A Series by Kathryn Lawson, PhD
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Grief Myths That Impede Healing
Dealing with grief is a natural, but difficult, part of life. Unfortunately, there are some widespread myths that can make the process even more difficult. We explore a couple of these below: Myth #1: You will progress through stages of grief in a linear fashion. Reality: You may be familiar with the stages of grief…
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Disenfranchised Grief
Have you ever felt guilty for feeling grief? We’ve talked before about ways to cope with loss and access appropriate social support in difficult times. But what happens when you don’t think you have the right to feel the way you do? Disenfranchised grief refers to grief that is unacknowledged or invalidated by others or…
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Techniques to Improve Focus
It is an ugly reality that sometimes our learning environments are incompatible with learning. Sleep deprivation and stress can both lead to impaired cognitive performance. Low self-efficacy can reduce motivation and perseverance. Internal and external distractions can hinder concentration. Fortunately, there are evidence-based techniques to improve your focus and performance even in difficult circumstances. Keep…
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Strategies for Better Sleep as a Healthcare Worker
You may have seen the recent news article about an exhausted Boston nurse who accidentally drove off the top level of the hospital parking garage at the conclusion of her shift. For many of us, our empathy for her may be accompanied by a fear for ourselves, a knowledge that we too are so fatigued…
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Combatting Learned Helplessness
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”-Unknown, but frequently attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald A debilitating thing happens when we begin to feel like our efforts don’t make any difference. At first, we might try even harder to…
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21 Things to Do When You Don’t Want to Do Anything
There are times when we might feel so overwhelmed or distressed that we are emptied of our desire to engage. Everything just seems too hard. Or we are physically exhausted, deprived of sleep, rest, and relaxation. So we find ourselves mindlessly scrolling through social media for hours, at the end of which we usually feel…
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Dealing With Guilt As A Physician
“Guilt is one of those emotions that feeds on itself. With every bite it gets a little heavier.” Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about coping with loss and about checking our social support to see if it is genuinely supportive. As we discussed, some of the steps to healing are both…
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Problem-Focused vs. Emotion-Focused Coping Strategies
To Solve or To Soothe? When we face a situation that causes us distress, we can try to reduce that distress by working to change the situation. We can also try to manage our emotions, or we can try a combination of both approaches. Emotion-focused coping centers on efforts to change our emotional responses to…
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Potential Pitfalls of Social Support for Physicians
Research has consistently shown that social support helps buffer us against stressors, but there are times when we may be getting suboptimal social support that can actually make us feel worse.
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Coping with the Death of a Patient
Have you ever struggled with your emotional reactions after losing a patient? There are rituals and practices frequently associated with loss of a loved one that may be absent in the case of loss of a patient.
