Ashok Bhattacharya [00:00:00]:
Foreign.
Sharee Johnson [00:00:13]:
Hello and welcome to Recalibrating with me, Cherie Johnson, where you'll hear healthcare professionals and others sharing their stories of recalibrating life when the unexpected Happened. As a psychologist and a coach, I've been listening deeply to people's stories for 35 years, and I've come to believe two things about people. The first is having witnessed so many incredible stories of hope, adaptability, and human capacity, I truly believe that we are all capable of so much more than we really think we are in times of challenge. Humans have demonstrated that over and over again. Here on the Recalibrating podcast, you'll get to hear amazing stories of healthcare professionals and others pivoting, overcoming and recalibrating their lives. The second thing that the research and my experiences as a psychologist have shown me is that humans need each other. We need people. When we have support around us, when we tell each other our stories, when we connect through the reality of. Of living our lives, we do so much better than when we pull back and hide what's really going on for us. Together on this podcast, we're going to unearth and amplify what helps us as humans, individually and collectively, to recalibrate in ways that help us change, grow, adapt, even surprise ourselves when life throws us a curveball. This podcast offers you the chance to be inspired and and encouraged to meet the unexpected in your life with grace, skills, and a belief in your own human capacity. Life is full of opportunities to recalibrate with agency, the right mindset, the right resources, and the right community. So let's welcome today's storyteller. Doctor Ashok Bhattacharya works as a psychiatrist in Ontario, Canada, in the clinic he founded 39 years ago, the Empathy Clinic. The clinic uses empathy to diagnose and treat a variety of mental health issues in individuals and couples. He is an expert in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The clinic's emphasis is on empathy, balance, integration of spirit and soul, and the pursuit of optimal wellness. Dr. Bhattacharya has presented at conferences all around the world on burnout and empathy in physicians. He is a musician, author, artist, and loves to work out. He has strong connections with his family and I'm sure we're going to talk a lot about all of that today. Welcome, Ashok Shari.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:04:29]:
Thank you so much for having me on this very important podcast. It's been a long time waiting for this to happen with you. We're aligned in so many ways, so let's get going.
Sharee Johnson [00:04:39]:
Awesome. It's an honor to have you here. So let's start with your current work. Ashok, you've been a psychiatrist for a long time. Can you tell us a little bit about your working life at the moment?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:04:50]:
Well, I'm still working full tilt, but I'm actually retiring very soon, probably in coincidence with the Heart of Medicine conference, which is happening in July in Australia, a place I've longed to go to for most of my life.
Sharee Johnson [00:05:05]:
We're both so excited about that. Could derail the whole conversation.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:05:09]:
So for me, working as a psychiatrist is really not my main emphasis. I work as a psychotherapist. I'm heavily committed to narrative therapy, helping people unpack, recognize, and restore and reconstruct their stories for better functioning. I got really interested in psychiatry as a child. And when I finally got into psychiatry in 1985, Prozac, which was a new invention at the time, was hitting the North American markets. And that changed psychiatry from being a mind science into a brain science. And so the training I was hoping to get when I came to Toronto was beginning to literally dwindle away like sandcastles on the beach. And I was thinking, no, no. But I was able to get just enough it. So when I graduated, I set up mostly a psychotherapy practice. I work anywhere from 40 to 60 hours a week in my practice. I'm typically doing about 45 hours of therapy per week, which is a bit of a lot for a lot of people.
Sharee Johnson [00:06:18]:
It's a lot of people.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:06:20]:
But I tell you, I'll let you on a secret. I love what I do, and what I do energizes me because I'm not just giving, I'm receiving as well. And that is the power of empathy. It helps the healer as well. So instead of being burdened, I feel empowered. Now after end of a 10 hour day, for example, I definitely need to grab my guitars, hang out with my wife, or hang out with my children or grandchildren. Absolutely. And that's where the balance is important. We should definitely bring that into our conversation. But I still love what I do. But my main interest as psychiatry is associated with chemicals and sometimes electrical shocks and sometimes hospitals and that kind of stuff. I moved away from that style fairly quickly. I moved into working with individuals and also couples because a lot of people struggling in relationships and I thought, you know, my parents divorced when I was 20. It was embarrassing. I thought, oh, what's up with that? So I wrote a book about how to keep your relationships going. And I've really dived in deeply to helping couples not just improve, but add more foundation to their relationship. So they have more resilience going forward, dealing with the stresses of life. I'll leave it there.
Sharee Johnson [00:07:36]:
I'm very intrigued, Ashok, that you were interested in psychiatry from childhood. What even brought it to your attention as a child?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:07:44]:
Well, my father also worked in psychiatry and in those days he was a resident and then became a psychiatrist. And in those days we're living in England where we were, we always lived on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital, in houses that were provided by the hospitals. And so he was always. The hospital's right there, just there it is right there. And he was a community based psychiatrist. So we had lots of circulation with people who were differently abled mentally as well. So we're very comfortable working with environments of being in the environment of people who are mentally challenged with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar and that, those kind of things. And so by the time I was a teenager now, I'd already been exposed to a lot of psychiatry then as a teenager. I work in a psychiatric hospital as a, as an untrained nursing assistant. And that was a little creepy and a little scary at times. But I, I remember thinking, ooh, the psychiatrist coming, what's going to happen? And the psychiatrist come and write some things and leaving. And I said, I'm not going to be like that. I want to understand my clients, you know, and understand their stories and help them from that way. So I mean, I can go on about this, but is that enough to answer that question?
Sharee Johnson [00:09:03]:
I'm wondering which kind of psychiatrist do you think your dad was? Was he scribbling the note and leaving or was he more doing more therapy?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:09:12]:
My dad was very interested in medications and did some very kind of brave things. He was one of the first researchers of LSD in 1957 in the treatment of schizophrenia. But he was also a staunch humanitarian and he founded the Canadian Human Rights association in the 70s. So he was always very, very interested and actionably interested in human rights and human concerns. And so he was very interested in the narrative, the community narrative and the family narrative as well. So he blended those things really from a very admirable way. I always saw that from a child.
Sharee Johnson [00:09:51]:
Oh yeah, I'm really in awe. We could spend the whole time talking about this actually. But let's keep going because we're interested all the recalibrations that we do in life. And so what happened, you went off to medical school, you thought you, you had this idea about psychiatry and, and how was, and your dad was at the cutting edge obviously in terms of medication. So that's, that Was a very interesting time too. What happened at medical school that you expected or didn't expect? What were the things that, that surprised you there?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:10:22]:
Well, I didn't really want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a microbiologist. So I was working on a degree in microbiology. It might help to understand. I started university at 16, which was a tad young, and I looked like I was 12 as well.
