The Worthy Physician Podcast
Reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine.
The Worthy Physician Podcast
Becoming Her Own Best Friend: Dr. Olivia Ong's Journey from Injury to Self-Compassion
What if the intense pressures of medical school and residency could be transformed into a journey of self-compassion and personal growth? Join us for a heartfelt conversation with Dr. Olivia Ong, a remarkable pain and rehabilitation physician from Melbourne, who shares her incredible story of overcoming a spinal cord injury and the harsh, competitive culture of medicine. Through her personal experiences, Dr. Ong discusses the emotional toll of her accident and how it led her to embrace self-compassion, ultimately becoming a beacon of hope and a burnout coach for fellow doctors.
In this episode, we explore the three vital pillars of self-compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. Listen as Dr. Ong reveals how integrating these principles can transform your inner critic into a supportive ally, reshaping your professional and personal life. We also touch on the profound impact of living a life filled with love and kindness, emphasizing that self-love is not just a luxury but a necessity. This inspiring discussion aims to motivate you to be kinder to yourself and to foster a more compassionate environment in the high-pressure world of medicine. Don't miss this powerful and motivating episode that could redefine your approach to both life and work.
Connect with Dr. Ong:
https://drolivialeeong.com/
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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.
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Welcome to another episode of the Worldly Physician. I'm your host, D Sapna Shah-Hawk, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. So at what point in time does a culture shift happen from medical school to, maybe, mid-career, early career? When does that culture shift start to happen, or does it? What does it take to start changing how we think about ourselves and others? Today I have a special guest, dr Olivia Ong, who's joining us from Australia.
Dr. Ong, MD:Thanks for having me Sana. So my name is Dr Olivia Ong and I'm a paid and rehabilitation physician from Melbourne, Australia, and I'm also a burnout coach for doctors. So I help doctors through burnout and helping them learn to be their own best friend, and it's a very rewarding job, I feel. As a coach you got to help so many people out and helping them truly find their true potential. And I'm not only just a coach, I'm a published author. I've published my own book, the Heart Center Doctor, and I've also published a children's book, Jojo the Kind Sloth, with my Son two years ago. My books ultimately come back to the same theme. It's on self-compassion and how to be your own best friend.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:That's completely different than the culture in medicine. It's very competitive. There are only so many spots and then, depending on what specialty you want to go into, you have to be like top 1%. What forced you to change your personal culture, your personal outlook?
Dr. Ong, MD:Yeah, I guess I want to just explain where, in the context where I grew up in, that will make a lot of sense. I grew up as a kid in Singapore where academic achievements were like what was a priority. Our parents focused a lot on the three careers that we have to be. Some of you might resonate with this Asian parents. I don't want to stereotype, but they usually want us kids to either be a lawyer, doctor or engineer. In Southeast Asia that's the norm and we grew up like that. And being very competitive was the culture as well in Singapore.
Dr. Ong, MD:Growing up in that kind of culture with all these competitions, I didn't quite know how to be my best friend. In fact, I was my own harshest critic and that was reinforced in school. Of course, when we make little mistakes, teachers will point it out, shame us in front of everyone. Of course we're going to grow up being so critical of ourselves and that carried on with me from primary school, high school, all the way to medical school. And it's really hard to especially medical school all the way to medical school. And it's really hard to especially medical school where the top 1%, as you said, they all end up in one place and asking for help would have been sheer terror, because they would have been like admitting that you are incompetent, stupid, so you just keep to yourselves, isn't it? Yeah, so every little mistake we make, of course, we were again shamed by our professors or our teachers in medical school. Even when we were in clinical rotations, the doctors were attached to us, sometimes shame us. It's that kind of toxic vicious cycle, that kind of carried on, I think, all the way until we started working as resident doctors, isn't it? And you can imagine why doctors burn out so quickly.
Dr. Ong, MD:For me, something unexpected happened one day in 2008. In fact, that was September 10th. So when I was a resident doctor, I was walking to work like any other day. So I was walking to work and suddenly I was struck by a car. This car came out of nowhere and before the next thing I knew, I landed on the ground with a big fat thun and I was lying in an awkward position and I realized that something's not right. Because, first of all, I couldn't feel below my legs, I couldn't move my legs, and at that time I just started my first year training as a physiatrist. So it was quite interesting that happened to me. So, because I learned about spinal cord injury and all that. So I started triaging myself.
