How does one of the most stressed people: doctors, deal of stress?

Recently, I’ve been talking about stress in my blogs–stress management and signs of stress. I’ve learned quite a bit about the mechanism of stress and I hope I managed to inform you as well. Also, I know that in my previous posts, I randomly and briefly added related my experiences of stress. I stumbled upon a doctor’s blog post,“how do you cope with stress, doctor?” that I want to share. It’s quite interesting to hear from a doctor, Dr. Michael Anderson, especially since we intuitively know that doctors are stressed everyday from working in a hospital (I think doctors are one of the people who deal with the most amount of stress! –I mean saving lives, doctors are really dependent on. This is why I liked his post; I’m getting a glimpse of how the most-stressed people deal with stress. Hopefully, you will become enlightened as well).

This is how I imagine doctors to be when going through the tremendous amount of stress everyday: screaming bloody murder, wanting to rip all their hairs out of their heads; something along the lines of that. Now, let’s hear what Dr. Michael Anderson has to say about dealing with stress.

He says “coping mechanisms that we develop in med school get tested to destruction when we become doctors.” From what I understand, when you become a doctor, you really have to put your coping strategies into play and it’s a way of seeing whether the coping strategies you developed in medical school really work in the real life. I guess that also implies how much different the stress level is between medical school and real life as a doctor. In addition, what I find really interesting is his opening statement of managing stress. He says he wanted to become a doctor because of his desire to help others have a healthy life. Thus, it implies that aspiring doctors want to be in an environment with healthy people. However, when they become doctors, it’s quite the contrary. You are placed in an environment surrounded by non-healthy people. Hmm, I’ve never thought about that! I guess that’s another difference prior to entering medical school and actual life as a doctor; maybe that’s why the coping mechanisms are “tested.” How he deals with stress is that he has supportive friends, families, and colleagues, engages in other activities, turns to alcohol, and even working harder. I have to agree with him for the most part; friends and families really help ease the stress, and activities really help take the mind off from all your worries. However, what’s really ironic is that Dr. Anderson says working harder is one of his coping mechanisms as being a doctor. Doesn’t that sound counter-intuitive in a way? I know I expected that if you’re stressed out, you are probably low in energy and not want to work any harder. But his side of the story is that not working is much more stressful than working. When you’re not working hard, and not getting the work completed, you have to deal with all the stressful thoughts about what still needs to be done. And when you’re working harder, you actually don’t even have the time to be stressed because you’re so caught up with all the tasks you need to do. Although I honestly did not agree with him in the beginning, I now understand what he’s saying! I notice that whenever I have tests and other tasks I have to do, it doesn’t seem stressful when I’m actually going through them; just the idea and  thinking about having to do them makes me stressful! When going through the work, I’m just so concentrated in having to get all my work done. Whereas If i just sit and think about everything little task I need to do, I get overwhelmed. Wow, as an undergrad student I can relate to a doctor when it comes to stress, isn’t that interesting–haha.