Mental Health Awareness Month. "I Can Handle It" A People Pleaser's Experience in Healthcare & Learning to PAUSE
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
"I Can Handle It": A People Pleaser's Experience in Healthcare & Learning to PAUSE
Written by Qualia Reed, Canadian Certified Counsellor
I’ve been a healthcare worker for over 20 years. Even longer than that, I’ve spent most of my life pushing forward because I thought it was what we did in life as adults. I tried never to complain and carry whatever someone gave me without thinking much about it. It’s okay, I can take that too, I can manage. I was the eldest; looking after those younger than me was my job. Growing up with a disabled younger sibling, I was taught from a very young age that it was my responsibility to care for and protect my brother. This was reinforced by disapproval or disdain by my family if I didn't meet their standards of being an effective parent 2.5
As a kid, my internal messaging about this taught me that I had to be something. I had to be this helper, this superman, in order to be loved and to be safe. As I got older, I would rebel against this feeling of needing to be hyper-responsible with bouts of hyper-irresponsibility in defiance. Those acts would trigger shame and guilt, and I'd have to be twice as good to make up for it and so on goes the cycle.
I had to hide the real me, complicated by the understanding that I was not straight and confusion about my gender, made worse by not having much in the way of representation, or even books to read on the subject in the early 90s. It led to a series of masks that remained in place for many years. I convinced myself it wasn't enough to help; I had to save. I became a paramedic and dedicated myself to saving as many as I could until a heart attack nearly killed me at 27.
That was my pause. I was left bedridden for months after, with little to do other than think about my life. I began seeing a counsellor to explore the pain I was in, suddenly no longer being able to do the one thing that I thought was important: saving others. Many in healthcare fields report that a big part of joining that career was to help, to be of service to others, but often, myself included, we don’t really think about the origin of that train of thought or how it interacts with our core self.
One way that I have framed this to myself over the years is what I call the backpack. Since I was born, my backpack has gradually filled with beliefs, opinions, values, fears, desires, and more. For me, the more stressed out I became, the faster I ran. It wasn’t until I stopped running that I was able to put the backpack down and do a full inventory. This helped me to examine all that I held dear and hold honest conversations with myself.
The fear of being truly seen
Since a very early age, it felt much easier to wear the mask others wanted, or the masks I was assuming people wanted me to wear. It’s a safety mechanism, a way of trying to maintain control in chaos. If I wear this mask and others don’t like it, they are rejecting the mask, not me, so I can just put on a different mask and try again, and never have to be truly vulnerable. The problem I eventually encountered was that, after wearing the mask for so long, it had begun to feel like there was nothing underneath it. This is where doing that inventory came in for me. “Do I actually believe this, or is this my father’s voice in the background of my mind from 30 years ago? Do I actually want to help others, or have I only been doing it this whole time because I thought if I didn’t, I wouldn’t deserve safety, kindness, and love?”
These questions helped me redefine my relationship with myself. My heart attack was the end of part of my story, but the beginning of a whole new chapter. I was able to start aspects of my life from a fresh perspective. What hobbies and interests did I enjoy, or what ones did I pursue to fit in or do because I thought others wanted me to? Along that line, what did I always stop myself from pursuing because I was afraid of what people would think, or afraid that I wouldn’t be good at it, and being bad at something was a personal reflection on who I was?
The fear of being seen to be bad at something can do a lot of damage to us in this hyper-productive, outcome-focused world. I remember being 20 years old and absolutely enamoured of writing, but a friend and my partner at the time both said my writing was bad, so I quit in shame and embarrassment, not touching writing again for almost 15 years. When I finally tried writing again, it was a revelatory experience.
What happens when we give ourselves permission to be bad at something?
In practicing giving myself permission to be bad at something, I experienced a surge of feelings of freedom and autonomy. This meant I could practice the process without focusing on the outcome. “Why am I writing? Because I want to, and because it is meaningful to me. I’m not doing this for wealth, fame, or the validation of others.” It was a liberating experience as an adult to know that I could simply enjoy expressing myself and practice a hobby, without it needing to be anything.
This pause gave me time to have these conversations with myself and also made me realize how rare it is in life for people to encounter opportunities to pause to this extent. How many adults can take extended periods off work, even if it’s for health reasons? It’s become a very meaningful part of my life’s work to help others find the space for a pause in their lives, to support them through the grey waters that need time and space to navigate authentically.
By giving myself space to be interested in the things I actually was, I gradually came to better understand my core values and beliefs, and over time, this helped me come out as a more authentic self to those in my life. I realized that I still wanted to help people, and this exploration helped me see that helping others was meaningful to me, which renewed my passion for it. Going on this journey helped me take off the masks I had been wearing my whole life and begin rediscovering who my authentic self was.
