelm. Why do you think it's important for physicians to look inward?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, for many years I was working on trying to change the system from within the system it was operating in. I was given the title of wellness champion and before that I was working on a resilience curriculum with our residents. I was always very, very desirous right to change the way that we take care of ourselves, but at that time I was very focused on the external. I was very focused on the system needs to be better so that I feel better. I still believe that the system has significant impact on us. I think that it has significant responsibility to change the way that it operates. But I can see now that the entire business model of American healthcare is really built on cramming as many patients as possible for less time and more challenge. Until that business model is different the kind of traditional fee-for service I don't see the systems relieving the pressure on physicians that are healthcare professionals, so I see that as a huge behemoth. It's still a problem and I fully acknowledge it, but I don't want anyone out there who's experiencing suffering, who is finding themselves overwhelmed and burned out, to wait until the system gets better. I want them to see the system for one day, to see that we have the ability to choose to stay within the system or not, but that if we're going to choose to stay in the system, we're going to need to take care of ourselves because the system is not going to do it. Again, I think we give up our 20s and we have this idea that one time an attending they'll start taking care of me. I won't have to do 80 hour weeks anymore there's actually no rule against that as attendings and we can very easily find ourselves in situations working that much but we also have more agency to decide what's okay, what's not okay for us.
Dr. Melo, MD:I decided very early that working full-time, full-time clinical practice was never going to be okay for me. The way that I am, the way that I my introverted self, the way that I take care of patients, the way that I listen to them, try to be present as a human, I cannot do that for 40 hours a week. But that's me choosing to say I take care of myself by never working full-time clinically because the system is not going to figure that out. How many of us are working in places that? And they would love us all to work at least 40 hours a week because we're the reason why the money comes in what's us drunken to build? It does.
Dr. Melo, MD:So. I want to work with people to understand what is it that you need, what is it that was the right balance for you to practice in this kind of setting? Or, if you're choosing to change your setting, how do we help you still get really clear on boundaries and self-care so that you are in a better position, no matter where you go? A lot of people have this fantasy right of it's just this place, it's just this employer. Right, that makes me work this way. But I'll promise you, if you hop to another system, right, even if you're working for yourself, you're really good at overworking and hustling and you'll keep doing it, just in a different place, unless isn't it Unlearning those habits that were protective in order to get through pre-med school.
Dr. Melo, MD:I want to help people now rather than spending my time hoping and wishing and dreaming that everything was different. Because if I take good care of myself now and other people do the same, then we have the opportunity to change the system collectively by saying we're not doing things the way that they have been done before. We deserve to go on vacation and really be on vacation and not come back to 380 portal messages. The reality is real. The reality is real. The reality is real. It's real. It's painful and people are upset at us and we feel all things.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Yeah, that's one thing that being able to. You want to be able to work with colleagues that will help you, will cover for you, because when they're out, you're going to be doing the same for them yeah. Well, we'll cover for you, because when they're out, you're going to be doing the same for them. Yeah, and it's the fear of going back to the office to an ungodly amount of tasks or messages is that should not happen.
Dr. Melo, MD:That dread is real and that buildup of maybe I should need to go on vacation. You know that's the bit of a hit term, not the right answer, but it's unlikely that the system is automatically going to make a change for us. We might have to start having those conversations and really deciding. Vacation is important to us and the way that we take care of ourselves and each other is that we do things in this way. But those conversations don't happen without somebody having an intention around it, right, mm-hmm?
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:But those conversations don't happen without somebody having an intention around it, Right when you work with your coaching clients.
Dr. Melo, MD:Do you ever get any pushback with some sort of advice, absolutely, absolutely. And it comes in a variety of places. But I'll tell you, those of us who have struggled with boundaries, it's not that we've never tried, it's not that we've never tried to set a boundary, but what happens right not that we've never tried, it's not that we've never tried to set a boundary but what happens right is that somebody gives us we say we don't have time to talk about all the things on your list, we're going to talk about these too, but I came in to talk to you about all these 20 things. Yeah, then we might. Okay, let's see what we can manage. Or we maybe will say no, I can't, I can't take a walk in today, I've got to leave. Well, no one else can say and they're your patient, you should learn to help them.
