35. The Overwhelm Antidote: A Physician Mom's Toolkit for Tough Weeks

Hey doc! In this episode, I'm getting real about a recent tough week and sharing my toolkit for managing overwhelm. I dive into:

• The perfect storm that led to my overwhelm
• How I used gratitude as a first line of defense
• When gratitude isn't enough and what to do next
• The power of reaching out for support
• Why it's okay (and necessary) to take mental health days

Key takeaways:

1. Gratitude can help shift perspective, but it's not always enough
2. Don't be afraid to reach out for support or reschedule commitments
3. Self-care isn't selfish - it's necessary for showing up as your best self
4. Mental health days are valid, even for Physicians
5. Reflect on what changes you can make to prevent future overwhelm

You're human first, Physician second. It's okay to prioritize your well-being!

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Transcript

  Hey doc, I had a rough week last week and I want to share a little bit about it. Because it goes through some of the techniques that I use when I am overwhelmed because I was very overwhelmed last week.

So I worked a lot. So starting two weeks ago, I was on call.  Like four times in five days, which was the first time that I had done that. And I do 12 hours nights. And when I did it, I was like, not doing that again. And that was a way in LA traveled back. And then I got called in to do two emergency shifts at my local site. 

And because we are kind of in push mode, because we have a lot of vacations coming up, we're going to be in Trinidad for a month in December. We were like, okay, yes, I got a great incentive. I'm going to do it.  Also, probably not the best idea, but like, Hey, these trips don't pay for themselves. I have to buy not.

I have to, I, we want to buy a washer dryer for my mom. Let's just do some extra shifts.  And the week that was following. My husband's going out of town. He's going back to New Jersey to see his parents.  Also my au pair who Had been here for then two weeks. was starting her third week and we've been having some challenges  so it was a perfect setup for Overwhelm and on Sunday night after I had then done 7 calls in like 11 days, maybe 6 or 7, I don't remember.

The last one that ended with 6 deliveries, a shoulder, and a postpartum hemorrhage.  And I realized I had not planned my week at all. I had an interview for VA. I was going to be solo parenting.  I was like, I felt, I felt the pressure rising. So I messaged my coach and I was like, yeah, I'm on the precipice of overwhelm right now.

 And she was like, okay, what can you do to back off of the edge? And that question in and of itself, made me feel overwhelmed. So I promptly put my phone down and went to sleep  and then I woke up the next morning.

I was like, okay, he's gone.  I still have to be on. What can I do to help myself? And usually when I wake up, I have a cup of tea and then I do some gratitude. Like I'd like to start with gratitude journaling, which is a new thing. Morning routine that I started in the last couple of months, but I really like to start that way.

And I was like, you know what? Gratitude is a very good way for me to battle these feelings because all of this stuff that I have going on  is actually  good. It's actually things that are helping my life head in the direction that I wanted to. So I worked out those locum shifts. So that I can travel for two months. 

I am out of traditional, , employed medicine  because I made the choice because I was burnt out and I'm no longer burnt out. So yes, I pushed a little bit hard, but I'm really thankful that I'm no longer employed and that I can control my schedule. I can negotiate for high incentives. I can decide, yeah, I'm not going to work in December and go back home for a month.

So I am truly grateful for that.  I am really grateful that I have an au pair who is just here to help me care for my children while I build this dream life with my husband,  even though,  even though she's taking so much of my energy, so much of my time. I am so grateful because it could be a lot worse. I could have no childcare or I could have a really expensive part time nanny because that's all we could afford or, or, or, right?

So I am grateful. I am grateful that my. Husband loves his parents so much  and it's one of the things that made me want to marry him. It was his relationship with his mother. It's not like a weird mother son relationship. It is beautiful with both of his parents. And because of that relationship, that's why he had to go and leave me to solo parent.

And I also leave him when I go to locum. So, you know, it's fair, but I am, I am grateful for that. So you see, My point, right? So I went through and just wrote down everything that was adding to how I was feeling and I tried to find and not try like it was so difficult. I just thought about it. I was like, you know what?

I am actually grateful that I have. These are good problems to have. And because I was so inspired, I wrote my newsletter for that morning  about, um, All of that because I know a lot of you feel overwhelmed sometimes and it's just like, well, what do I do? So as I'm typing up my newsletter,  my smoke alarm starts beeping, not like it was going off, but like the battery and that thing is loud. 