Dr. Ong, MD:I think it's very instinctive for us doctors when we're in crisis mode to just start triaging or wearing a doctor's hat. That's why I just detached whatever was going on and just started analyzing. So I assessed the fact that I could think I was quite happy. I was going yeah, I didn't have a brain injury. I could see what was going on, so, thankfully, I didn't have a brain injury. And then I started moving my arms and I was going yeah, I'm not quadriplegic. Hey, that's great. But when I started triaging from all the way up to the waist and below, I'm like, oh dear, I can't move or feel my legs. This must be either a pelvic fracture, which is a severe one, or it could be a spinal cord injury. So that happened.
Dr. Ong, MD:But the good thing about having a accident in a hospital. I had immediate medical. We had a code blue that was called Tumor and then we had doctors and nurses rushing in to assist me, to provide medical care and ship me out to a major trauma center in Melbourne. That's what happened. Then, after some testing and scans, the orthopedic surgeon came up and told me that I had a spinal cord injury, I think a part of me knew something serious happened, but I think a part of me just died. Part of my soul died because I knew that a spinal cord injury meant a life in a wheelchair and just not being able to be my high-functioning self. Because before the accident I was a resident doctor, rushing around doing my rounds, going autopilot. I was high-functioning, I was climbing stairs up and down doing my rounds, so very active individual at work. Yeah, I just realized that I'm going to be, I may not be able to be a doctor. So I think there was a lot of fears that came up for me and I was married for two years at that time and my greatest fear was to have my husband abandon me because it's too much for him, and the whole hospital experience was really quite terrifying. So it was terrifying for me as a doctor. So I can't imagine what it would have been like for our patients being in a hospital system with all this uncertainty.
Dr. Ong, MD:And I had emergency spinal fusion surgery on that day, as you can imagine, because the spinal cord injury was such that I had an L1, l2 dislocation and a burst L2 vertebrae, so my lower spinal canals were smashed and then lots of bony pieces ended up bruising my quadriquina. That's how I ended up having a L1 spinal cord injury. Because of that there was a huge hematoma actually that compressed the quadroquina and, yeah, surgery happened to debilitate the fracture. Immediately after the surgery, when I woke up, I could feel my legs. Actually, I was really happy I could feel my legs. I didn't realize I took a lot of things for granted, including feeling my legs. That's such a wonderful experience, isn't it? But unfortunately I had spinal shock and so I was paralyzed in both legs so I couldn't move them for about six to eight weeks and that was quite terrifying because I didn't know whether that will be permanent or not.
Dr. Ong, MD:After a couple of weeks in the acute hospital, they shipped me across to the rehab hospital and I think that's where it was truly confronting. I think that's when, at night, all the thoughts really came to my head, the fears, and yeah, it was just a very scary couple of months over there in rehab and I have to admit I wasn't my own best friend at that time. In fact, I was just blaming myself for why did I walk in that car park on at that moment? I kept blaming myself like why didn't I just arrive earlier or later? And then this wouldn't happen. I started blaming myself. Yeah, lots of things going, grief five stages of grief every day, from anger to sadness, to acceptance, to bargaining with God. If you gave me the ability to walk, I will do anything for you. Stuff like that. It just kept on happening every day. Yeah, I wasn't very kind to myself and then stayed in rehab hospital for a couple of months and then I was discharged and had to live my life as a paracord injury survivor.
Dr. Ong, MD:That was a big change. Suddenly, the self-image took a big hit because now I have to adjust to people seeing me in a wheelchair, friends, family. I even started feeling really angry when people stared at me when I go out, which is quite a natural reaction, I imagine If people see someone in the wheelchair, they'll start looking and just with curiosity, no harm, no judgment. But I perceive every stare, every look as a judgment thing and of course I was harsh on myself and beating myself up going. Now I have to put up with all these things and all this crap and yeah, it's just self-pity, self-critical all the way, and I think what really saved me was one a year after my accident, even though I've returned to part-time work at this point.
Dr. Ong, MD:But a part of me really wanted to walk. By this stage, a year after the injury, I have some functional movement in my left leg, but not very much movement in the right. But a deep desire in my heart was to. I really want to walk again. I think every spinal cord injury survivor always want to walk again, and I came across some YouTube videos of someone I went through rehab with a year ago who attended a facility in Carlsbad, california. This facility is called Project Walk Carlsbad. There's no project walk Australia, project Walk Carlsbad and he shot some videos of how he was walking again. And this is a fellow Aussie and I was going. If he can do it, I can do it too. So what I did was I took a year off work and my husband came along with me and we moved to Carlsbad.