Sharee Johnson [00:10:36]:
Where were you in the UK?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:10:38]:
This is Canada now. We came to Canada. There's a whole story behind that. But, but we came to Canada, we got put a great ahead for some reason. So my twin brother and I, we were, we started university at 16 and so I ended up getting a degree in microbiology and thought the microscope is interesting, but I'm more interested in people's minds. I'd like to have a microscope to look into people's minds and hearts. So I thought medicine would be really good choice. So I applied to med school and seemed to get in. I thought, well, that's nice. And I wanted to learn as much as I could about the way the body works and the way the mind works. But I was also really interested in empathy. Not that word necessarily, because I hadn't really crossed my mind, but I was interested, interested in the experience of that. And I saw a lot of, not to criticize, but appalling situations in healthcare as a medical student. So you go into the room, there's this terrified person in a bed. This is a great big steel chart. They pick it up. There's 15 white coats in the room and the patient's looking around for kind eyes. And I used to lock eyes with those patients. And I said, I'm sorry because it was heartless, it wasn't very humane. And, and so I got through that. Now I said, where's the empathy? Where is it? I did a few rounds of psychiatry when I was in my training and I knew instantly that's what I wanted to do. Like everyone in the class knew I was going to be the. Everyone called me Freud in the class. That's how obvious it was. But then when I, when I finally got into psychiatry training, I was looking for the same thing and I didn't find it. I didn't find empathic training in psychiatry.
Sharee Johnson [00:12:22]:
And what was that? It was that. What's the key emotion then? Was it disappointing, disheartening? What happened inside of you as you
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:12:31]:
were realizing that, well, I'm a very, well, closeted type A introvert. So I said, I need to keep this quiet if I really want to get through this. In those days, if you struggled against the system, you got kicked out of the program. You had to learn the rules and regulations and, and the style of it to pass, you know. Now I had no trouble passing. I was always a fairly strong student. But my true feelings about what was going on about no patients who I suspected had been abused, for example, but they were diagnosed with schizophrenia and illnesses that was burying their stories. I said to myself, I need to get out of here. And so instead of working at a hospital, as soon as I graduated, I started the empathy clinic right away and started working with people immediately in a non hospital setting in my private practice.
Sharee Johnson [00:13:28]:
The lovely thing in your story, Ashok, about the clarity that you had, and that's coming clearly from what you've said already, from your childhood and your family. It must have been lonely some of the time. I think you've written a bit about the, the loneliness in med school.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:13:44]:
Well, I, I'm, I'm so blessed that I met you and the people that, that we're beginning to meet, that, that have alignment, you might be a bit surprised, but this is the first time this has happened for me in my 60s. I do not fit in in medicine, in life, so.
Sharee Johnson [00:14:09]:
And do you think that helps you as a psychiatrist?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:14:13]:
I think it helps me as a therapist because, because when I realized, you know, what is post traumatic stress disorder, it's something that's happened to them that they can't believe they could ever share with anyone who would understand what they've gone through. Right. That, that's kind of the nub of it. I thought, oh, I can relate to that. I know what it feels like to not expect people to relate to me. I have a good sense of that. So when I began to talk to people and say, you know, I, I just want to hear what you have to say. I want to hear, I want to share what you've been through. I want to help you feel what you've been through as well. It's going to be hard for both of us. We're going to do that together. So I think having that sense of loneliness, and I wasn't lonely because I'm a loner anyway, but having that sense helped me to be more, much more empathic, but are also emphatic about building that rapport and that connection with my clients. So I think that helped me in a very kind of backwards way, if you can understand that
Sharee Johnson [00:15:11]:
so much here. Ashok, can we just go back to your childhood for a minute as a true psychologist might want to Say, I want to ask you posted recently on LinkedIn about your experience. I think you were about 6 or 8 when you had an experience experience with your legs and you posted about that. Those early lessons in empathy. Could, could you share that story with us?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:15:31]:
I'd really like to because I think it sheds light on me a bit. So when I was six and I have a twin brother and there were five, five children so there's lots of people around, I developed a limp and the diagnosis was either tuberculosis cancer or leg perthes. Lucky for me it was the last one, leg perthes. So basically the top of my hip was rotting so I had to be in in a non weight bearing brace for two years. I was in a bed like this for the whole summer with my leg being pulled and my head down here and the nurses were mean and then I had to wore this calipers on my legs like Forrest Gump for. Actually I got off early for 18 months. So what's the effect of that? I wanted to play soccer with the lads. I completely lost all my relationship with boys completely. They had no use for me. I was gimpy, I was slow moving, I had all the steel on my legs and guess what happened? I played with the girls. We played skippy rope and elastic band games and I got to listen to them and talk to them. I said girls are so cool. They talk about emotions and empathy and feelings and relationships. I'm way more interested than this. So I totally de. Identified with kind of the masculine roles that were in front of me and began to identify with, with the feminine roles that live heavily inside of me. So I've been a staunch feminist ever since I've been a child and I think that had a huge effect on my interest in, in empathy and compassion moving forward. Do I relate to men? Yeah, I do. You know, I, I've got male friends and that, but I find it much easier to relate to women. I always have.
Sharee Johnson [00:17:13]:
You're speaking a lot to psychological flexibility. You had these lessons early in your life that have to make really created psychological flexibility which we know is a very fabulous way to be in terms of adapting and responding to whatever life throws at us that we can understand and look from other angles at what might be happening, what else might be true kind of experiences.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:17:36]:
Yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:17:37]:
And then I'm also thinking about you picking up the guitar. When did you start learning to play the guitar? Or when did it become a significant part of your way of responding to the world?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:17:48]:
Well, my parents counter reaction when I finally got out of My, all my braces and my legs would have put me in everything physical. So I was doing, I was doing figure skating, I was swimming, I was doing karate, and I was doing ballet. I was in the nationally built ballet school of Canada. You know, I was been selected to be essentially a ballet dancer. And some guy brought in one of the male dancers, brought in a record. It was actually, yes, Fragile, which is a, a band. And I heard, heard this track and I said, oh my gosh, I want to do that. And so shortly after I was 15 at the time, I, I, my, I begged my parents for guitar. They never got got me one. They thought it would be too much of nonsense. But I managed to get one when I was 15 and that changed my life. I went from being a kid with like no friends and no connections and I had my guitar now and I got fairly good fairly quickly. So immediately bought respect. Attention from girls and respect from the boys. And that's never stopped. You know, I go and I go to the bars every Thursday night and play and people come up. Are you playing tonight? Yeah. Do you have your guitar? Yeah, I got it. And it's just an interesting thing that it kind of completely socialized me in a different direction. So that's how the music came about.
Sharee Johnson [00:19:06]:
And what about your hip? Your hip was fine.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:19:11]:
I tell you a cruel story. So here's these surgeons in England, you know, six feet tall, I'm a little tiny boy. I'm looking up at them and they say, when you're 38, you're going to be in a wheelchair. So my whole life I thought I might be in a wheelchair at 38. So I've always been kind of favoring and careful and never went running or jogging and that. And I reached my 50s. I said, wait a minute, there's no wheelchair here. What happened? And so I started running, you know, did a marathon and things like that. And I said, oh my gosh, you know, I'm going to be okay. But it took a while for me to really believe that my legs would be. I've. I've never take ambulation for granted ever.
