Great Equalizers

I had a good cry yesterday. That’s a phrase I’ve gotten really used to saying in medical school. Crying has always been an emotional release for me when I’m frustrated, angry, or stressed.

As anyone could imagine and pretty much all medical students can attest to, medical school is an extremely demanding and stressful journey. I thought that I had prepared myself for the academic rigor by pushing myself in college and bypassing a gap year. After writing my personal statement and secondary essays during the application process, I also felt really emotionally prepared—really grounded and secure in who I was. I was wrong. It turns out that medical school really highlights flaws that you never knew you had, or that you thought you had fixed.

First of all, I really don’t think anyone can be completely prepared for the scholastic demands of medical school. It is the great equalizer, no matter your background. By Block 2 or 3, it seemed everyone started to struggle and doubt themselves. With this struggle and doubt came emotional obstacles I never imagined would be so hard to dodge, let alone overcome. Social interactions became more difficult and my emotional responses became heightened.

The first time I cried at school was right before the Block 1 finals. I felt the tears coming in class and I had to run to the bathroom. I had never been unable to stop myself from crying in public, so this was new. I was shocked and appalled at myself and I vowed it wouldn’t happen again. It happened again in the second week of Block 2 and several times afterwards. The tears seemed to come out of nowhere and it became a success if I got through the week without crying.

What I began to notice about these ‘episodes’ was that after I let the tears flow, I recovered pretty quickly and was able to resume studying within minutes; it was amazing. It cleared my head and calmed me down. I even began to watch sad videos to make myself cry in order to get that release. The period that I spent crying was the only time I allowed myself to feel stressed out. When I wasn’t crying I was focused and studying.

Emotional maturity is acknowledging your emotions and recognizing when you need some time off to regroup. It is valuing your emotions and finding ways to incorporate them into your personal and professional identity to connect with people including patients, colleagues, and friends.

However, emotional maturity also demands that you be able to control your emotions and express them in appropriate social contexts. Using crying as a timer to put a limit on how long I allowed myself to feel was not a healthy way to deal with stress. What began to happen is I would start crying over things I normally wouldn’t have cried about like minor inconveniences. I would cry when I got too many emails on a Monday morning. I would cry if lectures went five minutes over. I would even cry if my cat, Maya, would walk over my laptop while I was studying. I began to lash out at my friends and binge eat. I neglected my health because I was setting myself up for the next cry. Obviously, I was building unhealthy habits. This kind of emotional maturity is something that I, as many people, need to work on rebuilding.

I got to a point where my eyes were constantly raw, and I was frequently on edge. This was not the medical school experience I wanted, and I knew that it was under my control to help myself. It is hard to acknowledge that we have room to grow. As medical students, we are so used to being successful and being the best that it’s hard to face a challenge that we don’t really know how to tackle. But it is something that we must force ourselves to do. I think that we forget that evaluating and challenging ourselves makes us the best possible versions of ourselves.

I looked into some mental health resources and began to build new habits. I started exercising more, journaling, working to define what my limits are, and recognizing when the stress is there. On this journey, I’m realizing how important it is to have guidelines and resources in managing your mental health.

I’ve been challenged this year with initiating a change for myself. I know that as a medical student, and a member of a family of many doctors, I have access to a variety of resources including professors, doctors, mentors, colleagues, and textbooks. However, people who are not inducted into the medical community or who are not a part of a higher socioeconomic status do not have access to these resources.

Through my own personal journey, I have realized that it is so important that we start amplifying the dialogue about mental health. Mental health is another great equalizer. It affects all classes, races, ethnicities, and genders. Additionally, mental illness can cause and even exacerbate physical symptoms. From first-hand experience, I know that it can be debilitating, isolating, and life-altering.

I think as a society we have an archaic perspective on what constitutes a mental illness. There is so much stigma and bias surrounding it, and many people still do not consider it to be legitimate. Society has a widespread misunderstanding that if there was more and better dialogue about mental illness, as well as more accurate representations in the media, the attitudes and policies surrounding mental healthcare and resource provision would improve.

We have made progress in shedding a light on the prevalence of mental illness and how damaging it can be if untreated or unrecognized. But we must continue this progress to provide the best resources and care to all that need it. Those in the general population are not only fighting for the legitimacy of their experience, but also for access to the resources to help themselves. We all want to be better. I want to be better. The difference between me and the lay-person experiencing depression, is that I have the resources and the knowledge to advocate for myself. This is a gap that the medical community can fill.

Start that conversation, ask people if they’re okay, ask what you can do to help, give them resources. This is just the start.