Thank you to everyone involved with healthcare, whether you are the actual direct care giver, or someone working “back office” enabling others to give the care 🙏🏼 Thank you.
I’m also requesting that you might allow yourself to please check in with yourself. Something I didn’t do myself so no judgment if you aren’t in a place where you will allow yourself to do that. If you can and when you do, if your body and/ or mind are screaming at you “enough”, please, please hear it and talk to someone about what you need.
I can absolutely understand that the TV adaptation of Adam Kay’s book “This is going to hurt” could be really triggering for those trying to get pregnant, who are pregnant, who’ve had baby losses and for people who have been a patient, relative or friend of someone where something has “gone wrong” or there have been repeated errors, right up to where there has been a “Serious Untoward Event”.
For me it’s triggering in a different way. It’s surfacing memories of how I felt for decades working in the NHS.
- The unrelenting pressure to get everything 100% right, 100% of the time… for everyone.
- juggling massively important priorities, with the constant gnawing fear of dropping one and the negative consequences for an individual or group.
- working within a system where we became used to being “short staffed” so everyone feels like they are doing the work of at least 2 people.
- I was the person that took the fear, anger, frustration and venom of people, whether that was patients or staff.
- I was constantly looking at how the processes could be improved / streamlined / delivered more efficiently.
- I was responsible for reviewing budgets and finding savings.
- I ran towards highly charged situations, be they arrests, incidents, people “kicking off” where any sensible person would run in the other direction.
- I’d be the person who was trained in “diffusing” situations and who had to judge what was safe and how to de-escalate threatening and sometimes quite frightening people
- I often felt trapped between competing demands and that I was having to make choices that hurt my very soul because I knew I could be doing something much better for the choice that was “deprioritised”.
- I was working in a system that is RAG rated (Red, Amber, Green) where red is often mind-blowingly, emotionally catastrophic for the person it happened to and for the whole team looking after them, including those who weren’t on duty at the time but who knew those involved and were in fear that it could have been them. I was aware about the damage there and that we hardly ever had the resources to look at the Amber in the detail it warranted and incredibly rarely celebrated the green because how can we take the time to celebrate something that went well when there’s the red and amber needing attention?
- Daily, I’d walk from something really hideous and traumatic into the next situation. Id have to change my energy and demeanour like Mr Benn, plaster a smile onto my face and try to find calm in my body, trying to give my “best self” to the next person or meeting and make sure they’re completely unaware of how devastating the previous situation was for me.
- I wore a uniform and/or a badge, that made me “fair game” to be spat at, sworn at, scratched, hit, (once with boots, another time with a chair) and kicked, once so hard that I was ‘comically’ propelled backwards out of the bed space through the drawn curtains. I had to go back in and carry on looking after that person despite being winded because there was nobody else around who could whilst waiting for backup to arrive.
- I was with people who were receiving really bad news so that I could be with them and be there afterwards so I could re-explain it to them when their initial shock had worn off and they asked me what the Dr said or what that actually meant.
- I was there during births, a few “normal” one where the husband refused to translate for his wife and responded for her that she didn’t want ice chips and when their daughter arrived just walked out of the room in disgust that the baby was a girl. One where the baby was severely deformed and rushed out of theatre in a resuscitaire to have the first of many operations while Min was still on the table having her Caesarean section completed.
- I have sat with many as they have died, laid out many bodies, some of strangers I’d never met in life. Giving them the loving care and respect that I could on behalf of their loved ones who couldn’t.
- Looking after the relatives and visitors of patients as well as the patient as they all came to terms with huge life events.
- Doing nights as a ward nurse, on-calls as a more senior nurse. Wrecking my sleep and making me feel I’ll through lack of good quality sleep.
- Completing innumerable statements, forms, reports, investigations, hearings, risk assessments, procurement assessments, bids…
All of the above and more.
All of that done while under the pressure of being accountable for whatever I had done and whatever I had not done.
I had no idea what a bedpan was when I went for my nursing interview! I knew that I wanted to be there for people when they needed someone safe to look after them. That was all.
Said like that it’s so simple and yet it is so complex and unrelenting. The flashbacks in the TV show really do give an insight into the way that work broke into sleep, days off, holidays. In my case it was never the thank you’s, the hugs, the feelings of having made a positive difference. It was always the worst of the worst. Flashbacks to the worst moments, the “if only” moments, the heart crashing through my boots moments. They’d come in when I least expected them to; singing happy birthday to someone, travelling on a “local bus” in a distant land or waking me sweat drenched several times in the night.
