Suicide risk for physicians is elevated when facing a malpractice case or licensure restriction, or dealing with other career concerns.

These are obviously significant stressors, and they deserve attention and intervention. But what about the distress associated with making a mistake, even if that mistake doesn’t lead to external consequences?

The weight of error can be hard to bear. We have fallen short of what we hoped to do and may have caused harm by doing so.

There are a number of ways in which we can offer compassion to ourselves when we struggle or fall short of our expectations, or when mistakes happen, as they inevitably will. 

Research actually shows that physicians who are self-compassionate have lower levels of burnout, fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, and lower levels of stress. They also show more empathy towards patients than do physicians who are less self-compassionate. 

There is nothing about self-compassion that is detrimental to performance. So if you’ve made a mistake, try giving yourself grace.

Escalated emotion can cloud our perceptions. An initial first step might be trying to clarify the magnitude of the perceived error. Did you truly do something wrong, either through action or failure to act? Is it only with hindsight that you can see this error or was it apparent beforehand? 

When beating up on ourselves, we tend to believe that if we had acted differently, the outcome would have been better. Rarely do we consider that acting differently might have led to something even worse. If we examine this, we can see the fallacy. We only know what happened. We don’t know, and will never know, what might have happened under other circumstances.

You can also work on acknowledging and accepting that people are not perfect and that life isn’t perfect either. Everybody fails. Everybody suffers. When we keep these facts in mind, our own failures, missteps, and suffering don’t make us feel isolated the way we might when we lose sight of these realities. This recognition of our common humanity is one of the three main components of self-compassion.

In addition, it can be helpful to attend to your self-talk. Self-talk is the messages we give ourselves throughout our daily lives, our internal monologue. 

The first step in changing self-talk is noticing it. If you’re having trouble getting started, you can recognize the activities of an overactive inner critic by some of the following signs:

• Using global language (“you always screw up, you never do anything right, etc.)
• Name-calling (“you’re such an idiot”)
• Extreme self-censure over small mistakes.

Once you’ve identified unhelpful self-talk, you can take steps to substitute more helpful statements.

NAMI offers (via Self Love Rainbow) some specific things you can say to yourself to help you move forward from error:

• I don’t need to berate myself like this.
• I am trying my best.
• I am learning how to do this.
• If someone else made this mistake, I would forgive them.

I prefer “I am doing my best” to “I am trying my best” but you can experiment to see what works better for you.

You can also imagine that someone to whom you are close came to you with an account of having done what you did. They are eaten up with guilt about it.

How would you respond?

If you struggle with being that hypothetical, use your memory and not your imagination. 

Think about times when people close to you have made mistakes. How have you responded to them? Think about what you said, what you did, and the tone of voice you used in your interactions. 

Next, think about your response to yourself. Think again about what you say, what you do, and the tone you use in speaking to yourself. It can be very helpful to write this down instead of just thinking about it so I encourage you to do that if possible.

And remember that offering yourself this sort of compassion will not make mistakes more likely to occur; it will actually serve to decrease their occurrence. I want to remind you that it’s okay to move forward. In fact, that’s the only way you can go.