Sharee Johnson [00:19:55]:
So there's something here to be, you know, grateful and in awe of in terms of the medicine. The medicine clearly helped you. The way it was delivered wasn't necessarily, you know, we've learned a lot since then, shall we say.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:20:07]:
Yeah, yeah, well, that's an important point. I became a doctor, but I made sure I never told some kid they're going to be in a wheelchair at 38. If I was. Unless I was terribly sure of it. You know, I think it's about inspiring, realistic hopefulness, but also in an empathic way.
Sharee Johnson [00:20:23]:
I. I guess that some of those doctors did feel sure of it when they said that to you.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:20:29]:
Well, that's because most people who had my disease did not look after them very well. In England, hip diseases are very common, and it was probably the norm that by the time they reached that age, they were quite crippled. Yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:20:41]:
Do you want to tell us a little bit about the immigration story from the UK To Canada?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:20:47]:
It's traumatic. We were profiles from racial perspective in England. The British school system told me, and my twin brother. My twin's a genius, by the way, which is annoying, but there you go. That we were both. They told us we were both. And told my parents that. That he and I would probably end up sweeping the hair in our older sister's hair salon, because that's all she's going to be able to do now. Most of this was just racial profiling. My dad was Indian, living in British culture shortly after India's independence. Met my. My mother, who was very British and very, very white and very London, and had these little PO reads, you know, that were infecting the British purity. And so I spent most of my time in school being slapped by my teachers for no reason at all.
Sharee Johnson [00:21:37]:
Wow.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:21:38]:
So my parents. And this is amazing, they did this, and they said, well, let's go off to Newfoundland in Canada and get out of here. And they did that, and everything changed. Wow. So I have a huge map of Newfoundland in my office.
Sharee Johnson [00:21:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's all these moments of gratitude. Ashoka. Just, you know, all the things that lead to us meeting, all the things that lead to us being who we are. I mean, there's just so much depth. And that's. That's the thing that I'm really rediscovering or being reminded of in these podcast episodes that people's story has so many layers and so much joy and so much strength for us to discover if we spend the time.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:22:18]:
And.
Sharee Johnson [00:22:18]:
And that seems to be one of the things that we're getting less and less of in the way that we live. How do you talk about that with your. With your clients?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:22:27]:
Well, with my clients, they've often come from a bad story, and a bad story doesn't have to make them a bad person.
Sharee Johnson [00:22:36]:
Not at all.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:22:37]:
And if we reconstitute that so they can feel less shame, less of that badness, less of the responsibility that somebody else probably gave them to feel to feel those feelings in the first place and then show them post traumatic resilience. You can write a better narrative for you in the future. And I think when I, when that happens, for me, it's so empowering for me to share that with a. With a client who's got a breakthrough and come and said, I felt free to be myself. In fact, I spoke to someone just before our meeting and they said, I'm dreaming in color now. I'm dancing in my dreams. And for decades I've dreamed in black and white and it was just dreary. I said, your brain has told you it's safe now. Safe. And so these, when these things happen, it just makes me cry in my heart because this is why we do what we do.
Sharee Johnson [00:23:29]:
Absolutely, yeah. When you arrived, can you remember when you arrived in Canada, that feeling of safety, or did that come. Did that take a while to.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:23:37]:
Or when I didn't want to leave England, I didn't want my accent to change. I didn't want to say, say pants instead of trousers. And I had no idea what Canada was. And we left fairly quickly, too. I think we got about two weeks notice. My parents said, yeah, we're going to Canada. Oh, where's that? What is that? And how and when and. And we got here and it was awkward. It was awkward for quite a while. My mother, God bless her, she sent me and my brother to school on our first day in Newfoundland in our British school uniforms, which are white shirts and green jackets and short green pants, high socks and brown shoes. So we look. We looked absolutely like little leprechauns.
Sharee Johnson [00:24:19]:
What were the Canadian children wearing?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:24:21]:
Just regular clothes, but she didn't know any better, and that's fine. But I remember that we were chased around mostly by girls the whole day who wanted to kiss us because Beatle mania was happening. We looked like we had beetle haircuts as well. So it was a bit awkward for my brother.
Sharee Johnson [00:24:36]:
How old were you then?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:24:38]:
Eight. We were both eight. Yeah. Yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:24:41]:
Wow. Okay, so let's keep moving along to something a bit more current. You finished medical school when, when did you meet your wife and start your family in the. In relation to your medical experiences?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:24:56]:
Oh, well, that's an interesting story. So my brother got married. He asked me to be the best man, so I went to the wedding. This is July 5, 1986. My wife happened to be at the reception, so I met her about 7:20pm I had a. You laugh, but this. You'll see why. I had a conversation with her for 20 minutes and never saw her again. Said to my brother, I said to my brother that night, I'm marrying her. And I did.
Sharee Johnson [00:25:26]:
And so when did you meet her again? What happened? Did you.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:25:30]:
We were living in different parts of Canada, so I found out where she worked and I wrote her a little sappy letter on pink paper and I got a reply like 3 weeks later, you know, handwritten. And then we, we dated by as pen pals for, for many months. And in September, so July 5 to September, she ended up coming to Toronto. Didn't tell me she'd been there for a month already. And that's, and she turned up at, at the, at my door in the hospital. And standing there, I said, what, what are you doing here? And by that time we were in love through, through mail. I mean, we were just crazy.
Sharee Johnson [00:26:08]:
It's a different time, but it's not that different to the people. People often communicate online for a long time before they actually.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:26:15]:
But we were very, very keen on each other and we started dating right away and, and I was, I was a naughty boy. I had lots of girlfriends and, and, and so she knew that. She said, you know, we need to clean house. So I, I, I made lots of space for her and we, we dated and got married a year later. Yeah, yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:26:33]:
And was it difficult to manage, you know, the, the medical requirements? Were you still working in the hospital at that stage when you got married?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:26:40]:
I, I was a resident then. So I, I started my residency in, in 1985, finish it 1989. Met her in 86, had a child with her in 87. And, and so, yeah, I, and I had to save up for house and all these things were, it's just so much on me, you know, to try and make it all these moving parts work. I got very little support from my family to marry my wife. They had some objections a little bit, and they came around, you know, she's fabulous. You'll meet her, of course. But yeah, it was, it seemed like we were just both of us like two salmons swimming upstream. And the stream kept harder and harder and then suddenly it was easy, you know, and it got better.
