My Life as an Anxious Doctor

I might be just as scared as you are.

In this Covid-19 world, I get to keep my mask and face shield on all day long. It’s a blessing in disguise for people like me, who are tired of wearing a poker face to hide their inner struggle. I’m alright now, but how I wished I could have had a plexiglass wall to protect me these past few years.

My name is Adriana, I’ll soon turn 35 years old, and I’ve suffered from sudden, unexplained, and debilitating anxiety for the past 3 years. As I’m recovering, and 90% better now, I can talk about it from a place of acceptance.

In my late 20’s, I never would have expected this to happen to me. After all, I had survived 6 years of med school and 3 years of residency, shared a dorm room with 3 other people, and experienced such a flawed teaching system during residency that I basically had to be self-taught. Having to learn an entire specialty all by myself was such a stressful experience that it nearly deterred me from practicing it all together. But at least I still had my sanity, and despite my self-doubt, I considered myself to be a strong and resilient person.

At 32 I got married to a wonderful man who supported me in all my endeavors and continues to do so. I gave up dentistry, which I had been practicing for a while, to pursue orthodontics full time, and focused all my energy into becoming a decent specialist. And that was the year when things started to go from stress to worry to fear to full-blown panic.

Looking back, I think I understand why it happened this way. I was finally in a safe loving space, where most of my problems were solved, where my greatest need — finding someone to love me back — was accomplished. It was time to look inward, it was time to deconstruct. And since I was unwilling to do that, my anxiety did it for me.

I’m not writing this to seek sympathy, I’m just trying to raise awareness. Medical workers aren’t superhuman, we’re people too. There is a stigma attached to mental health in the medical profession. Doctors with mental health issues are secretly considered to be less competent, which is ironic since my anxiety was triggered by trying to be the best possible doctor I could be in the first place. And while this is what triggered it, I’m sure there was a deeper existential cause at its root.

The most obvious one would be growing up with an extremely anxious and often depressed mother. She had her own childhood trauma to deal with and suffered her entire life in silence. While being an exceptional dental assistant — her patients loved her for her warm and kind nature — once at home she could finally take her shield off and break down. There was no more love for us, she was drained. Oh, how I resented her angst and all-consuming panic attacks! How selfish she appeared to me, so self-involved in her suffering. But she was deeply hurting, and years later I got to relate to what she was feeling, or at least a fraction of it. Call it karma.

My perfectionist tendencies pushed me over the edge these past few years. I was setting ambitious goals, too massive to handle in a balanced way. It took meeting those goals to realize they weren’t what I had wished for in the first place. I set milestones for the numbers of patients I would start treatments on, for my income each year, and for mastering certain procedures, and I’ve met them all. And by the end of it, I was a nervous wreck.

At some point this would be my typical day:

My mornings would be consumed with anticipation anxiety and I couldn’t stomach any food until the day was over. It was as if my organs had been paralyzed by a constant state of fight or flight.

I would cry or hyperventilate on my commute, while half-listening to self-help books. I would try to talk some sense into my irrational fears and worries, but the drive was long enough for them to loop inside my brain and leave me terrified by the time I got to work.

On the worst of days, I would get panic attacks, always in the privacy of a bathroom, whether at home or the office. They were primal and absurd. My mind would go blank and I couldn’t point out a single reason to explain the feeling of doom that was taking over my body.

But my anxiety was high-functioning. I was still able to focus on what needed to be done, and put on a front with my patients, just like my mother. For the kind ones, I didn’t want to be a burden. For the annoying ones, I didn’t want to show my fear and weakness.

At the end of office hours, a tidal wave of relief would wash over me, as I would drive back, happy to survive another day. At home, I would medicate with red wine and a Netflix binge, and cuddle next to my husband and my little dog. And eat, finally eat, maybe for the first time that day.

For three whole years, I’ve been so tense in my body at all times that I’ve developed a constant chronic pain that, combined with my anxiety, sucked all the joy out of me. And while my anxiety has receded, I’m left with the pain to this day, a nagging reminder of my excess and futile overachiever tendencies.

Being an anxious person in the medical field is lonely. We’re supposed to know it all in front of patients, and fake success and confidence with colleagues. Most of the doctors I know would never in a million years admit that they don’t enjoy their profession, or that something might be wrong. So there’s no one for me to open up to or develop a relationship with. Whenever I try to be honest, I can see their puzzled expressions and quickly retreat. For now, I’m stuck with small talk and discussing cases.

Being an anxious person in my family is just as lonely. You’d think my parents would be more understanding given our history, but no, they’re not showing any mercy. They were the ones pushing me to follow this career path in the first place, and all I wanted to do in my early years was to make them proud. Acknowledging my suffering would mean admitting they felt guilty about it, and that’s not a comfortable feeling. My mother would say to me that “It’s just a job”, that I should “toughen up”. My father would shake his head in disappointment and tell me that he thought I was strong like him, but it turns out I inherited my mother’s weaker side of the family. It hurt me to hear this advice from them, but I realise this was the advice they received from their own parents. Being vulnerable was not an option for them either, ever.

Three years and loads of therapy later, my anxiety has tapered off significantly and I’ve indeed “toughened up”. I’m at the point where I get to be comfortable at work, but I haven’t yet reached the level where I enjoy it. I love learning and thought that if only I mastered that skill, or finished that case, THEN I’d be happy, THEN I’d love my job. But it doesn’t work like that.

Giving up after a decade of training and many years of practicing has never been an option for me until recently. It would have felt like such a waste. But the thought of spending 30+ more years in this state was scary enough to motivate me to look inside and search for what I might enjoy doing instead. Pandemics are a good time to reflect on such things.

I still don’t know if I will have the courage to do it, drastically change my career path again. I don’t know if I have it in me anymore, it takes a lot of work and determination, and anxiety has left me tired and hesitant. The seed has been planted, though, and I love a challenge.

I just hope I’ve learned my lesson and that, this time, I’ll start listening to my gut feeling. I hope this time I’ll put my mental well-being first.