Dr. Ong, MD:Initially we thought we'll just be there for a couple of months, but we ended up extending our stay to three years because I was making so much gain. Just in my first couple of weeks there I was getting a lot more movement. My right leg and I went. I'm gonna just settle in Carlsbad. It's not a bad place to settle. It's Southern California, the weather's beautiful and I could go to the beach every evening, almost every evening.
Dr. Ong, MD:I came initially, when I came to Carlsbad, I had a mission I wanted to achieve, or goal I wanted to achieve was just to focus on walking and that's it, and not socialize with people. Just do my thing. It's a very doctor thing, the Lone Ranger thing, isn't it? I'm just going to do my thing. I'm just going to do this, achieve this and I'm just going to move on. I just don't need to have the fluffy interaction with other people.
Dr. Ong, MD:But I didn't realize that fluffy interactions with other people was the very thing that saved me, because through my friendship with other spinal cord injury survivors most of them were Americans and a smaller group were from like other countries, like Brazil, japan, australia, new Zealand and a few and, yeah, the friendships I made with them was what taught me about self compassion, just made me aware about how I have to really start to accept myself, treat myself kindly, because these people accepted me with open arms. It is something very different about the American, and Australian culture is very different. I think Australian culture is very different. I think Australian culture is very quite. We tend to be quite how do you say not as positive.
Dr. Ong, MD:The Americans were just embracing me with open arms, introduced me to so many things, took me to watch football games I think we watched a Chargers game. I didn't understand the game, to be honest, but out there as a participant and I enjoyed the whole atmosphere they took me to. When we had Thanksgiving, they invited me over. I didn't realize how much food you got. It's like Thanksgiving and then Christmas. It's a lot of food, but I enjoyed it.
Dr. Ong, MD:Enjoyed it and just the whole forming the connection, emotional relationships that taught me to be my own best friend. Because in those times when I was by myself, I had to be my own best friend, because in those times when I was by myself, I had to have my own back. Really, that was how I treated myself when I was at Carlsbad. So that's how this whole concept being your own best friend started, because when I did that in Carlsbad, in Project War, that's how my healing occurred emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally. So I think it's a very important message I really want to send out to the people out there and just be your own best friend.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:I just want to take a moment and honor that story. I don't know if I could handle something like that with as much grace, but what you did and your perseverance and positivity, and yeah, you're absolutely right, as physicians we have a goal, we're going to achieve it and then we move on to the next accolade, the next milestone. Except we forget to stop and live life, and that includes the friendships, like what you said. And when you embrace the community, you started to heal Somebody that has not had as tragic and life-changing event as yourself. How do they start formulating that relationship with themselves to start to become their own best friend? There are three pillars to self-compassion, really.
Dr. Ong, MD:So there's three pillars. I'll just go into detail in a short while what they are. The first pillar is mindfulness. Second pillar is common humanity. Third pillar is self-kindness. So let me explain what mindfulness the first pillar Mindfulness is awareness that you're actually suffering.
Dr. Ong, MD:I think a lot of us physicians tend to numb ourselves when we are actually truly suffering because uncomfortable emotions come up. And then what do we do? We just stuff it all down and then just move on and continue doing our work. It's just being mindful that you're suffering at that moment or you're going through something. Just acknowledging that awareness is a start. And the second pillar is that concept of common humanity or interconnectedness, which is what I experienced beautifully in Carlsberg Reaching out to other spina coli injury survivors, being open and connecting to other people. That's common humanity and just know that we're all in it together and I had a strong sense of that when I'm connected with the other spinal cord injury survivors.
Dr. Ong, MD:And the third pillar, very important pillar, is self-kindness. Probably the hardest pillar because you might go through the other two pillars and you go, yeah, I've got this. And then once you reach self-kindness, you're like, oh, this is too much, this is too much, this is like trying to love myself. We talked about inner critic or being so harsh on ourselves. We never knew what it was like to love ourselves, isn't it? Even as kids growing up. So that part the birth failure might be a bit too much for people, but it's okay. You just take a breather, a few deep breaths, and then try to, I'll say, connect with your inner child.
