Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
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We don’t have to answer to society tomorrow. We have to answer to our children and ourselves.
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This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I want to know it all. Feeling ashamed, ashamed of being ourselves and our emotions, is something that society has instilled in us from a very young age. Being ashamed of dressing the way we are, being ashamed of looking the way we look, being ashamed of going to a movie by yourself.
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Being ashamed of having certain friends or choosing certain professions. Being ashamed of being diagnosed with an illness. And the list doesn’t end there. It goes with us into adulthood. As a healthcare provider, there are so many things that make us feel ashamed and we don’t even realize it. The first and biggest one I’m going to say is asking for help. Medicine or
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Healthcare is so complex that we can’t know everything. But for some reason, the way society has positioned healthcare professionals, we feel we have to know everything and we decide not to ask for help. Asking for help, whether it’s with colleagues or sending a patient out as a referral is a sign of strength, not weakness.
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So it’s important that we know and we accept that we can’t possibly know everything. And for the best care that we can offer our patients, we have to ask for help, because ultimately our goal is that best care for that patient. Making mistakes, it’s gonna happen. We are going to make mistakes. We’re not perfect. What’s important is that we learn from those mistakes and we learn to move on and pass them
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make them repeatedly. You know, for example, even with our staff or our team members, your technicians, they’re going to make mistakes and it’s okay as long as they understand that those mistakes can’t always happen and be repeated. Emotional responses. It is normal and we have to accept that it’s normal to have times when we are scared, we are afraid, we are sad, we’re frustrated, we want to scream.
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Being a healthcare provider is so stressful that, and we have such long hours that it’s normal to have these emotional responses and accept them, understand them, learn how to deal with them. That’s the important part of it. Fatigue and burnout. Again, we have long hours, some of us dealing with more complex cases, it’s normal for to feel tired or burnout.
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we are able to take these rest times or take off time for our mental health, our wellbeing to rest and recover and obviously be able to care for our patients when we’re not as tired, diagnose them appropriately and treat them appropriately. If we’re constantly tired or feeling burnout, we’re not going to offer that level of care to our patients. Then there’s the imposter syndrome. Many
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healthcare providers, especially early on in their early career, feel that sense of self doubt or that they’re not good enough. And that’s very normal. But we want to accept that we don’t want to be ashamed of those feelings. We want to accept those feelings, learn how to move past those feelings and be okay with not knowing everything or having that self doubt. Patient outcomes.
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Not every patient outcome can be the same. And we don’t have control over all our patient outcomes. We can only offer the best care that we can. And after that, it is not in our hands. So what’s important is that we focus on what we can control, which is the care that we can offer our patients. And I’m going to say the last is our work-life balance, right? We’re always in that constant feeling of shame that we’re not giving our profession enough time or.
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you know, family enough time. And we have to understand that we also have to have self-care time. Where do we fit into this and give ourselves that self-care time and then balance our work and our family life as well. And don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t be ashamed of giving yourself more time and be ashamed of giving your work more time at certain points and giving your family more time at certain points. Right? So for example, I know in the summer.
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the last week before school started just recently, I decided to take a week off. And I felt so much guilt and shame because for us as optometrists, it’s our back to school season. And I felt so ashamed and guilty of not being there for my patients. But then I had to come to terms with the fact that this is the last week before my kids go back to school. So this is something I have to do for my family. And other times I will be there for my patients. So,
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That constant feeling of shame is just constantly around us. We need to understand that that’s what we’re feeling and we need to accept that and move past it. As parents, there’s also a whole list of what makes us feel ashamed. It’s endless. We need to be okay with asking for help, right? Asking for help is huge. So…
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You know, I know early on when I had my first child, I was like, no, I’m gonna do everything by myself and I’m gonna, you know, I’m not gonna ask parents for help. I’m not gonna ask these people for help. I’m gonna do everything by myself. But quickly I learned that I could not do it all. And I needed to seek help and ask for help. Otherwise I would break down, especially as a working healthcare professional. So there was no shame in asking for help and being able to maintain your mental health.
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And making mistakes, right? Very similar to a healthcare professional’s role. We are going to make mistakes as parents, but what’s important is that we learn along the way and we correct those mistakes. We’re gonna make mistakes like yelling at our children, you know, not feeding them the right foods all the time, giving them too much candy sometimes. There are certain things we’re going to do, but we need to learn to get past that, learn from it, and make the right adjustments as we see fit. Not having a perfect home.
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So as you know from previous episodes that I’ve talked about, you know, my anxiety around the home, especially if it’s cluttered, I get really stressed out and if it’s not organized. This year I’ve really focused on learning to say, I don’t care to myself. So the kids rooms are a mess. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. So not having that perfect home. Don’t feel the pressure.
