Hi!
I have had a difficult relationship with my mother basically since my 7 year old was born. I feel guilted into doing things that I wouldn't want to do, just to appease my parents (but mostly my mom). I'm not really even sure where to start with the healing of this relationship, or the transition to healing within myself and acceptance of our relationship as it stands, and not to feel so guilty about it.

ANSWER:

C: Mother exists, 7 year old exists. Mother has wishes
T: I should appease my mom.
F: Guilt
A: do the things she wants (it sounds like at the cost of things you want?) What else???? Are you in judgement? Worry? People-pleasing? What else are you doing and not doing from guilt?
R: Resent your mom, disconnect from your parents. Ignore yourself.

I'm happy you brought this here, especially seeing that you are interested in healing.
What, specifically, would this healing look like for you?

If we put "healing within myself and acceptance of our relationship as it stands" in your RESULT line and work backwards, what might that look like? See if you can fill this out and bring it back and we can really dig into your thoughts:

R: healing within myself and acceptance of our relationship as it stands

A: ????

F: ?????

T: ?????

C: Mother exists, 7 year old exists. Mother has wishes

Hi!
I've been struggling off and on for the past week with guilt. It's my daughter's spring break and I have things that I'd like to do, but don't really think that my family wants to join in. I feel guilty about "forcing" them to do something that they would not have chosen to do, just to appease me.
Please help!

ANSWER
Hi there, thanks for bringing this here! Let's plug it into a model:

C: Daughter's spring break
T: I don't think my family wants to join into the things I want to do, so I'd have to force them.
F: Guilt
A: ??? What have you been doing? (are you saying nothing and doing what you think they want? Are you "forcing" yourself to do things you aren't choosing?)
R: You set up a lose-lose situation here (either you "force" or don't get what you want).

I want you to examine that thought a LOT- where could there be possible thought errors?
Are you sure you know what (exactly) your family wants to do? What evidence do you have that they do or do not want to do the things you prefer?

How would you force them? In what ways? With words, physical force, manipulation, etc - and are you sure these techniques count as forcing?

Are you sure they have a goal of appeasing you? Could they have other goals? What could they be?

Whose desires are more worthy, yours or your family members? Why?

Welcome to Ask for Coaching!

Here is a guide for how to get the most out of this type of coaching:

1) Title your question with something memorable for you. Unless you identify yourself in the title or in your request, your coaching request will be anonymous to other readers. If you want (and to make it easier for you to search and find your old posts later), you can add a tag unique to you (Ex: #abc)

2) Think of a topic you would like coaching on and do a thought download on it here in this space.

3) Try to pull out a thought and run it through a model (C-T-F-A-R) right below your download. It doesn't have to be perfect, just give it your best shot.

4) Hit "submit" at the bottom and one of your coaches will reply HERE within ~ 1-3 days. (Your request won't show up here until we post it with our response)

5) Come back here and search for your post (try to remember the title and scroll down until you find it), and you will see our answer in the text below your question.

6) Read the questions and coaching your colleagues receive - chances are lots of the coaching topics here will apply to you too!

7) Use this as much as you like, 24/7, for coaching on ANY topic. There's no wrong way to do this. There are no gold stars or failures. The more you ask for coaching, the more you will learn, grow and benefit from this course. We will keep our answers succinct and offer 1-3 questions for you to consider and bring back for more coaching. Feel free to respond back in a new post (there's no way to respond in a "thread"), or consider bring any follow up to a group coaching call.

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Coaching opens on February 3, Bring it on, friends!

I would like to benefit from individual coaching

Answer:
Hello! Wonderful!

You can sign up by going to the top right corner dropdown--> "Coaching"--> "1:1 Coaching".
https://app.bettertogetherphysiciancoaching.com/1-1-coaching/

From there, there are two ways to schedule.
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Hello,

When I was working through the "How to Feel Better" section there was a question about indulging in emotions and getting stuck in emotions. I do this frequently with doubt. Like I doubt myself and the decisions I make for patients which results in me calling colleagues to ask advice, following their chart for multiple days, or checking the Epic in the middle of the night. I also feel doubt when it comes to larger life decisions, for instance I don't know if I should back down my clinical time, I don't know where I should take my career, and I question if I should even remain in medicine sometimes. I think the doubt and second-guessing kind of paralyzes me and I just end up doing the same thing over and over because I can't make a decision.

I'm not sure how would not indulge in this emotion. I don't know how to move forward sometimes. Do you have any recommendations for this?

ANSWER: Wow, great insight! Doubt is a classic emotion to indulge in. I am curious if you know what thought is leading to your doubt? This is the place to start working when you want to move forward. I took a guess at a thought that leads to doubt and plugged it into a model, but please correct me here if this isn't your actual thought:
C: There is a decision to be made (around pt care, or your own life)
T: I might get this wrong, and that would be horrible
F: Doubt
A: Second guessing, call colleagues/friends to ask advice, engage in perseverative "checking behavior", continuously try to "solve" the decision in the right way.
R: You are paralyzed (and prove to yourself that it's very important that you be "right" about decisions).

In this general model, you are creating a narrative that
1) There is a "right" and "wrong" choice to be made
and
2)that there is something inherently "bad" about making the wrong one.

Questions for you:
-So what if you get this wrong? Why (exactly) would that be horrible?
-Do you generally expect yourself to get things right all the time? What are you missing out on because of this? What's the gain and what are the risks

Play out the future scenario where you find out that you made a decision that you wish you hadn't. What's the worst part of this for you?

Bring you answers back!

I generally struggle with a combination of perfectionism and imposter syndrome, and oftentimes I find it really difficult to distinguish between when to push myself (I tend to avoid as a coping mechanism) to get out of my comfort zone vs. when to accept my own limitations. For example, I have always struggled with public speaking. It was an actual phobia at one point and was something I would avoid to the degree that I would shape my course selection around whether it was a requirement. I've improved a lot, out of necessity, but it's still something that will keep me awake for days leading up to an event where I'll need to give a talk, which in my job happens at least every couple of months.

So my question is, how do I balance the desire to keep going in a career that requires public speaking with the knowledge that after all this practice, I still get physically ill for days before a talk (even the small ones)? Is this the kind of issue that warrants considering different career paths if only to promote a more peaceful life, or should I keep pushing myself? And how do I know when that balance tips to one side or the other?

ANSWER:
Thanks for bringing this here! You are correct that perfectionism and impostor syndrome go hand in hand :).
The question you bring queries: Is this "healthy uncertainty" or even "healthy striving" or is this real "imposter syndrome."

The way to answer this is to see if your thoughts are serving you or not, and we can use a thought model to see!
C: Public speaking is required in your job.
T: I have always struggled with public speaking
F: ?? (fear?)
A: avoid it for the most part. If you do have to give the talk, you stay awake for days leading up to an event, worry, phrase the task as "pushing myself" and dread it.
R: You continue (and worsen?) the struggle.

Now, you have a choice here. You can absolutely change your "C" and decide that this is not something you want to do the work on. You always get to decide what's worth your time and energy and what's not. There will be consequences of declining speaking offers it sounds like, but you get to decide if the relief of not speaking is worth the consequences.
In order to make this decision, you need to clean up any thoughts you have tied to "worthiness" of being a public speaker (let's be clear, you are just as worthy of a human being whether or not you are publicly speaking, just as valuable, just as wonderful). If that's a sticky point for you, then this is your work, and come get some coaching!

Once you sink into the fact that you are worthy either way, you get to decide if you want to continue to publicly speak either because you want the result of conquering/excelling at this skill, or just simply because you want to keep your job as it is (both are great reasons, just make sure you like them!).

If you want to continue to publicly speak, then let's work on the THOUGHT that you struggle with public speaking.

-So what if you struggle with it? Why is this struggle bad?
-Do you think you shouldn't struggle with aspects of your job?
-What if it's not the fear from your public speaking thoughts that is the struggle for you but rather your reaction TO the fear?
-Can you process the fear without reacting to it? (If you haven't done this before, dig into this weeks worksheets and webinars for a how-to, and then come get some coaching around it!)

Welcome to Ask for Coaching! Here is a guide for how to get the most out of this type of coaching:
1) Title your question with something memorable for you. Unless you identify yourself in the title or in your request, your coaching request will be anonymous to other readers. If you want (and to make it easier for you to search and find your old posts later), you can add a tag unique to you (Ex: #abc)

2) Think of a topic you would like coaching on and do a thought download on it here in this space.

3) Try to pull out a thought and run it through a model (C-T-F-A-R) right below your download. It doesn't have to be perfect, just give it your best shot.

4) Hit "submit" at the bottom and one of your coaches will reply HERE within ~ 1-3 days. (Your request won't show up here until we post it with our response)

5) Come back here and search for your post (try to remember the title and scroll down until you find it), and you will see our answer in the text below your question.

6) Read the questions and coaching your colleagues receive - chances are lots of the coaching topics here will apply to you too!

7) Use this as much as you like, 24/7, for coaching on ANY topic. There's no wrong way to do this. There are no gold stars or failures. The more you ask for coaching, the more you will learn, grow and benefit from this course. We will keep our answers succinct and offer 1-3 questions for you to consider and bring back for more coaching. Feel free to respond back in a new post (there's no way to respond in a "thread"), or consider bring any follow up to a group coaching call.

8) Remember that this space is completely anonymous and of course confidential to our group. It's totally fine (and welcome!) to share successes, give support, shout-outs or love to your colleagues here too, doesn't always have to be a place for problems.

Coaching is OPEN! Bring it on, friends!