When Someone Else's Emotions Make You Question Yourself

Sitting on the rolling stool, I faced the patient sitting on the exam table. His sisters sat in the two chairs to my right. I’d known him for years, and this was the first time I’d met his sisters. After explaining his disease and the treatment decision we needed to make today, I turned and asked what questions they had. I was prepared for questions to clarify his acquired von Willebrand disease, gastrointestinal bleeding from angiodysplasia, or the new medication we were thinking about adding, given his angina and high-grade stenosis of his coronary arteries. It was complex. I expected questions. I expected some confusion. I didn’t expect their blame. 

What I heard from the patient was that he didn’t feel like I had his back 10 months ago when he was bleeding so much that he was being transfused weekly. What he didn’t see was my work to get approval for his pill endoscopy despite repeated denials and lack of engagement from other providers. What he didn’t recall were my numerous requests that he go to the emergency department, knowing that would be the fastest way for him to be evaluated by gastroenterology.

I tried to stay present with his suffering. I knew he had endured months of bleeding, transfusions, and uncertainty. I wanted him to feel heard. But as the conversation continued, something shifted. I could feel myself taking on blame that I didn't believe was mine. Outwardly, I became defensive. Inwardly, I began searching myself. If he experienced me this way, maybe I wasn't the physician I thought I was. Maybe everything I believed about how I cared for him wasn't true. How could I have worked so hard and still failed him?

By the time the conversation ended, I was emotionally exhausted. I left the clinic in tears. Driving home, I realized I had spent the entire encounter trying to find solid ground somewhere outside myself.  I had abandoned myself.

Reflecting, I wish I had been more graceful in the room. And looking back, I don’t think there is more my team and I could have done to care for the patient. I regret the patient didn’t feel more supported through a difficult time, and that is not all mine to hold.

Reflection or Self-Abandonment?

Later, I realized something. I wasn't simply reflecting on the conversation. I was questioning myself because someone else's experience had begun to feel more trustworthy than my own. That's when I realized there is an important difference between reflection and self-abandonment.

Reflection asks, “What can I learn?” Self-abandonment asks, “What does this say about me?” Reflection helps us grow. Self-abandonment quietly erodes our trust in ourselves.

Self-abandonment begins the moment another person's emotions become more trustworthy than your own experience.

We don't simply carry responsibility for good medical care. Many of us also carry responsibility for how every patient feels, how every family understands, how every conversation ends, and whether everyone leaves believing we did enough. Those are impossible standards. Yet many women in medicine quietly hold themselves to them every day.

Over time, we become so practiced at orienting ourselves to everyone else's experience that we begin to trust it more than our own. That's why self-abandonment doesn't only happen in clinical care.

A client of mine had difficulty giving her team feedback. Instead of trusting that she could deliver honest feedback with compassion, she questioned whether she had the right to give it at all. Her team’s discomfort led her to question herself and her value. Or imagine taking a friend to your favorite restaurant. They don't enjoy their meal. Suddenly, you're wondering if you were selfish for choosing the restaurant you like. Different situations. The same pattern. Another person's emotional experience quietly becomes more trustworthy than your own.

At the heart of this pattern is a simple misunderstanding about what it means to care. It is deeply uncomfortable to sit with another person's disappointment, sadness, or confusion. Rather than allowing them to have their experience, we instinctively try to make it go away. When a colleague is disappointed, a team member disagrees, a child is upset, or a partner doesn’t understand the decision, we take on the responsibility. We want to get rid of it as fast as possible. We also believe that is what caring people do: take on the discomfort and make it go away. But taking on another person's discomfort as your own isn't compassion. It's self-abandonment.

There is another way. We can remain present with another person's disappointment without making it our responsibility. We can listen without fixing. We can care deeply without abandoning ourselves.

There comes a point where another person's experience and my responsibility are no longer the same thing. Learning to recognize where that point is has changed the way I understand self-trust.

Where Self-Trust Begins

We don't simply carry responsibility for good medical care. Many of us also carry responsibility for how every patient feels, how every family understands, how every conversation ends, and whether everyone leaves believing we did enough. Those are impossible standards. Yet many women in medicine quietly hold themselves to them every day. Over time, we become so practiced at orienting ourselves toward everyone else's needs that we slowly lose trust in our own inner knowing.

Rebuilding self-trust begins by returning to ourselves before looking anywhere else for certainty. It isn't built by making sure every patient is happy, every conversation goes smoothly, or every decision turns out the way we hoped. It grows when we know we can stay connected to ourselves, even when things are difficult.

When another person is disappointed, self-trust doesn't ask me to ignore their experience. It asks me to stay connected to my own while I listen to theirs. That is very different from trying to earn my way back to solid ground through someone else's approval.

Coming Home to Yourself

Since that conversation, I've been thinking a lot about what it really means to come home to ourselves. Not home as a place outside of ourselves. Home as the place inside ourselves we return to before someone else's fear, disappointment, or anger tells us who we are.

We spend so much of our lives searching outside ourselves for certainty. We look to our patients, our colleagues, our families, and even our accomplishments to tell us whether we've done enough or whether we are enough. Self-trust asks for something different. To trust ourselves, we need to know ourselves and find the source of our safety and wisdom within ourselves.

Where are you looking outside yourself for safety and certainty?

What would change if, before searching for reassurance anywhere else, you first came home to yourself?

A lighthouse doesn't chase every ship trying to convince them where the rocks are. It stands where it is. It shines. Some ships follow the light. Others don't.

The lighthouse remains steady all the same.

Being the lighthouse doesn't mean becoming rigid, emotionally detached, uncaring, or unwilling to give or receive feedback. It means remaining grounded enough to listen without allowing another person's experience to replace your own.

No one becomes steady overnight. We find our way back to ourselves one difficult conversation at a time. Every time we remain present with another person's discomfort without abandoning ourselves, we strengthen self-trust.

If you recognize yourself in this story, you're not alone. Many women in medicine have spent years carrying responsibility for things that were never theirs to hold. Learning to remain connected to yourself while caring deeply for others is a skill.

And like any skill, it grows with practice.