Dr. Melo, MD:We've encountered so many situations where we may have tried boundaries a little bit and then we've gotten pushed back and we felt bad, we felt uncomfortable in some way, and we decided to make that mean that boundaries are just not for us Right. But what I push people to see is that when you have boundaries, you're simmering in chronic frustration and resentment. Much of the time, you might also be judging yourself for feeling that way. Right, because shouldn't you want to take care of everybody? Shouldn't you want to be available 24-7? Right, if I set a boundary, I feel uncomfortable. When somebody gives me pushback, I am the opportunity to choose that discomfort as an alternative to my chronic frustration or resentment, because I don't get a world where I don't have either. If I'm not used to setting boundaries, I'm going to be uncomfortable, especially for a while while it's new. But the benefit is that I no longer feel frustrated that people are constantly asking me to do things, expecting that I'll do them, but I just don't have the time or capacity.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:I love the fact that you're bringing that up because it's difficult Again, going back to the people pleasing, and we can be easily guilt-tripped, but then, at the same time, it's a matter of reframing, of which one do I want to feel If?
Dr. Melo, MD:I say yes to you, I'm saying no to something else, and a lot of the time that no to something else is me. That's no to me. No, you don't get to eat lunch. No, you don't get to go to your son's soccer game. No, you don't have time and energy to do anything else. Know, your feelings are not important. We've done that to ourselves for a lot of years many of us but we have to expect that there's going to be discomfort and that's okay. Nothing has gone wrong.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Yeah, usually there are other systems in place to maybe which that walk-in can go, because many times it's five minutes before the office closes or it's on the weekend when you're heading out to the car. Hey, I just need to talk to you for a minute those are real scenarios yeah and it's. Can you just call in something, an antibiotic for in my head cold?
Dr. Melo, MD:it's not that easy. It's not that easy, yeah, or just yesterday this happened a lot in our clinic. People will call and be like my hands hurted, can I just get an x-ray? My answer is always no, that's bad care. I need to talk to you, I need to examine you, I need to figure out is this something that's going to be x-rayable? Because if I just order an x-ray and I don't know the story, it turns out you've got a red, swollen hand, something else. I'm going to tell you the x-ray is normal, right, because it wasn't the right test with the right evaluation.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:But like we have to decide, yeah, I'm taking the risk of disappointing this person, but not that simple. They don't know that. I think that's where we need to trust our training and the. I'm not a fan of patient satisfaction scores, because this is not a restaurant, it's not a hotel. There's a difference between the patient expects and then the standard of care, and we have to remember to stick to the standard of care and stick to our training. It's okay to say no, it's going to ruffle somebody's feathers. At the end of the day, you can look at yourself in the mirror and say I know that by my training and because I have confidence in myself, that was the right thing to do. But it seems like a lot of times, with the way the medicine is, I'm even I myself have struggled with. Yeah, I made the patient upset because I wouldn't order what they wanted or I wouldn't order a medication. How do you teach your clients to deal with that?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, I think it sounds a little counterintuitive, but we need to be better about just acknowledging the emotions that we're having and in my work I teach people kind of the relationship between their thoughts and their feelings. So we have an emotion that we often can recognize that we're pretty good about squishing those feelings down or pretending that we're not feeling numb. Like I said, we might still have judgment, like I shouldn't feel angry at a patient. What a terrible person. I'm a terrible doctor for feeling that way. But if I let's say, somebody calls and they want an antibiotic because they've had the sniffles for three days and I say no, they tell the front desk person I'm never coming back here again. I can't believe that they. I always get it, I always get a Z-Pak.