Sharee Johnson [00:27:27]:
What's the lesson from that time? What did you learn from that? Harder, harder, harder. Suddenly it got better. What did you bring then into the next phases of your adult life after those lessons?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:27:36]:
When two strong hearts are beating together, you're stronger than two. There's like 10 of us pushing and helping us to get through that. And the fact that we went through that, that time together and there's a lot more to the story, of course, but it was. It was rich with struggle, if I can gently say that. We came to that together. So I think that's always been a very powerful thing, that you can have someone by your side. And I'm going to be sensitive because I don't want to upset you, but someone by your side who's, who's there for you and you know that they. They really are truly there for you in your heart and soul and presence. Yeah, yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:28:16]:
This phrase rich with struggle, I want to just savor that for a moment for our listeners. I think that this rich with struggle is a very powerful phrase. I don't want anyone to miss that, that this experience of, you know, that struggle has a richness in it and life without struggle actually is boring. And that. That's easy to say when we're settled and everything's fine. It's much harder to say when there's struggle happening. It's the contrast that gives the richness to our lives. Do you want to expand on any of that a little bit?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:28:56]:
I think struggle, I'm going to say, if it's manageable, if it's overwhelming and traumatic, that's a different conversation. But struggle by itself is how we grow, is how we. You know, I play guitar. I've got calluses on my fingers. You know, that's. That's from the struggle, but it helps me play better. So the calluses are from the work and the struggle, but I play better because of them. So I think, well, why not put some calluses in your life, on your soul, in your heart, not to numb yourself, but so you can work harder. And if you got someone by your side, you can hard work, work harder with, you know, with their heart, I'm. There's no stopping you. So my wife and I often say that, like, you know, if we ever broke up, we'd never find someone who's been through what we've been through together.
Sharee Johnson [00:29:41]:
Right? That's right.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:29:42]:
Not that we've. We will broke it, break up, but it's just that, you know, if we. If we lost one of each other, that kind of thing. But it's like we put in so much time with each other, and I would say some really hard time that, that just. That's really compounded the strengths of the relationship, but it's also built individual resilience, dealing with other things in our lives.
Sharee Johnson [00:30:02]:
You're also reminding me of the Harvard research around the relationships. I can't think of the name of the study now, but the study that's been going for 85 years around longevity and, you know, points very clearly to having three or four, two or three or four very significant intimate relationships in your life. And they don't have to be your romantic partner, but somebody that you trust, somebody that has been through things with you over time. Those, those really lifelong friendships, they're very powerful for our well being.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:30:32]:
But just to expand on that a little bit, I think, because I'm going to talk about empathy as much as I can, right. When someone else knows how you feel, you don't have to explain it to them. And they get it. You're not alone. And one of the things about trauma is if you have to deal with alone, that's one thing. But if you have someone, that makes it less alone. And that's, I think, one of the reasons why therapy can help someone, the chance of getting through that and building resilience and being stronger because, and living longer, this is the topic here, is higher. So I think empathy can actually increase your life expectancy. How about that?
Sharee Johnson [00:31:07]:
Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? I mean, it's just, it's so simple and it's so complex all at once. I love that we have the time to really dig into that a little bit. Maybe. Maybe. It's interesting, Ashok, you referred to Prozac before and some of your experiences of your dad in psychiatry and then what you found at medicine. If you, if you're looking back now, you've been working nearly 40 years in, in your clinic.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:31:29]:
I have been working 40 years, yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:31:30]:
So, so what do you feel like you've seen over those decades that's really shifted or moved in in your practice, I guess in the way that you meet your, your clients?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:31:42]:
Well, I haven't changed my approach, I've simply expanded on it. And I still see my clients. I spend a lot of time getting to know them. I spend a lot of time with them. It's intense. I warn them, this is intense. I need you here. Some of my clients dissociate. Some of my clients experience depersonalization and derealization when they're dealing with trauma issues. So you can't have a 15 minute session like many of my colleagues do. So I did invent the two hour session. So with many of my clients, especially if I only can see them, every couple of weeks, they come in for a session. That's the better part of two hours. And I, I developed that because seeing someone for 50 minutes, which is the classic psychotherapeutic allotted time. You spend the first 15 minutes kind of unpacking. You spend the next sort of 20, 25 minutes kind of dealing with something. And then you've got to sew them up so they can get outside if they have a traumatic story. That's not enough time.
Sharee Johnson [00:32:51]:
That's the moment in my experience when I have my therapeutic practice was that you'd get about 40 or 45 minutes, and then the real work would be put on the table or would begin. And then you'd be as a therapist, or I would be thinking, oh, gosh, how can we do this? And then pack up in five minutes. The next person's waiting outside. It's very stressful, really.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:33:12]:
Do you do longer sessions as well?
Sharee Johnson [00:33:14]:
Sometimes I did. I don't do any therapy now. I haven't done since 2019, so. But I think that's part of the things that wears out a therapist. That intense, kind of trying to turn things around in an hour.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:33:26]:
No. I realized that early in my career that this is. This is not going to work for me. So I started seeing not. Not all, but. But some of my clients that needed it, and some couldn't tolerate a longer time. I said, it's okay if we try this. They just relaxed because instead of, like, looking at the clock or me saying, you've got five minutes left, they could relax and they had time to safely. That's such an important word in therapy. Get to a space that was extremely unsafe for them to go to. And we have to differentiate safety from security. So safety is the absolute danger that you're exposed to, and security is the belief that you're going to be okay in that space. So if I can't create a secure environment with my clients, they're not going to safely unpack things to me. And when I've got. I look up at the clock and we finish it, we've kind of sewn it up, and I've got a good 10 minutes to reflect and consolidate and set goals for the next meeting. I feel good about it, and I'm not burning myself out. And they feel good about it because they've got a relaxed face in their therapist. My heart's not thumping away thinking, oh, my gosh, I've got a, you know, reach out to them and see if they're not going to be safe over the weekend kind of thing. And it just made me feel so much more confident that the process I'm doing with this person is going to help them, but it's going to help me as well, because I'm going to feel good about it.
Sharee Johnson [00:34:56]:
How do they pay for it, Ashok, is there any government support for any of the people that come see? Is it all privately funded? Is it insurance? How do they.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:35:06]:
Well, because I'm a medical doctor, I get to bill our Ontario health insurance plan, full fare for all of my work.
Sharee Johnson [00:35:16]:
Awesome.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:35:16]:
So if I'm seeing someone for long periods of time, the government is still reluctantly happy to pay for it. About every five years, they threaten to take away the, the support for that. And the other issue is that so many of the therapists from different disciplines who doing psychotherapy, they're kind of saying, why would we pay psychiatrists if someone would pay a therapist? So there's been a bit of politics around that. But as I wind up my career, I've been generally paid by the government for the work I do, so.
Sharee Johnson [00:35:49]:
Good. Okay, so I wonder. You're pointing, you've pointed a couple of times to this pending shutting, closing the clinic or not working in the clinic in the same way. Do you have a whole list of things you're going to do then after that transition or what's going to happen then?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:36:06]:
I have a very annoying list of things that I'm going to be trying to do, including, you know, the Heart of Medicine conference that's upcoming very soon. I'm starting to get asked to do speaking engagements. I'm speaking to someone next week on my next book that I'm going to be start putting together. I have four book ideas, so I need to make sure I just do one at a time, including a children's book idea that I've had for years.