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early on, you know, when my kids would have play dates and things, I always felt this whole pressure every time to clean the entire house because every time I would go to somebody else’s house, their friends’ parents, it would always look so nice and clean. But now I’ve learned that it’s just not worth my mental sanity to stress over it because when I stress over it, then I get upset with the kids and my family and it just becomes a whole deal. So
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Not having a perfect home is not something we need to feel guilty about. In fact, we should be proud that we have dedicated that time to something more important or somebody more important. Not following social norms, whether it’s not choosing the school for your kids that everybody goes to, or not having that conventional family that everybody has, not following the similar extracurricular structures for your kids that everybody goes to as well. These are not things that matter.
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What matters is that you have built your family in a way that works for you guys. And there’s love, kindness, and respect. Not having to follow those social norms and feel pressure, destroyed, your kids will feed off of that, that’s not important. You need to understand that society has set these norms on their own rules and own assumptions. And we need to break free of those.
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and pick schools according to what we feel is best for our children and us, and have our family set up that’s best for us and our children, not society. We don’t have to answer to society tomorrow. We have to answer to our children and ourselves. And the same applies with financial struggles, right? We are ashamed sometimes of having financial struggles, not being able to afford the same things that maybe our friends can, or schooling that our friends can afford.
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And what’s important is that we are offering that same love and support to our children, not offering financial status to our children. Your child’s behavior, that’s something that I think always stresses me out and makes me feel ashamed. And recently I went to Walmart with my children and I took all three of them and they were having, my little one was having a meltdown.
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at the cash register and they were all the self-checkout register and all three of my kids were fighting over who’s going to scan the barcodes. And we had so many items in our cart, everybody was looking at me or so I think they were, including the people at Walmart. And I was feeling so ashamed, so ashamed of my children’s behaviors. I started screaming at them.
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I was just like, what’s wrong with you guys? Why can you just not take turns properly and stop yelling at each other? And after that, when we got in the car, I was so upset at myself that if I had just been a little more patient, taken more time at the register and let them each take their turn, maybe I wouldn’t have broken down at Walmart and had everyone stare at me. But also the fact that everybody was staring at me made me more angry at them, made me more ashamed of their behavior.
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And that was something that really stuck with me that I shouldn’t have been ashamed of them. They’re my children. I brought them up. They may not react the same way as other children do in certain scenarios. But the point is that they reacted in a way at the checkout that was because I was stressed out as well and because I was feeling ashamed. So make sure that you don’t feel sorry or ashamed for your child’s behavior.
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They’re a product of you. They’re gonna mimic what you feel, what you see. So if they start seeing that you care what society feels about the way they behave, the way they look, the way they talk, it is going to rub off on them. And they’re gonna start feeling ashamed of themselves. And parenting styles. You don’t need to parent like everybody else. Do not feel ashamed of the way that you are parenting or that you choose to parent.
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Your parenting style is going to be different from others, and you are going to have things that you can offer your kids that others won’t be able to offer. So don’t be ashamed of you, and don’t be ashamed of your children and your family. Parenting is a journey that is filled with ups and downs, but what’s most important is that you are offering love and support and respect to your children and your families. And don’t forget the amount of effort that you’re putting in every second of the day.
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to be with your children, support your children. That’s huge. And we often forget that we’re putting in so much effort that we remember the times when we are not doing the right thing. Feeling ashamed is a difficult emotion to navigate. Very difficult. What’s most important is that you recognize it because most of us feel ashamed and we don’t even realize that we’re having those feelings. So acknowledging it. What’s helped me is almost talking myself
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through that feeling and knowing that, hey, you know, your house doesn’t need to be perfect. Your house doesn’t need to be clean. Telling myself those things, telling myself that my children aren’t perfect and they are going to have meltdowns at times. Don’t be ashamed of those things. It’s almost like a self-talk and that’s really important that you are giving yourself comfort and knowing that you don’t have to match society’s needs and you don’t have to feel ashamed. Challenging your negative thoughts. If you are feeling…
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negative about certain things. Focus on your growth and focus on talking positively. So focus on what you can do to change those feelings. How can you grow from these feelings and how can you change the dynamic at your home or your workplace so that you can feel better? Because there’s no place for shame in this society anymore and you have to do what’s right for yourself and your family and your profession in order for you to come out strong.
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Seek help where you need help. Talk to family members, talk to a therapist. Do whatever you need to do to recognize these feelings, break free of these society norms. Dealing with shame is again, a very difficult process. And my suggestion is always practicing self-compassion, having those times for self-care and mindfulness, accepting those feelings and…
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definitely navigating it and focusing on growth. I’m going to leave you guys with a reference from an episode we had earlier with Shalina Kalfan regarding illness and cancer. She said, it’s important to recognize that this shame is often rooted in societal misconceptions or personal fears. Challenge the stigma. This is something that society has built.
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society that society I don’t know who the society is but it’s the society that has built these norms or you know made us feel like these were the normal norms but it’s not and we need to challenge those break those stigmas and say no to feeling ashamed because you’re not alone. Thank you listeners and viewers for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes
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make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered.