Weekly Insights

{Ventura, California}

I am a perfectionist (sometimes to a fault) and most of my writing is edited at least 10 times until each and every word is as perfect as can be (at least in my mind).  One of the reasons that I don’t post more frequently is due to my perfectionism, because I’d much rather NOT post than write anything that doesn’t meet my standards.  So I am trying really hard to let go of my strong inner self-critic.  Even during residency, my psychiatry supervisors would find me at the clinic after hours typing notes documenting my patient visits.  However, the reason I was there late was not due to having a pile of tasks to complete — it was because I took way too long typing and perfecting each note.

During my training, I recall a free association exercise that my psychoanalytically-trained Program Director had us do as part of an intro to psychoanalytic theory.  Free association is a psychotherapy technique where a patient talks or writes freely about whatever comes to mind in relation to a specific topic, with the goal of bringing unconscious thoughts to the forefront or the emergence of repressed memories, which can provide valuable insight of a patient’s problems.

So, with this exercise in mind, here goes my attempt at free associating by typing nonstop for 3 minutes whatever comes to my mind regarding the following topic: lessons learned from this week.  And, go:

that it’s extremely hard to say goodbye to several of my patients.  a part of me wants to take all of my patients with me to my practice, though I know that it’s probably in some of their best interest to stay within a system with resources to monitor them more closely.

I am sad and exhausted usually by the end of clinic because i didn’t realize saying goodbye would be harder than I thought.

i hate feeling lazy when I get home, but I’m so tired that all I want to do sometimes is lay on the couch and watch shark tank, hotel impossible, or other reality tv-type shows mostly because I don’t want to think.  But then I feel bad because I feel like I should be cleaning my house, writing a blogpost, exercising, going grocery shopping, going out for a run, or anything else that makes me feel like i’m not being useless.

i wish I had the energy i once did because I feel guilty knowing that I need rest, need more sleep, get injured when working out, takes me longer to recover from workouts and pretty much anything that makes me aware that i’m getting older.

i look at other bloggers and wish that I blogged more often like them, wish it didn’t take me so long to write wish that i could go eat a cheesecake or something that was fattening and sweet like a lot of skinny bloggers posting food shots on their social media sites as if they actually eat those things.  how much of reality is blogging anyway, how can we believe anything that people actually write or say and how i can we tell if someone is being authentic or not.  i can’t be fake and maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to write yet at the same time I don’t know how my image will be perceived and that takes editing that i wish i didn’t have to do.

Thought of the Week:  Interesting that my recurrent body image issues and fear of judgment appeared in this post.  Perhaps a sign that I should process this material with my therapist?