Sharee Johnson [00:36:33]:
Let's go there. Let's talk about your book. So deep Fried Nerves, which I just love. I just wish everybody would read it. So that's a fantastic novel and you can tell us about that. And then of course, your book Cake, which is for couples in terms of their relationship. Can you tell us a little bit about both the books but also finding or identifying the writer in you tell us about finding these other identities in you separate from being a therapist or a doctor?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:37:02]:
Well, I've always been a storyteller and my brother, who I respect immensely, was always a bit scared of the world ending. We were in a planetarium when we were seven and they said at the end of the planetarium presentation, and the world will end in 400 trillion years. And we went home and he cried the whole night. So we slept in the same room. I told him stories to keep him calm and help him fall Asleep. I've never stopped doing that. I think stories are packages of empathy. I've always said that. That that's how human beings began to relate to each other. So how are you doing with. Let me tell you a story. And that's how we did it. It probably started off with cave paintings, which are stories as well, before language was invented, and then music, which was vocalizations that were lyrical. And then consonants came around, and then so we started speaking, and then we started writing. So what is going on in someone's mind and heart? Wow. We can actually find out by asking and listening. And that's what stories are. And so I think when I sit with someone, it's like, well, what's your story? And that way I can begin to envision it and feel it with them. And then if I can put that into my own way of comprehending that and then putting onto paper and then publishing that, now I've got something that's out there that is celebrating the power of the story potentially forever.
Sharee Johnson [00:38:32]:
So you see, you're writing partly as a legacy.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:38:35]:
I. I mean, I don't. I don't necessarily need that. I think it's a way of. Of. There's a backstory here. My grandfather in India was a very famous man. He was one of the last gurus that people came from all over India to. To go and talk to. He had a photographic memory, and he memorize thousands and thousands of books in. And for fun, the local telephone directory in Calcutta, which had 10 million entries in it. And there's books written about him and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And people will go into his library and pull up a book and say, this is the title. This is what? Page 127. He'd start reciting the book to them. He wasn't just a parrot. He understood. So I think that that kind of legacy would have been amazing if he had written himself. He didn't. He didn't write. It was all the tradition of just speaking and learned listening and speaking. He had disciples hanging off him from all over the place. And when I went years later, after his death, there was a lineup of people to touch my feet.
Sharee Johnson [00:39:44]:
Wow.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:39:45]:
Because I was the grandson of this guy, it was weird, you know, but I said, okay, cool. So I said. I said to myself, if I have ideas that are relevant, I need. I need to write them. Because he didn't.
Sharee Johnson [00:39:58]:
Did anybody else. Has anybody kept his oral history or in some way recorded it?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:40:03]:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, there are some of it, but not nowhere near Enough. And so I always thought, you know, if I, if I can become a writer, I'll. I'll have. I won't have that disappointment for my great or great great, you know, grandchildren. Say, what with this guy, like, well, this is one of his books, you know. Oh, okay.
Sharee Johnson [00:40:22]:
Ashok, you've described lots of different recalibration moments to us. You've described now something about your grandfather, but also your parents, what the recalibrating that they were doing and what was a dangerous environment, really. And you've described, you know, your, Your, your legs, your hip issue and changing from focusing the way you played in the school ground and then moving countries and all of these things. What have you learned that you would want to share with our younger doctors about recalibrating and expectation, I think, is the part of what I'm hearing in your stories?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:40:57]:
Well, I know because of my movement history, I believe in flexibility and agility, like in my body, the way I move it and the way I think about it. Balance is important, strength is important. But I really emphasize flexibility and agility. And if you think about being a doctor, there's a certain inflexibility to that and a certain lack of agility, unless you're on the inventive curve of coming up with new treatments and surgeries and that kind of stuff. Most physicians, they get into med school, they learn the rules, they learn the regulations, they learn the treatments, they learn the diagnosis to go out, and they do it, and they do it, and they do it, and they do it, you know, better than 90. You speak to them until they just kind of get, oh, my gosh. And then snap, right, Something happens and they've, They've. They got that problem. I've always, I said to myself, actually, when I was 20, I need to change what I do every five years in some way so that I maintain that flexibility. I don't have to change a huge thing, but something different needs to happen. So my life feels a bit differently to me. So I've got to readjust to it and move to that new every five years. And I kind of kept that going. And I think to be able to not just be flexible, but to practice flexibility, it might be simply as. As a doctor saying, okay, tonight I'm going to go to a Zumba class or I'm going to make pizza or I'm going to go singing or something. It doesn't matter what it is. It means it has to be different from that rigid, rigidity. And not that I don't like doctors But I have very few doctor friends because I find that when I hang out with doctors we end up talking about doctor stuff. And I think, no, let's, let's talk about other things. So the majority of my doctor friends are artists and do lots of other things with their lives. And I think, I always think build your life and put your career into it instead of building your career and look for little squeezy places to squeeze your life into it. That's how you end up having the highest divorce rate, the highest suicide rate, the least enjoyment and all these other things that we're seeing in your prototypical physician who's stressed out and just said what did I do that for?
Sharee Johnson [00:43:18]:
I love that reframe. In the context of you saying at the beginning that you work 40 to 60 hours a week, you can still create your life and have a big career. You can still give a lot of time and effort and dedication and devotion to your career even for a lot of hours. It's a, it's a more conscious choice to, to, to design it from, from the opposite direction. I think that's a really beautiful reframe.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:43:41]:
Well, I will say something I hope people won't be offended by, but my self care is not negotiable and it never has been. And I think being a frail little child, you know, with a weakness and having those vulnerabilities when I was truly disabled, it's always made me think, yeah, I, I need to ensure my ability and the only way I can show my ability is to look after it. It's not, something just happened. So it's not like a self maintenance battery that you don't need to look after, you have to look after it. I look after every day, every week, every month of year and on that five year program as well. And, and people say oh, what are you doing later today? So I'm doing these. Everyone that knows me knows that my self care routines are not negotiable. So I've got my friends. Oh well you need to go do this and this because that's what you do. I don't have to fight with them.
Sharee Johnson [00:44:39]:
Yeah, well established habits and practices. So, so it was one of the things you're also reminding me was one of the things when I started working with doctors that I was really surprised about that I was finding myself explicitly saying multiple times, do you have any friends outside of medicine? Where are your non medical friends? Do you think it would be useful to have friends who are not doctors? And I think that one thing that Medical school does very well in a lot of countries is it really creates a very tight cohort as people are going through medicine in medical school and then in residency. And there's great value in that, peer support. There is a lot of goodness in that. And then there's this rigidity that you're describing, this kind of lockdown culture that has very strong norms and very strong requirements and makes it hard in a way to kind of think outside of the square. I kind of understand how that's evolved, that that's evolved probably with good intention and good reason. And you know, every strength in its extreme becomes a weakness. And I see that with the doctors that I am coaching that oftentimes they don't have a life outside of medicine. And when they realize that, that can be quite devastating. I wonder what your reflections are about that. A few things. First of all, I wonder about the peers. Can you talk a little bit about is it important to have some peer relationships in your work?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:46:04]:
If we have time. I want to just very quickly download an earlier story. So my parents divorced the same time I got into med school. And I went from living in a very posh neighborhood with, with all the fixings to, to living in the poorest place of town and experiencing intense poverty including no money for food for some years. I pretended at med school that I was okay and I wasn't. Lucky for me, I was playing in a full time rock band that gave enough, enough money to buy food and buy rent and those kinds of things. And you know, my parents were going, my mom had cancer, my dad was a drinker, so they were just not available. And as a result I went through all of medical school not connecting with my colleagues in med school at all. And I gave a talk about this at our reunion, our 40s reunion just recently. And I said to them, I lied. I told them that story. Everyone in the room was crying and one guy said you were a ghost in medical school. So I completely missed out on that kind of peer thing completely. When I got into psychiatry in Toronto, I had lots of friends, lots of psychiatric friends who made some very good, good bonds with them. I think pairs are, are essential if they can help you get out of the space that you're stuck in if they just jump in with you. So if two people are stuck in quicksand, they're not going to help you, you know, I think so. You want someone who's not in the quicksand to help, help get you out or if you're not in, to help get them out. If you're both in it, I think that's a problem. I've always picked my peers who see me as a total person. I think for me that's always been really, really important because if I can't be my whole self and anyway, another negotiable, non negotiable, I'm going to be squeezed and imprisoned into somebody else's expectations of me.