Oftentimes it was reliving something and sometimes it was rehearsing for something challenging the next day. Knowing I was going to have to go in and suspend someone from duty for an investigation; to chair a hearing that might be leading towards a dismissal and knowing sometimes those dismissals also led to reporting a trained professional to their professional body that would lead to a further investigation for them, possibly meaning the end of their career.; heading in to a conflict, sometimes knowing I’d be going to meetings where colleagues would be present who I’d witnessed in other meetings “throwing someone under the bus” to take the heat off themselves. It feels unsafe going into meetings like that, knowing you might be the next one to be thrown under any buses.
Allowing myself to sit with the accumulation of all the moments of my 30 years working for the NHS I’m absolutely not surprised that I broke. In fact I am surprised it didn’t happen a lot sooner.
I’m learning that in my life now, I can get triggered by something apparently unrelated but that lands in my body in the same way as some of that trauma I was inhabiting for years. It’s a bit like I’ve heard that hearing fireworks can manifest in someone’s body who has PTSD as being gunfire or explosions, triggering the same terror as if there were in a war zone, that’s bringing pleasure to those enjoying the firework display. The feelings that accompany the not being able to enjoy something that “everyone” else can are really isolating and I know in my own stories I can beat myself up about it rather than being compassionate as I would be to someone with PTSD.
Before the terrible tsunamis I’ve seen reported on in recent years, as a child, the massive wall of a tsunami wave towering above me was a regular nightmare. Thankfully the place I lived, although close to the coast, was not in a place ever likely to be physically affected by a tsunami. I’ve no idea how tsunamis came to feature in my nightmares. Then, as an adult I watched the news of a different kind of tsunami. One, I’d previously been unaware of, where the rising wave coming in, just kept on coming. There was no dramatic 100ft wave like in my nightmares, this was something all together differently overwhelming. There was a relentlessness I had never imagined possible after seaside visits, standing on the shore watching the waves come in and then retreat, a mini version of the tide ebbing and flowing. This had no ebb, only flow carrying the water deep inland, destroying all in its wake.
What this has helped me to see, is that my body and mind were dealing with what it perceived as something akin to the relentless rising tide of a tsunami, where I was constantly trying to outrun the rising water and find some solid ground of safety.
Being present for others is what I still desire to do. I have done a lot of training that has included being trauma aware as well as the physiology of the nervous system and how that affects our behaviour.
The difference, for me now to when I worked in the NHS is that I am learning to listen to when my body and mind are telling me “enough” and that I have to be there for me.
I’m also learning to ask for help, to express my vulnerability in a safe space and to surrender to being held by someone else. It’s all a learning process and after decades of habitually being “independent” and not allowing people in. I am aware that I can slip into old patterns and stories that I tell myself I “should” be “able to do this”. I’m learning to recognise when I’m doing that and to be “with it” rather than trying to “outrun the tsunami” as I have for so long.
I benefit from having places where I am held. From knowing people who are experienced in holding space for someone else who I have built up trust with, so that I am able to process whatever it is that’s there. They’re not doing the processing for me, that’s me. They are creating the safe and supportive space for me to do that in a resourced way.
No more do I try and pour from an empty cup. When I “practice what I preach” I feel the relief, the freedom and the peace and let go of the pressure, the fear and the blindly running to somewhere I don’t know the location of or directions to to reach a place where I feel safe and secure.
The only reason I am able to facilitate others is because I am living it too. I am learning too and I trust others who I choose to facilitate me.
If I feel out of balance or that I am in my own deep process I will defer a pre-arranged session and won’t book in a new time until I know I am back in balance. I do that equally for the person as for myself. My body has clearly communicated to me that I don’t want to go back to my “old way” of juggling all the things, fearful that I’m going to drop something that is really important.
The gift of being with my own form of tsunami-like PTSD is that I know when I’m metaphorically “running” in fear. I feel it in my body. It’s my form of being out of alignment.
The reason I choose not to facilitate “as many people as possible” is not because I don’t see the need. I see the need, for sure. Similarly to the need that I see for the NHS, social services, complimentary therapists etc. and AND I know that I need to maintain my own balance and inner harmony. I’m not responsible for the whole world!
I am no longer able to wear the “superwoman outfit” of invincibility, juggling everyone’s needs and putting them first.
Even if I was I would like to think I’ve learned enough that I wouldn’t want to. That I value myself as much as I value everyone else.
I am only able to facilitate someone when I’m in alignment for them to get what they need AND for me to remain well and in balance.
When I am in my own place of feeling safe and grounded then I am able to hold that place of safety for someone else too without losing it for myself.
Learning to be resourced and connected. 