Hi! you look for
What stressor is pressing for you right now?
Really, take a minute to answer that for yourself. It’s a little like scanning your body to see how it feels – but you’re scanning your mind.
This week I noticed that a patient of mine was limping as he walked down the hall to the exam room. That’s new for him, so when I came in I asked “What’s causing you to limp?” He looked at me, surprised, and said, “I… I don’t know. Was I limping?” When I assured him he was, he said, “Must be something in my shoe. Or maybe I put my sock on funny. I mean, what else could it be?” He checked his shoe and sock, but they were fine.
Then I made my med student sweat by asking him “Tell me some of the possible causes of a new limp in an adult.” (Don’t feel to sorry for the student, it’s what they’re in the office to learn). “Ummmm…
gout, stress fracture, neuropathy, plantar fasciitis, foot drop…” It was a good start. The issue turned out to be a corn (you can see a picture of the condition if you’re interested) and I’m only mentioning it because it proves a lesson I’ve been taught and have in turn taught to students for years:
You only find what you look for… and you only look for what you know.
You have to look in order to find what’s happening to you. Otherwise you’ll deal with the symptoms without a chance of curing the problem. And you need to know the whole width and breadth of what could possibly be going on for you, or else you’ll try to fit the available evidence into a pattern isn’t yours.
So back to you. To keep your mental health and resilience as strong as possible, you have to look for what might be causing you to “limp” – even when it’s someone else who notices it. And if you can’t identify anything, but there is a symptom that something is wrong, well, that’s when you want to ask someone who’s got some knowledge you don’t. So you don’t have to solve it by yourself and you don’t run the risks of ignoring it.
How are you?
All my best,
Dr. G
