Resilience Redirect: How Introverts in Healthcare Can Stop the Exploit
Avoiding exploitation of
Your inherent resilience
Despite the message you may be receiving, you don't need more resilience. You need a new way to use it.
Many healthcare professionals cringe at the word resilience. This makes sense. You haven't gotten to where you are due to a lack of resilience. You've gotten here because of it.
To imply something different is, frankly, insulting.
The nods of approval come when you're "strong," "reliable," or "cooperative." Yes, these are positive attributes of introverts in healthcare.
Unfortunately, what's not spoken aloud is the underlying message: "We're counting on you to tolerate more, complain less, and keep pushing forward no matter what."
That, friend, is not a celebration of your tenacity and fortitude. It's an exploitation of your resilience.
This blog is an invitation to redirect your perseverance and strength.
Stop allowing your resilience to be used as a tool for manipulation - as a way to sentence you to chronically enduring.
Instead, use it for your own good.
Calling Out the Resilience Ruse
On some level, the healthcare system cannot exist without seeding doubt and self-judgment in resilient healthcare introverts.
Resiliency is held up as the ideal in healthcare.
It's the badge of honor proving you work well under pressure, adapt to impossible circumstances, show up day in and day out, and keep going when your mind and body are pleading with you to stop. You remain steady when everything around you is decidedly off-kilter.
This external performance requires you to wear a mask you can't take off.
Where does it land you?
*The better you perform under pressure, the more responsibility you're given - without consideration of your need for resources and support.
*You're celebrated for your flexibility and stoic ways - and no one checks in to see how you're really doing.
*Hiding your overwhelm and pushing through has become the norm - you've forgotten what it's like to not be in constant self-regulation.
You've begun to believe that taking time to recharge, rest, or - gasp! - asking for help or a change in circumstances is letting others down.
There's the Catch-22.
You buy into the fallacy that your value lies in how much you can tolerate and whether or not you stick it out.
Your innate resilience becomes your default coping mechanism, even when it's wrong for the situation.
*You stay too long in situations in which you're not valued.
*You're the one putting in more than your fair share of effort because it's easier than speaking up and pushing back.
*You stop questioning what's not working because it's become your norm and you're used to enduring it.
This can happen in personal and professional settings. In healthcare, you might not recognize it because this way of being is lauded.
It's another silent message: "Your needs can wait because you can handle it." The quieter you are and the stronger you become, the easier it is to be overlooked and overused.
It's the resilience ruse.
Resilience Reframe
Your resilience is for you.
Resilience is a way of being that's intended to be protective of you. It's not a stance you should feel compelled to take so you can endure in toxic and overstretched systems.
Resilience is not:
*Never having needs because you're the dependable one.
*Tolerating again and again so others don't have to be uncomfortable.
*Maintaining a persona of cool and calm despite mounting demands.
When you take these actions in the name of resilience, you're "disappearing" yourself.
Recognizing your value and including yourself in the circle of care is true resilience.
So, have you been getting what you're giving?
This is a great first question for redirecting resilience in your favor.
Your resilience isn't serving you if you're absent from the list of people benefitting from your actions. At best, it's pushed you into people-pleasing. At worst, it's martyrdom.
If you now realize your resilience has been used against you, not for you, it's not too late to get back on track.
Real-World Resilience for Introverts in Healthcare
At first glance, using resilience for your own good may seem a simple matter of setting boundaries. But it's more than that.
It's recognizing what generates resilience at its core. Rather than using your energy to hold it all together, use it to build yourself up.
Resilience comes in many forms. Nurture all of them.
Mental Resilience - Protect Your Cognitive Space
Working in healthcare places significant demands on your intellectual abilities. You're often required to meet the needs of multiple patients at once, stay on top of best practices, and stay sharp in overstimulating, draining environments.
Practices for supporting your mental resilience include:
*Set aside time for deep thinking outside of the action. Even 5 minutes of silence - no multitasking! - can help bring clarity to your thoughts.
