I recently received some very negative feedback. The mom of a patient I saw just once or twice over a decade ago sent me a scathing email telling me how negative the impact of my care had been for her and her son. All these years later, and I had no idea. And since I only saw them once or twice and it was so long ago, I have no memory of them. I don’t know, really, what I did or didn’t do.
Reading the email, I was crushed. I reacted. I became angry and then sad. And then shameful and full of self-doubt. This emotional journey offered me a defensive stance. My first line of defense was one of excuses. Around the time that I saw this child was when I was going through a tough time myself. Between my first and second sons, I had three miscarriages. Bam, bam, bam. Right in a row. I worked through all of them, and I am sure I was sometimes distracted, sometimes in physical pain, and sometimes lost in grief and psychological stress related to that personal trauma. I considered emailing this mom and explaining to her why I may have been rude or uncaring.
But it doesn’t matter. My excuses don’t change the impact my actions had on this family. That’s one of the hardest things about human relationships. Even if our intentions are benign, if our impact is harmful, it is our responsibility to try to understand and make amends. We might not agree with our impact, but we must be able to validate the other person’s experience and our role in it. So it is my responsibility to apologize without trying to explain or defend myself. Further, this difficult feedback has given me an important opportunity to reconnect with my deepest intention and integrity as a healer to first do no harm. It is from this sincere heart space that I can commit to do my best not to repeat the harm to this or any other family.
Now, I know that I can’t please everyone. As any public facing professional, I am going to upset some people. Especially in the business of giving advice about children and parenting. Sometimes people are not ready to hear what needs to be said. But I’ve had a lot of mutually respectful disagreements with parents over the years, and until reading this email, I would actually say that building rapport and helping families feel safe when there is conflict is one of my strong suits. This email bomb brought that confidence under the microscope. For all of the positive feedback I’ve gotten, are there other families out there that are secretly stewing, cursing my name in their diaries?
I know enough about the negativity bias to see how feedback like this can take root and grow toxic tendrils that could constrict my professional confidence to death. If I let it, it could turn into the loudest story in my head about my reputation and the impact I’m having on patients and families. I could have 50 five star reviews that slide off like I’m Teflon, but this one scathing review might be like Velcro, stuck to me for all to see like a badge of dishonor.
I am going to take a different route. I have been gentle with myself and am trying to practice self-compassion, just like I teach it in my office. When the negativity tendril pops into my head, I notice that it’s there. “Oh hello, you toxic little weed.” Then I try to give myself a message of kindness. Maybe remembering a nice message from a family or just reassuring myself that this difficult thought is going to pass. I have found myself analyzing the thought. What evidence do I have that this thought is true? Could there be a more likely explanation? I can also remind myself that rather than isolate myself in a echoey silo of shameful self-doubt, these feelings are actually shared by all humans and provide a map to finding community in shared vulnerability and growth. Maybe that’s why I want to share this journey with you. It is through connection that we can transform doubt and shame into resilience.
And it is with this tenderness that I turn back to this family. It pains me to think of this mom angry for all this time. She signed her email “still furious after ten years.” Why didn’t she contact me sooner? I imagine that over time, the story she remembers of those impactful office visits has taken on a life of its own. I am not going to argue any details with her, but some of those noted in her email seem unlikely to me. Not that she’s lying, more that it seems like I have become “The Uncaring Doctor” in her mind and she is ascribing me a more villainous character than I know to be possible.
Lastly, I hope she can forgive me. I sincerely apologized for the negative impact I had on her and her son. For all these years, she has been carrying this heavy burden of anger. It has, I think, morphed and grown from its original form. And who is suffering here? Until I got her email, I was blissfully thinking I was a pretty well-liked doctor. The person who suffers when we cannot forgive is not the person who caused the harm, but the person who was harmed. With this in mind, she is forgiven. I will not carry any anger towards this unknown mom or family forward. A more reactive version of myself might take offense to her scathing tone, personal attacks, and seemingly inaccurate memory, but I’m not going to pick up that burden. I sincerely extend to her a symbolic olive branch. If we ever meet again, perhaps we can both be afforded the grace of a new beginning.
Comments