Sharee Johnson [00:48:14]:
I wonder how we developmentally approach this if we have young doctors who praised for their academic ability and under a lot of pressure in terms of working full time in those later years of medical school, working more and more in the hospitals and still requiring, you know, still doing a lot of assessment, studying a lot. I wonder where the room is or how we reshape some of that to allow more of this whole person development. It seems like that there's like just focus purely on medicine. That's all you've got time and room for and worry about that other life stuff when you get to be 30 or whatever the age is and that it's, it's probably, it's not too late. Of course we can come to these things anytime, whenever we start to notice them. I wonder how we address that in a more whole person, meaningful way.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:49:14]:
I'm going to use a word the audience may not like hearing and that is shame. So medicine less so nowadays, but it was very shame based when I was in it. And you, you lived in dread of feeling stupid and if you made a mistake or if you didn't know what a blood vessel was and an operation, something it wasn't, oh no, good try but that's in fact what it is. You were humiliated in front of everybody and, and I think I was told three times during my, my medical school years, even my internship year, no, why do you become a doctor? You shouldn't be a doctor. And it's just that shame based stuff plus all this stuff was happening in my family and, and I felt very embarrassed by it so I had to hide all that. So you end up hiding and hiding and hiding and hiding and, and hoping no one finds out that you're terrified and you're scared and you're worried and you've got to perform and if you don't perform they're going to be disapp have that because you're a doctor, you're an a personality. See it's a recipe for cracking. So if we can get the shame a little bit out of there, some breathing space and say that it's okay to make a mistake, it's okay. Find support. If you don't understand something, find support. Let's make it not. Let's. Let's applaud people who ask for help instead of shaming them for not asking for asking for help and making it an easy space for people to have connections that are purely for peer support instead of, you know, are you going to tell anyone about that? I kept secrets for years in med school because if anyone found out what I was going through, I probably could have been kicked out because, oh, you can't handle all this, so. But it didn't happen, obviously. But it's. It's the shame.
Sharee Johnson [00:50:57]:
I think you're also talking about psychological safety, and I think that we are doing better than. The younger doctors I know are not shamed in the same way, but they certainly still. Still here, still alive. It's not perhaps as. As blunt as it was. Right. Who. Who are the. Who are the mentors or the supervisors or the coaches? Who are the people in your life that helped you move through some of those things?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:51:24]:
Well, I had med school itself wasn't very good for me for. For a hundred reasons. So I think. I think I was really just winging it myself. Yeah.
Sharee Johnson [00:51:35]:
I'm wondering. Sorry to cut you off. I'm wondering if you're mentors might have even been, for instance, the people in your rock band or, you know, like, who. Who are the people that we're showing. There's another way.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:51:46]:
I think Ann Shelter was a huge mentor for me. She was my figure skating coach, and she's the person that said, you're spinning in the wrong direction. You need to go this way. That literally turned my life around, but it gave me permission to change the direction I was going in so I could land better. I mean, think of that metaphor.
Sharee Johnson [00:52:05]:
What a metaphor. Exactly right.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:52:08]:
And. And Deborah Bowes, who was my ballet instructor when I was 13, and she knew that I probably wasn't going to do this for a lifetime. I knew that because of this leg thing. Wheelchair 38, you know, I'm not going to have a career in ballet. Once they find out about that, I'll be shelved pretty quickly. She said to me, ashok, you can do anything, you know, and that just hit me right in the heart. And she didn't know me that well. I had private classes with her because the ballet school was insanely busy that way. You basically dance eight hours a day, but I had an hour a week with her, and I never forget those hours. And she was so influential, you know, 13 years of age. You know, and that's my ballet instructor saying, you can do anything. What a seed that I could grow a tree from.
Sharee Johnson [00:52:55]:
What a seed. So powerful. We just need one person to believe in us. And I really do. I subscribe these days, maybe not always, to this idea that we really can't see ourselves, we can't see the whole of ourselves. We need other people to hold. Hold those mirrors up and give us those reflections. Which brings me back around to empathy. And I love in your bio that you really point to the spirit and the soul and that you're not afraid to use these kinds of words. I wonder if you could share something, if you were able to tell our primarily healthcare audience something about why you think that language is really important. Talking about the heart and soul and spirit and empathy. Empathy. What's important about keeping these. Keeping our consciousness awake to these ideas and feelings?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:53:47]:
Well, I haven't. I have a lot to say about that, but I'm going to make. I'm going to make it digestible for our audience. I believe that everything is energy. And I think when I'm speaking to you right now, not, yes, we're online and, you know, and I can't wait to meet you in person, but there's an energy here in this conversation. And even though we're completely different time zones, there's an energy. I think for me, it's very important to make sure I look after my energy so when I'm interacting with people, I can portray it to them. And whether that comes out as music or writing or doing a therapy session with a client or just sharing a moment, like laughing at the same things, crying at the same things. Human beings absolutely require connective energy. It's the essence of our being on this planet to connect with each other and have our communities and have each other. So I kind of just max out on that idea. That energy is. It's here. There's no question in that. There's air and you can feel it. There's electricity. You can feel it, you can see it. You know, so I, for me, I think talking about energy is just the most natural thing to talk about.
Sharee Johnson [00:54:59]:
And are you making. Just to help everybody listening, are you saying that spirit and soul are energy?
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:55:05]:
I'm saying that the spirit and the soul are definitely very connected to the energy of the universe and the energy of our being. And I used to stay in the room when I was a medical doctor in hospitals for about 20 minutes after someone who passed away. And I'm alone now with, With. With the bodies There. Now look up at the ceiling and talk to the person as they were leaving and saying, it's okay, you had an amazing life, that everyone here loves you and we did our best to help you. And you're going now, but you're going to a safe space. Getting emotional just talking about it because I knew, I knew they were still there, that energy was still there. And I think that's, that's okay. When people say, what are you doing? What's better you're doing, you know, he's speaking to the person's soul as is leaving their body. Oh, okay. But I think to give it that, that, that energy, to give it that respect, I think for me has always been important.
Sharee Johnson [00:56:05]:
Thank you for the modeling that you're doing around. You know, you said earlier that you've been a learner and now you're talking about community as if it's the most deeply felt connection to the, to your humanity. And so I, I thank you for modeling the complexity that, that we are, that we hold these opposites, that we can be true to both opposites in our lives, that we can see these as both ingredients of ourselves. And I'm also really acutely aware of the counter medicine things that you're saying. And so I really appreciate, I really appreciate that modeling too, because, you know, people do come out of medicine with strong messages about what they need to do and be, and particularly what they need to do. And this, this conversation is about who do you want to be and who can you be and who might you be? And this is a much wider, expansive field of expression and living. And I think it's, you know, in these realizations that we get to be inventive and explore and really find out what is life like. If I talk to a psychiatrist on the other side of the world about these kinds of things, things, how do I learn or grow or get, what do I get curious about as a result of those interactions? It's my own bias, is that medicine can do well from lots more of these conversations.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:57:32]:
I've always known that. And I think again, with a kind of non compromising mentality about doing that. I think there's nothing wrong with, with letting all that energy into the work that you do. With boundaries, of course, because I tell you one thing, it heals my clients faster and deeper when I do that. If I write a prescription and say, I'll see you in six weeks, and that can be helpful too, but I notice the difference, and I notice the difference in the way they hold their hearts in their relationships with other people as well. Their other relationships get better in their life. Moms are more tolerant of their kids. Men are much more empathic. I had a guy once come into me and said, I'm mad at you. I said, why? He said, I walked past a homeless person and I felt something for them. I went and gave them some money and bought them a sandwich. I never did that before. I said, you're welcome.
Sharee Johnson [00:58:31]:
A lot of what we've been talking about, Ashok, you have clear sentences about your identity and knowing some things. In particular, knowing yourself, knowing that you wanted to be working in psychiatry, that you were fascinated with the mind. You know, knowing that you needed to keep some secrets at medicine. You have some clarity in that. How do. What can you help other people think about in terms of their priorities? How do people find that clarity who are feeling lost? You know, lots of our. Particularly when people are burnt out or experiencing moral injury, they lose themselves. They have a sense of, you know, what is this all about? What's the point? Why am I doing any of this? Of this. What's. What's one or two kind of, I guess, points of guidance or. Or things that you've learned that you might think people could use as anchors in those moments.
Ashok Bhattacharya [00:59:19]:
So we have to go Back to India. July 1983. I'm 23. I'm heartbroken. My dad sent me there because a relationship had ended for me and I had a month off. I'm in the throes of medical school. I'm wandering around Calcutta alone. My family's just over there. I just want to go for a little walk about. And I meet a young guy. He's an Indian priest. He's the same age as me. And we start having a conversation. And he asked me, so who are you? I said, well, I'm a doctor. I live in, you know, Canada. And I'd no, no, no. Who are you? It blew my mind because I didn't know. And that's when I realized, when I don't know who I am, how can I be optimally myself in. As a. In my career, but in my relationships with my children, if that was going to happen, and it did, luckily, and grandchildren as well, who am I? And I think what happens when you get into medicine, it's such a comprehensive experience. It can become your identity. And if. If medicine is essentially your identity, you need to find some other ways to identify yourself. And that could be a hobby. It could be a new relationship, could be taking vacation somewhere that you've never been before, that's not a medical conference, because most doctors just vacation on medical conferences. I certainly did that for years. But I said to my wife, we need to have some vacations. There are just for us, just to celebrate things outside of that and to create that. Always active about creating that space because a medical career is always threatening to take that away. Because you can always get to it tomorrow, right? Well, tomorrow doesn't actually happen unless you make it happen.
Sharee Johnson [01:01:10]:
Yeah, I love that. Who are you? That's a, that's a strong Buddhist practice and I'm sure it exists in many other cultures as well. But that repeated asking, who are you? Or if we're doing it by ourself, who am I? Repeatedly, like, until you're exhausted, you have no more answers. It's a very deep inquiry. I love that. That's a contemplative practice, really. I'm running. We're running out of time, Ashok. So as. As we both suspected, we could talk all day and as you have said a couple of times, will be just magic to be together in the desert in Central Australia in July, finally in person after several years of being like this on Zoom and online. I wonder if we, before we finish, if you can just make some comments about moral injury and, and burnout and what seems important to you. You've been talking in the world for a long time about these kinds of issues. What do you notice for our medical professionals, not just our doctors, our nurses, our allied health, anybody who works in health, what are some of the things that they can do, either collectively or individually, about moral injury and burnout?
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:02:14]:
Well, they're two separate issues for me. You said something very helpful earlier on. It's very hard to see your full self. And I talk about self empathy a lot, especially to professionals. My diagnosis of burnout is a lack of self empathy. If you can't see yourself, you're driving blind. And the more you can begin to see, and that's where you need other people, other relationships to say, hey, what do I look back from back here? What's my face look? Do I look happy? Now I have a mirror in my office so I can see my face to make sure I'm looking reasonably relaxed when I'm seeing my clients. So being self aware, having self empathy, answering that question, who am, who am I? What is my life about? And I think this is the value of taking a vacation outside of your life, because you can see yourself outside of it instead of being in it. And often people come back from that space and say, oh, I can make some changes here. I can do this and I can do that. Moral injury, I think is a, is. I mean it goes right back to Piaget. We learn morality around 5 or 6 years of age. We learn right from wrong around that age. And a lot of people would become doctors because it's the right thing to do, makes everybody happy. My son's going to be a doctor. My daddy was a doctor, my mommy was a doctor. And everyone's a doctor. And you know, great, so now you're a doctor. But then does that still align up to being the right thing to do? And if people get into the careers 10, 15, 20 years, they're divorced, their health is poor, they're drinking too much, they're, they don't have friends and have a hobbies or anything was the right thing. It's not, it's not the right thing to do anymore. It doesn't feel right. And so it becomes increasingly challenging them to stay on the course of what's the right thing to do. And that's when things begin to snap and that's when self empathy begins to become shortened because now they don't care what the right thing. I'm just going to do whatever. And that you've seen this many, many times in your career and your beautiful book that you wrote. So I think it's about being aware, self aware and then always aligning yourself like, like every couple of months and definitely once a year and get a, get a group to touch out with. That's what I did years ago. A group of peers that we talk about our stresses and strains. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we curse, but we keep each other aligned with. Are we okay? Are we on the right course for us? Because once you drift off course, you can actually lose sight of yourself and that's when the burnout begins that you've lost sight of yourself, you don't care anymore and you start to make mistakes, you don't care about that either. And that's, that's the way I look at that connection between self empathy and moral injury. I hope I, I've addressed that properly for you.
Sharee Johnson [01:05:03]:
Thank you. I think that's. Yeah, there's a lot of food for thought there. Is there anything you've noticed in our conversation today that you want to go back to or put a pin in? Is there anything else you wanted to say that you haven't had a chance
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:05:12]:
Chance to say you made me way more emotional than I thought. Isn't that interesting?
Sharee Johnson [01:05:19]:
Well, did I make you or did it happen in the in between us.