Dr. Ong, MD:This is all that coaching work that I did on myself, but that's what I had to learn. I had to learn to accept the young Olivia that grew up without loving herself, having to get the perfect grades, going to med school, putting lots of pressure on herself. That's self-kindness and it means just being your own best friend, that, no matter what challenges you have, you've got your own back and you've got to be kind to yourself, because no one else is going to be kind to you if you're not going to be starting that first. So I think that those three pillars of self-compassion will be a starting point for anyone who's going through challenges, adversity. That will be a starting point.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:That's beautifully said and thank you for pointing out those three pillars, because it's such a juxtaposition. Right, we know that we're supposed to practice self-love and self-acceptance, but it's very counterintuitive when you're for lack of better terms baptized in this culture of medicine like what you described. It's quite often the same in the US.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Now you know there's been some work to soften those edges. However, it doesn't take away the competition. It doesn't take away the chastisement about asking for help or trying to team up and not really sure if somebody's going to backstab you because it is so cutthroat. Having said that, I'm like I tell my medical students if you're on the rotation with me, I'm not here to chastise you or to make you feel less than we're learning from each other. We have to move that needle to a better culture. Do you find that when you became your own best friend, do you think it changed how you presented yourself in public or how you carried yourself? What you started to do, the internal work? Did it come out externally with how you talked or interacted?
Dr. Ong, MD:yeah, I think once I learned that how healing it was to learn to be your own best friend, I just wanted not only just my patients to learn that people around me. Once you start to have that awareness of this concept of being your own best friend, you start seeing how patients treat themselves unkindly. Our patients do that. Our patients are very critical of themselves because I'm a pain physician, so a lot of my patients are very critical of themselves because I'm a pain physician. So a lot of my patients are super critical of themselves because they've seen countless doctors because of their chronic pain. They're quite isolated. They've lost all their relationships with people. So there's a lot of self-blame, self-critical of nurse of themselves.
Dr. Ong, MD:So once I saw how healing it was for me, I wanted my patients to experience that, so I teach them some self-compassion practices. I see clearly how my friends are treating themselves, sometimes even my kids. Hey, my husband, and yeah, you see that. And then you just teach that and then you just want them to learn that you are your own best role model. You start modeling that and that's how I think people can see that and learn from you in a way to let people know about this when you see how healing it is for yourself.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Tell us about the heart-centered doctor.
Dr. Ong, MD:How did that come about? Yes, yeah, how I came up with this? Because I led a life that wasn't aligned to my values For the first five years of my medical career as a paid physician. I just did the work turn off the world do my thing.
Dr. Ong, MD:In 2019, another significant event happened. I suffered a severe burnout episode in late 2019 because by this stage, I've lived with a spinal cord injury for almost a decade. I just sat for my board exams. My son was three at that time and I was working full-time. That's a lot and I think, just pushing through the early years of the spinal cord injury, with the rehab intensive rehab in Calvert, coming back to Melbourne to resume my medical career and having to prove myself to my peers that I still had the capacity to be a physician, I spent some years trying to prove to people that I still got it and still do the work then set for the border exams.
Dr. Ong, MD:I think all that really destroyed my body and my soul because I just kept pushing through each moment and in July 2019, I had such severe burnout that I just wouldn't literally get out of bed. I thought it was my spinal cord injury getting worse, but it wasn't even there. It was just that I was so burnt out and I just ignored the signs because at that time I didn't quite I've heard about the term burnout but I didn't quite understand it very much. I didn't realize that physical exhaustion would be one of the first few, was the first sign, and then followed by disconnecting, isolating myself from people, disconnecting from others and myself and being snappy, irritable, and then I think the last, and I didn't realize that, losing my sense of purpose in medicine, which was the quite the quite a severe symptom of burnout, was the deal breaker that really got me into this situation, the burnout. So I took a few months off work but I came back to work.
Dr. Ong, MD:Even after that I wasn't the same person and somehow I thought burnout must have took a whole chunk of my soul out of me and I don't think I ever fully recovered until I started working on my personal growth the year after, because of the pandemic and I was heavily pregnant at that time I focused on my personal growth so I started to work on it and that's how I learned about why I burnt out, about all the stuff that we learned, the narratives we have as kids because of the culture that we grew up in and all the beliefs that carried until adulthood.
Dr. Ong, MD:That's what I learned on all these things and that's the reason the burnout was quite spectacular. But I think it was through that experience I learned to be your own best friend came out from that too, because it's easy to forget that concept once you're in the day-to-day working as a physician because you're so busy on survival mode. It's really hard to have that concept at the back of your mind. Like any habit, like going to the gym. You just have to train that self-compassion muscle every day.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:And it's not to blame the physician for the burnout, that's not the issue. But we also know that the system's not going to change and if this is the reality we work in, we need to really advocate for ourselves. But we can't advocate for ourselves and what we truly need to thrive until we do the inner work.
Dr. Ong, MD:And, yeah, I think it's easy to get caught up with the blaming thing, like blaming the system yes, the system's to blame, sometimes the healthcare system but I think we can control our inner self and I think this is something that we have great control over. So I think learning your own lesson is something that we can exercise over. And back to the why heart center After I did all that personal growth work, I realized that I wasn't living according to the values, because one of my strong, one of my values in my work that I did on myself was that coaching found me. I did find coaching. Coaching found me Because, yeah, I didn't realize I'd been coaching almost my whole life.
Dr. Ong, MD:Even when I first resumed my medical career, I was already coaching my peers, coaching the junior staff, about mindset and things I did coach myself through walking. Again, that was a lot of self-coaching. So coaching found me. And once I started integrating coaching and medicine together, I think that's when I was really living a heart-centered life as the heart-centered doctor, because just combining coaching and my medical work as a pain physician was the best combination, just made me happy again, thriving again. Yeah, I think burnout could serve us. I think burnout's a warning sign, in a way, that our soul is not aligning very well with ourselves and we need to reevaluate our values.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Basically, Amen to all the above. Unfortunately it took a tragic accident, but thank God you're still here. And then, on top of that, the move, the life-changing at multiple points. The move, the life-changing at multiple points. But the beautiful thing is that you brought it back to make yourself whole again, and not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And it's hard to start to really sit I believe you said it earlier really sit with your feelings and evaluate what are my core values, what's true to me? Because there might be afraid of not knowing the answer or having to go down a path of I know. For me it was what if I can't answer this question to myself? What if my values have changed and I don't know what to do with that? That opens up a lot of what ifs, but I think that it's not something that you definitely have to work at. Do you think?
Dr. Ong, MD:Yeah, I think physician land where we always want certainties and that's our thing, yeah, yeah. But I think after doing all this inner work, just being curious is such a wonderful gift. If you're facing challenges and you're freaking out and all these fears come up, what if you shift that with a curiosity mindset and asking yourself let's just find out, okay, let's just find out. Just coming in with that kind kind of reframing just helps so much. And I teach this to my patients and my coaching clients as well, because they come to me and go, look, I'm facing all these challenges and I say, what if you come in with a different mindset, saying, let's just find, be curious, let's just find out? Yeah, I think I used to freak out with up with uncertainty, especially during covid. That was really a tough time because we didn't obviously we all didn't know how long it was going to last, what kind of complications it will bring and meet. The media was always portraying all this like disastrous things every day to scare us, not just the doctors everybody in the world rightly right.
Dr. Ong, MD:we're faced with that kind of bombardment of mass media, and all that that curiosity mindset got me through those tough times. Let's just say that.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:That's a beautiful way to redirect, and so if the listener wanted to connect with you, what is the best way to connect with Dr Olivia Ong? Olivia Ong.
Dr. Ong, MD:Absolutely so. I'm on several social media channels I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram and I'm on LinkedIn, and I also have a website, drolivialeeongcom, and you can reach me through email through my website as well, so there's several ways you can reach out to me. You can message me on my social media channel on my website.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:Yeah, you can message me on social all in my social media channel on my website. Yeah, and those links will be in the show notes. So what is one final pearl of wisdom that you would leave with us?
Dr. Ong, MD:I think what I would like to leave your audience with is live your love and be your own best friend. Live your love means live the life that you love and be kind to yourself. Live your love and be your own best friend. Live your love means live the life that you love and be kind to yourself. Live your love and be your own best friend.
Dr. Shah-Haque, MD:That's awesome. Thank you so much. That just really put a smile on my face with everything that you said and just thank you for sharing your story and just your words of wisdom and inspiration. Thank you for having me. If you're having difficulty finding out what your type of print is on the world around you or trying to figure out what type of print you want to leave, hit the link down in the show notes and connect to the workbook that is on theworthyphysiciancom.