As I look over to it, I realized that that curtain you see behind me is a foot lower than it was supposed to be, which means it's falling. At the same time, my daughter started crying. This is like 5 a. m.  I was like, you have to be. F ing kidding me right now. I am trying to be grateful. I am trying to get out of overwhelm, not roll down that hill. 

What is going on? So I was like,  get it together. You don't have a choice. Figure it out. So I went and spent a very sweaty 45 minutes trying to Well, first of all, trying to find the battery for the smoke alarm. Thankfully, we had one then trying to get the curtain back up. That is a two person job, bt dubs, and it fell a couple of times on me. 

Yeah, so it was fun. But, you know, I showered, came back. It was fine, finished my newsletter, sent it out. And I was like, OK, I'm feeling good. I don't feel like I'm backing away from the edge.  And so I. Shared with my email list, how to use gratitude to get away from overwhelm.  But then I also wanted to follow up, because as the day progressed,  I was like tumbling down the hill, like over the precipice, over the edge, because I, you know, I homeschool my son.

So I spend the first couple hours in the morning with him until 10 o'clock when the au pair starts. So I was going through some of his things to just organize some stuff because he got  a new curriculum.  And as I'm going through his cupboard,  I'm finding, like, empty boxes. 

random papers.  So I'm realizing my old au pair, as he got stuff,  she would open it and just stick the empty boxes and basically trash back in the cupboards.  And I was just like, what is going on here? Like, is this for real?  And this is an area that I had an organizer come when I was pregnant with my daughter.

And then again after.  So everything is in a container that has labels, like, and also is trash. Like, it was very clear that it was not supposed to be in there.  That coupled with just the normal things of my new au pair being new and the frustrations that come with that, I was just like, y'all have to be kidding me.

Like, I cannot.  I cannot handle this right now.  So as that is brewing, I get a message from my coach. She's like, yeah, do you want to just postpone today's session? Because that's the other thing I did mention.  I was starting the week with all of those things in the background. And then I also had  Four meetings.

I had my personal coaching. I had an interview for my VA and two of my coaching clients.  So it was just like, I really need to be at the top of my game.  So when I saw that message from her saying, you know, should we postpone? I was like, yes, 100 percent because I had those thoughts on Sunday, but I was talked out of it  and it was just like, she gave me permission.

To do what I should have done before, which was say, I, I,  I need a break. So I was like, yes, we are going to postpone and. I'm also going to cancel the interview for my new VA and it was only a couple hours before it started. I felt really bad. I think it was very unprofessional, but I knew I would not  have had a good interview. 

I couldn't, I wouldn't be focused. I couldn't bring my best self. So it was really better to just cancel and reschedule than to proceed that way because I need to find a good hire. So interviewing like that was just not a good option.  So I found myself with a couple hours of free time where I could have tackled my to do list, you know, get things done.

But instead I laid on that couch back there and I meditated. And I was just like, I need to come back down. And I'm kind of tired because I still haven't really gotten much sleep being post call for all those days. So if I fall asleep, great that I set an alarm. Fine. And that was exactly what I needed in that moment.

And I was able to show up for my coaching clients at my best and everything was fine. And then when I got to my kids in the evening, they got happy mommy because I got in that moment of time for myself. So. Yeah. Sometimes gratitude doesn't work  or sometimes it's not enough, I should say.

And there are different things that we can do. And I feel like, especially coming from a coach, you know, it's like, Oh yeah, practice gratitude. It's like, stop with that toxic positivity nonsense. Like I, gratitude will not help me.  It can in certain circumstances. And then sometimes you need more.  So I use a couple different things. Reaching out to my support system, which was my coach, even though I didn't technically reach out to her, we are in such constant contact that she knew what was going on and she could sense mainly by the fact that I did not answer  when she asked how I could back off from the precipice of overwhelm.

But having that support there, It was invaluable.  I knew that I should have cancelled, but her, you know, giving me that permission, quote unquote,  was really helpful, right? So who can you reach out to, to give you support, even if it's just a listening ear so you can vent or not even to get advice, just so somebody can hear you and empathize with you,  right?

And then, my favorite. It's to retreat into yourself and not like, you know, wallowing woe is me, even though I do believe that that is important sometimes for a set amount of time, but going into yourself to take care of yourself and it should come as no surprise that one of my remedies to overwhelm is self care  because it is, and that's what I did when I went to meditate, I just needed to not have to talk to anybody.