*Release the need to constantly explain yourself. If you need a short break, take it. There's no need to justify yourself. Your needs are valid regardless of someone else's approval.
*Let curiosity lead. Whether acknowledging a job well done or considering how to avoid a mistake in the future, be curious about what led to the outcome. Learn and grow.
*Catch perfectionism disguised as professionalism. You can be effective and compassionate without being perfect.
Emotional Resilience - Your Inner World Matters, Too
If your resilience has been commandeered for the benefit of others, you will often find yourself hiding, stuffing, and otherwise dismissing your emotional needs. You can be emotional and professional. At the same time, you don't have to give all your emotional energy away.
Strategies for maintaining emotional resilience are:
*Name your emotions for your benefit instead of ignoring them to protect others. Honor your truth. Simply acknowledging to yourself - "I feel angry" or "I feel frustrated" - is an easy step toward validating yourself, especially when others might not. Give yourself a break before jumping into the next task.
*Let go of the need to immediately "fix" how you (or others) feel. Resilience for yourself requires not abandoning your feelings or gaslighting yourself into thinking you shouldn't feel a certain way. It also means knowing it's not always your responsibility to make things right for others in every situation.
*Practice compassionate detachment. You can be kind and caring without taking on patients' and colleagues' burdens. If it's not yours to carry, set it down.
*Say no to emotional labor that isn't acknowledged or reciprocated. Deep emotional connection is one of your strengths. However, you're not required to share it if you don't have the capacity or find attempts at connecting have landed you on a one-way street.
Physical Resilience - Honor Your Body's Basic Needs
It's a great irony that you're often forced to neglect your own body in the name of caring for others' bodies. Resiliency shows up in self-respect, including how you protect yourself physically.
Routines for boosting physical resilience include:
*Take a break before you crash and burn. Resiliency requires recovery. It's wise, not weak, to be proactive about rest.
*Fuel your body as necessary. No apologies required. Put eating and hydration on your schedule if you must. They're not optional.
*Move your body for good. Constant rushing and molding yourself for others' needs takes its toll. Use movement to support your nervous system.
*Pay attention to your senses. When something doesn't feel good, pay attention. Be intentional about discovering ways to create comfort.
When you know how to source your resilience, it becomes easier to protect it and use it for your own good.
This leads us to another great question for redirecting your resilience.
How would you show up differently if you didn't allow your resilience to be used against you?
Let your boundaries come into play.
Start small. Say no when you need to say no. Offer an alternative that works for you. Practice including yourself in the circle of care.
Keep a "Resilience Redirect" journal and track each and every time you use your tenacity, courage, and perseverance to support yourself instead of furthering someone else's agenda.
It's not selfish to protect yourself from people and situations that disregard your well-being.
Be Strong, Be Resilient - But Do It For Yourself
Let's bust a healthcare myth.
Being resilient in healthcare is not about being taken advantage of. It certainly isn't about giving everything you have and then being called weak when you've got nothing left.
The healthcare system in its current form won't gently guide you to redirect your care, compassion, and empathy toward yourself.
You have to choose to do it.
It's when you've cultivated resilience for yourself that one of two things will happen:
You'll either thrive in medicine because you choose to show up from a place of power or flourish outside of medicine because you recognize what you can no longer tolerate.
When you make your resilience work for you, you'll know neither choice is right or wrong. It's all about knowing what's right for you.
Want to learn more about flexibility and resilience?
Learn how to protect and support your energy for greater well-being with the Energy Management for Introverts in Healthcare guide.
You can access it for free here.
Ready for 1:1 support from someone who understands your introverted nature?
Learn more about working with me here.
Charity is a physician and burnout coach helping introverts in healthcare escape feelings of apathy, irritability, and resentment brought on by the increasing demands and decreasing rewards of medicine.
She uses her 20 years of experience in clinical medicine combined with coaching to help introverts discover ways to be diligent, thoughtful clinicians while prioritizing their needs and protecting their energy. She wants you to know you don’t have to feel guilty for wanting a thriving life inside and outside of medicine.