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:05:25]:
Give yourself some. Don't back away from the credit here. You're a very easy person to talk to because I know that what I'm going to say will be listened to and received and felt in your heart as well. So your empathic skills are superior. We're not surprised. So you brought things out of me. Not just the text or the words, but the emotions that go with the words. And I think if I can get my clients to do that. How you doing today? I'm good. But once you connect the emotions to it, and you did a very good job of doing that with me today, please take credit for that. And it makes it a safe place. Physicians have to learn how to be okay with being vulnerable. They have to learn that it's okay. We're not invincible. We're not made of steel. And when you find a safe place to do that, as we've done today in this meeting, I've told you lots of very vulnerable things. You didn't say, oh, no, no, that's not good for the audience. No, no, no, you change topic. No, no, no, let's. Right, you let me do that. You allowed me to do that, and you actually added some extra facility to make me say a bit more, like, can you expand on that? You know, sneaky, aren't you? But now I'm saying more and getting more emotional about it. That's gold in an interview.
Sharee Johnson [01:06:42]:
Well, I think you've been very generous, Ashok, and I knew that you would be. And so I think that's. That's coming from both directions. Your. Your experience of being willing to move outside of that rigid medical culture is, I think, of great value to the rest of us to listen and learn and. And be curious about could that happen for me? What would that look like for me? And, you know, I'm definitely biased. I mean, I'm doing something that most psychologists are not doing in my work with doctors, and so I'm clearly biased in that regard, too. I really hope that the listeners to this conversation can have some sense of, you know, what would I really like to do or what else might I do or how else could I do it, that your example is just an example of richness, to use a word that you used before, really rich in inquiry into what would work for me or what's not working for me, what's useful for my clients. That's perhaps not the prescription or the protocol. You really triggered me a little bit earlier on. I didn't let on, but when I was with Tim, My husband, the audience know that Tim died of cancer. So when I was with him in the hospital, there were many, many times. I think it might have been the genesis of this work that I now do, where nurses and doctors would refer to the protocol. And it used to make me so mad inside myself that, you know, the. The protocol. Stick your protocol up your jumper. Let's talk about what we need, and I have a more rounded sense of that now. Protocols exist for very good reason. We need a lot of safety requirements inside of medicine, and so I have a warmer understanding of that now. As the carer of somebody who was gravely ill at the time. It was a word that was very difficult for me. And so we could spend, as we've said, a lot more time. I think this language is very important, too, and you've touched on that in a lot of what we've talked about, which I really appreciate. Do you have some mantras or some kind of go to little phrases or touchstones that you use for yourself?
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:08:45]:
I'm going to give you one. I'm in the evening. Right. Right now, as we're speaking. It's not either or. It's with. And especially with medicine. You can have your protocols, you can have your medications, you can have your treatments and your tests and all that. You can bring your humanity, your compassion and your empathy with you in that same space. You can do. Do the deal of it and then bring that space with you as well. It's with. It doesn't have to be either or. And that giving yourself permission and. And empathy can just take a few extra seconds of your time. It's not like it's going to. You have to sit down and spend hours doing this. You can spend 20 minutes with your client doing the protocols and 30 seconds doing the empathy, and they will remember you differently and that will change their experience of that moment differently, even if they're going through an egregious situation with a loved one.
Sharee Johnson [01:09:38]:
It's not what you do, it's how you do it. You referred before about locking eyes with the patient. I think what a powerful thing that is that we have available to us in every second, no matter what we're talking about. And of course, there are cultural sensitivities to that. Sometimes it's not good to look straight in a person.
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:09:55]:
Absolutely. Yeah. You've got to know your audience and
Sharee Johnson [01:09:58]:
having a sense of using our bodies, our whole bodies. And maybe I've got one more question that I meant to ask you earlier, and that is, I wonder if you could Just say something about the mind. Where is our mind?
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:10:11]:
There's a beautiful movie called the My Octopus Teacher. And you learn in that, you learn in that movie that octopus has three hearts and its brain goes out through its entire body. So do ours. I look at my feet, I see my brain being there. I look at my hands and all the complex things that they do, and I think my brain lives in there. I look at my heart and they're very, very connected. So I kind of think it's all one thing. I don't see it as it's up here and there's this thing down below that's hanging off it. And I've always felt that way, whether I'm moving, you know, through space or if I'm making art, a painting or making music or singing. Especially with singing, it's coming out of thinking it's a note, it's a music. My body and my mind is one thing now. It's really cool. Doctors sometimes just go to karaoke and sing. It's really therapeutic.
Sharee Johnson [01:11:07]:
That's really cool. I agree. I think that's a beautiful place to finish our conversation. Ashok, thank you so much for being with us today. I think I've got a lot of processing to do. I'm not sure if I can do our little summary just yet. We've been wide ranging conversation. You've been very generous and I so look forward to being physically with you. At the heart of medicine. For those who don't know about the heart of medicine, please have a look on the Coaching for Doctors website and come join Ashok and I in the desert for two or three really special days. Thank you, Ashok.
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:11:37]:
It's been my honor, Shari. Thank you.
Sharee Johnson [01:11:40]:
Well, what an honour it is to have a friend like Ashok from Canada. We met, as he said, on LinkedIn during the COVID years and he's just enriched my life so much. He's such a reflective person. I really appreciate his ability to own the parts of himself, to own all the different identities, to brought those into a whole experience of life, to be able to acknowledge that he is a loner or that he was by himself or that he was being secretive and also to have this deep appreciation and value of connection and commitment which I have truly felt in my life. In my friendship with Ashok, I've really definitely always felt seen and connected to him. I hope that listening to this episode of recalibrating with Cherie Johnson has triggered some curiosity, some ideas, some wonderings about who am I for you. We all can be much more than we think we are on the surface. And it doesn't take long to dig around in our own stories, to discover those other parts of ourselves that we might like to develop and to be curious about what would happen if we did develop those. I hope also, if you are a healthcare worker, that you've listened to Ashok's story with an open mind about how you can be in the healthcare system. There are lots and lots of ways for diverse people to offer help in the health system, and I think Ashok is a lovely example of doing it his way within the boundaries. We didn't talk a lot about boundaries today. He's very protective of his clients and their confidentiality. He takes his work very, very seriously and he also has been able to divert or take the best of what works for him from medicine and add in things from from other spheres, from other domains, and it's resulted in a beautiful 40 year career in psychiatry. So I look forward to your feedback about this conversation with Ashok. I hope that you can take some curiosity out of the conversation and wonder about the other parts of your life around medicine and to think about that idea that Ashok used of, you know, creating your life and working out how your work fits into your life, rather than creating your work and then squeezing in your life around it. Until next week. May you be well and I'll see you soon.
Ashok Bhattacharya [01:14:13]:
Sa. Sam,
Sharee Johnson [01:15:16]:
Thank you for listening. I look forward to sharing our next conversation with you next week and in the meantime, may you be well. The content in this podcast is not intended to constitute or be a subject substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care professional. This podcast represents the views of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect those of any entity we work with or for.