Take care. To not have to answer any questions, not have to care for anybody, not to be on or anything. I needed a break. And at that moment, meditating slash sleeping was what I needed, right? So those, uh, the tools that I use, the one that I couldn't necessarily use was to call in for reinforcements, which would have been my husband, like a physical person. 

That wouldn't have really helped me,  on that day  during the week because the rest of the week remained a challenge.  But these are all things that you can use. And I know what you're thinking.  You don't work traditionally, Dr. Toya. Yes. But I will tell you,  this is not just something that I came up with as I left traditional medicine and started doing locums.

I used to do this when I was still employed and it's called a mental health day, right? So if I. was just at the brink or even rolling down the hill of overwhelm, I would call out. I would take a sick day  and cancel clinic.  I don't think I ever canceled a surgery day because I actually loved my surgery days and that was something that I enjoyed.

But I do believe that you can cancel slash delay surgeries if you are at that point. I know it's a hard sell.  But your patients deserve to have a physician cutting them open, who is fully present, fully focused, relaxed, like,  wouldn't you want your surgeon to, to be like that if you needed surgery?  So  if you are so overwhelmed that it's just like you feel like you're going to break like you are Exhausted you are whatever else. 

Yeah, I think they would appreciate  knowing that  You decided that it was the best thing to not operate today or at least to give yourself a little bit of a break It's like that story a couple weeks ago Where the pilot was like, yeah, I'm not feeling it. I'm canceling the flight and everybody was like good if my pilot is not feeling it  Let's cancel.

I don't want to go with you  I think it's the same thing but we have this kind of idea that you know, we cannot  call out we cannot cancel  Patients will be mad This can't delay this patient has cancer this patient has an emergency. There are other people  That can take care of it. I promise you, because if you stepped out of your house and got hit by a car, knock on wood,  they would find somebody else.

They would figure it out. So this is not like a flippant thing where it's just like, yeah, I'm not feeling it. I'm not going to go into work today. Yeah, I don't want to do the surgery. I'm canceling.  Being overwhelmed, feeling like you're drowning, being too exhausted to think. That's an emergency. 

That's something that needs to be dealt with.  So, you taking a mental health day is not out of reach because you're fully employed or whatever other reason you can think of where when you hear me say it, you're like, Nah, I can't do that. Or, you're crazy, I,  you can do it, I promise you.  And then, there's the reaching out. 

Do you have a helpful, warm body that can come to you? and help you out. Like , if the rest of the week continued to be terrible, there were people that I could call to come and just give me an extra hand.  I didn't need it because I knew what I needed to do to take care of myself. So for the rest of the week, I did not show up for a lot of things.

I was not online. I canceled things. I didn't do a whole lot of work. I just took the time to rest and save my energy for dealing with my au pair.  Because I, I knew I had to ration the energy,   so I couldn't give it to every single thing. And I knew my main reinforcement, my main man, was not coming back until Thursday. 

So I did what I had to do.  So I hope this was helpful for you and it was inspirational for you. Mainly to call out. You can do it. I promise you. You have sick days for a reason.  Seriously, though. Utilize these different options when Everything just feels like it's too much. So hopefully you can get to a place where You can at least come up for air, and then think about  what do I need to change in my life, in my daily routine so that I don't get to this point again, or I don't get here so often.

So for me,  I know I'm not doing that many shifts in a row again. I don't care how much money they're paying me. It's not happening. I am too old.  I have too many kids and too many other things going on.  So I'm not going to put myself in that situation again.

For you, it could be something else.  What do you need to  because being in that chronic state of overwhelm is also unsustainable.  Okay. All right. So let me know if this was helpful for you. Send me a message in that little box below where it says, you know, message me now, whatever it says, send me a DM, send me a PM, join Stethoscopes and Strollers.

I would love to have you in there for a great community that is. Will uplift you and help you when you have in those moments of overwhelm is a positive space where we love our husbands, even though we want to strangle them sometimes,  you know, where we love childcare and outsourcing and negotiating and all the things that are leading you to your dream life.

It is a wonderful community, and I would love to have you in there. And if you feel like you need a little bit more, you just need that kind of support  that my coach gave to me.  Schedule a free coaching session. The link is in the show notes and on my website, let me tell you that support is unmatched and I model it for all of my clients  and  it was exactly what I needed to start this week off  and I want that for you too. 

So I will see you on the next episode of Set the Scopes and Strollers.