Dr. Melo, MD:I have the opportunity to sit and notice that I'm feeling some kind of way right, I'm feeling I might be feeling guilty at that moment. I'm feeling guilty because I'm having a thought that I should take care of the patient, their needs. It's a common thought that we make now. Right, I should be doing everything I can to take care of the patient. My brain is interpreting their upsetness as me not taking care of them. But I have the opportunity to reframe that and think is that really helpful? Do I really want, every time somebody wants an inappropriate antibiotic, to think that I'm not doing a good job? Or do I want to think, no, I'm providing safe and appropriate care? I don't control whether they go to Zoom care or some other doc in a box clinic and get what they want, because there's much more of a customer service push right without that relationship, right in these quick clinics that have popped up. I don't control that. But what I do control is my own integrity. I can check in with my emotions. I can sit with them. It's really normal that I feel this way.
Dr. Melo, MD:A lot of people would feel guilty or annoyed or upset in a situation. That's okay. But I value my integrity of care. I value the quality of care. I value that I prescribe very few antibiotics because I really use the guidelines and I don't have to compare with everybody else. I can decide what's okay for me and what's not okay. But it is a promise that I'm sitting with that and choosing. Today I'm willing to disappoint that patient, not because I'm a jerk, but because I know that the quality of the care that I'm providing is this. Not everybody's going to like that. Sometimes people just want to be able to order us around. That's okay. I can let that person go. I'm not going to be the right person for them.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:No, and I think that's the reason why I bring that up is that that's very common, but we can really apply that to so many different areas, such as the books, the triple books, the walk-ins, being on call, ungodly amount of hours. Again, it goes back to boundaries and knowing what you're willing to do, not willing to do. But I think the biggest thing is and that I know, up until about a couple years ago I was not very good is sitting with those feelings and figuring out why am I feeling this way? Yeah, because it's very uncomfortable.
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, because we want to just make the feeling go away and we might turn to social media, we might turn to ice cream or alcohol or any other thing to make the feeling go away. I don't like feeling this way. If we notice the feeling, if we name the feeling, I'm feeling angry, right feeling. I'm feeling angry right now. I'm feeling resentful right now. We can get curious about it, even for a minute or two. Why am I feeling this way?
Dr. Melo, MD:I'm feeling this way because this patient came in. They requested something I didn't think was appropriate and I said no and they got really mad because I wasn't meeting their expectations. Okay, that doesn't feel good, but on the other hand, I feel good about the decision I made. I don't control their emotions or expectations. It's okay for me to feel this way. When we can reframe it into like a second experience, you can realize that our negative emotions that don't feel good to feel they're very temporary. They're there to tell us something. It's okay for me to replay that conversation, decide that I'm good with the integrity of my choice and that I'm not responsible for other people's feelings or expectations.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:I think that's key because we tend to internalize and try to own things that don't belong to us. Going back to the feel better Right, but just going back to the people pleasing, my worth is reflected on how people see me.
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, if I'm making you upset, there's something wrong with me, and I imagine that you might reflect on this as well. That parenting is another place, obviously, where this comes up. What I see in physicians and high achievers, who we work a lot, we do important work and often carry around this layer of guilt about not being more available to our children or not being available to go to the school events or some things like that, and therefore being more permissive and being more, more desirous to fix their feelings too if they're upset with us and therefore also not having good boundaries with our kids. There's this like double spillover. Again. We can come back to this process, like when I'm having a thought like I'm not a good mom with our kids. There's this like double spillover. Again. We can come back to this process, like when I'm having a thought like I'm not a good mom because my kids are upset with me.
Dr. Melo, MD:Again, I can sit there and decide do I really think that my decision was wrong? Do I really think that should have gone differently? I don't control their emotions and of course, I do make mistakes right, so I can own that. I don't want to act like I don't control their emotions and of course I do make mistakes right, so I can own that. I don't want to act like, I don't want to show up that way.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:I'm sorry that I yelled, but knowing that that people-queasing trigger comes up in our parenting journey as well, and being really aware of that, so how did you get to the place where you are now, with working less than 40 hours a week, maintaining boundaries with patients and life coaching, along with your personal life?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, I'll tell you very honestly that it's always been a work in progress and it always will be, because I have a tendency to overwork and to say yes to too much. I was reminded of that again in this month of November, where I very ambitiously reached out to a lot of people such as yourself let's record a toolkit, let's exchange podcast episodes, do things and I overbooked myself because I'm again, I'm very good at being yes, let's get some energy going. I had to sit with that. When I looked at my calendar for November and thought how many things were on my schedule, I said you know what? I've done it again.
