Affirmation

It is hard to find positive affirmation in this job. Finding evidence of a job well done is even harder. The emergency department doctor can point to the sutured cut and sailors pull their boats into harbor, but psychiatrists are left only with the familiar  paradoxical concreteness and abstractness of words to validate their work. "The patient whom I followed for six months went back to work today," I hear myself saying to justify my work and self-worth. But my mind quickly beats back any comfort I may have felt. "He would have done it anyway; He didn't benefit from your therapy; He thinks your a hack; those meds  just make him gain weight." And this is internal dialogue. Should the geyser of self-criticisms dry up a quick online search of  "the myth of mental illness" or "Scientology" or, more to-the-point, "anti -psychiatry" will generate an unrelenting rush of hate against my work of Niagara-esque proportions.

But today is different. A friend called tonight simply to tell me how important he thinks my work is and how valuable he thought I was to it. This man is a friend of the family who is pushing sixty and still works as a millwright in rural Newfoundland. "You are dealing wit' th' stuff from th' chin up" he said with a thick accent. "And that is lookin' after not a human want, but a human need". He went on to say how authentic he found me to be in the few times we have interacted and how good he thinks I will be as "a healer".. This message was  clearly his intent, but it was only clear after I listened to a twenty minute story about a squid smashing into a fishing boat that this message came across.

This message, from a family friend who has almost certainly never received any feedback about my clinical work, is an amazing gift. It is fuel for my small flame of self-love. It is enough to slow the rush of my thoughts of failure and worthlessness. It also shows me the strength of one act of love and encourages me to give away similar gifts. Is there someone I can call tonight to tell them how valuable I find their work? Definitely. But for now, I am just going to enjoy the gift given to me.