Dr. Melo, MD:Okay, I can see that I've got too much on here. How am I going to, you know, shuffle and make adjustments? How am I going to take care of myself there? I didn't beat myself up about it, which is something that we definitely would have done in the past, but I also looked at that and really just appreciated the lesson, because we can do the same things no matter where we are, because the habits are in us. So I'm working all the time on being intentional about how many, what's my balance of patient care and how long do I spend with notes and inbox and all of that kind of stuff. How many hours am I available for coaching? How am I organizing things so that my podcast goes out on time and some of those responsibilities? How am I doing with spending time with my kids?
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:and my husband.
Dr. Melo, MD:It's always shifting right Because life is just different and different season. But I try and just really keep my eyes on that and tuning in with myself, like how does it feel? I realized a week or two into November when things were so busy. I'm like, ooh, this feels like too much. This feels when I've been so overwhelmed in the past. I just want to lay down and not have anybody talk to me for too long.
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, okay, this is no longer my employer's thing. I've done this to myself. How am I going to remind myself not to do this again? How am I going to take care of myself in this moment and stay true to the things that are really important to me? Learn to shift some things around, learn to really appreciate that lesson, and I'm going to carry that with me as I move forward. But we're constantly learning as we go. There is no arrival, just like there's no arrival to this magical place in medicine. There's no arrival to this place where we've learned all the lessons, we're perfectly boundaried and everything feels great and the kids are all smiling and happy. No, it's all just a journey.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Thank you for pointing that out. To recap that it's an ongoing process, even though it's not related to clinical work. In medicine, we can easily pigeonhole ourselves into being overstretched in other areas. We have to really be intentional with what we're doing. Bring the seasons of change, just changing with the seasons, that what worked six months ago may not work now because of where we're at in life. It's okay to acknowledge that and with that, be frustrated with that, feel your feelings and figure it out. And with that pushing boundaries. The boundaries tend to change depending on which kid is pushing that button. I have one that really tests those boundaries and she'll make a great adult someday, but she's a great kid, or my four-year-old. But it's acknowledging that and being resourceful and mindful of our time and energy. So where can the listener find you and your podcast?
Dr. Melo, MD:yeah, my chain, yeah, my podcast is ending. Physician overwhelmed available on all the major players, and my website is wwwhealthierforgoodcom. There's information about my one-on-one coaching, as well as my group coaching programs for women physicians.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:So that's where people can find me. I appreciate that and that will be in the show notes. What is one last pearl of wisdom you would leave our listeners?
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, I think, coming back to what we were talking about before, of choosing to see your emotions as data that you can get curious about. We'd all like to have this life where we feel happy and joyful all the time, but that's just not reality. No, humans are actually like that. But how can I see my negative emotions when they pop up as something that's trying to tell me, something that I can get curious about? Because when we can just accept that they're there, when we can name them, get curious about them, we will process them in a much healthier way and we will move through them instead of what we've been taught, which is often to suppress, shut them down, pretend they're not there.
Dr. Melo, MD:I think many of us have had the experience and bernie brown writes extensively about that. It does not work when we do that. They don't. That's not a benign thing that they just exit through our toes of trepidation down right now. They store up inside of us. They manifest as other things insomnia, disabling anxiety or depression, chronic headaches, all sorts of things. Let's take the moment to recognize that we are human, that we do have negative emotions, and they can be there to tell us something, often cuing us to have an opportunity to learn ourselves a little bit better I appreciate that and I, the listener listeners honor yourselves by sitting with your emotions and figuring out where they're coming from.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:A lot of times, I can, if you feel like you're feeling something over and over again, listen to it. A lot of times you need to reevaluate what's triggering me. By by reevaluating that and maybe reframing that and addressing that, you can shed some light and some freedom into your life. So, megan, thank you so much for your time and your words of wisdom.
Dr. Melo, MD:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been a great conversation.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Absolutely.