The Saddest Thing I Ever Heard, Part 2

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Photo by Rick Hustead

 

This morning, I read a tweet that made me very sad and then warmed my heart. In it, an anesthesiologist described how one team member demeaned himself and his role as a doctor when she introduced herself to her colleagues before a surgery. “I’m just a medical student,” he said. It was almost as if he was correcting her assumption and that of other more senior doctors in the room that he was not important and so didn’t need or deserve her professional courtesy. Apparently, he and his classmates had been repeatedly admonished by their instructors (and more senior physicians) that as a student, he should stay out of the way. He should not seek recognition or, heaven forbid, do anything to catch the attention of another “real” doctor. Or so he believed. Needless to say, the anesthesiologist made a point to introduce herself and find out his name. She lamented in her tweet that demeaning and diminishing the confidence of future physicians could only be harmful to their self-confidence and performance in the long run.

According to John Kappas, Ph.D., the subconscious mind works on expectation and imagination. Over time, we learn to expect others to respond to and interact with us in a particular way based on our previous experience with those individuals. Eventually, this treatment becomes part of our subconscious mental script as we also learn to internalize the message or emotion we perceive in those interactions. All of this can and does affect self-confidence and self-esteem, the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder explained. No matter what the “message” is, the more you hear and repeat it to yourself your subconscious mind starts to believe and even “own” that message. When everyone around you constantly bombards you with so much criticism and negativity, including referring to you as an idiot or some other derogatory slur, it’s no surprise that your self-confidence and self-esteem take a hit. It’s really only a matter of time until you start to believe in the negative hype, and when you are as young and impressionable as this child it takes even less time to create a negative mental script.

I imagine that the medical student in the previous example processed his instructor’s admonitions about being “just” and “only” an inconsequential student, in a similar way. The higher status of the instructor and other more senior physicians he worked and trained with, combined with the subconscious overload of information—medical terms, techniques, and order of procedures—likely overloaded his subconscious mind and the student in a highly suggestible (trance) state. The pressure of processing criticism or corrections of his knowledge and skills, combined with being told that he was unimportant and even inconsequential, would have reinforced other negative messages in his mental script. It is understandable that he wanted to clarify and differentiate his identity, because by now he also believed what he had been taught: Students don’t matter.

This scenario reminded me of a similar one I described in a previous blog titled, The Saddest Thing I Ever Heard. In August 2016, a four-year-old-girl was rescued from an abusive home in Hot Springs, Arkansas.¹ When police officers rescued her, the child reportedly told them that her name was “Idiot” because that’s what her mother’s boyfriend allegedly called her. Apparently, she was called that so often that she didn’t even know her real name.

Hopefully, the anesthesiologist’s compassion and encouragement of the medical student she described in this morning’s tweet helped him feel appreciated and consequential for a little while. Everyone is a student, just learning the ropes, at some point in life and at the start of a career. Kindness and encouragement go a long way to create the professional that a person wants to become. Kudos to this doctor for taking the time to nurture this growth by doing something so simple as recognizing the future “professional” that medical student is becoming.

1.        “Abused 4-Year-Old Child Tells Police Her Name Is ‘Idiot’: Mother, Boyfriend Charged After Abuse Reported” by Anneclaire Stapleton, CNN. http://www.clickorlando.com/news/national/abused-4yearold-child-tells-police-her-name-is-idiot

 

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Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. In July 2019 and in September 2020 she was voted the Best Hypnotherapist in Santa Clarita, California. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2021

 

The Metaphor of Professor Moriarty

(This blog was originally posted on January 4, 2016)

Warning: this blog may contain spoiler information about Sherlock: The Abominable Bride. Please do not read any further if you have not yet watched and plan to see this episode.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

     I had an epiphany on Sunday evening.

     I’m sure many an English-Literature scholar has already analyzed the dysfunctional, symbiotic relationship between private investigator extraordinaire Sherlock Holmes and his arch-nemesis, Professor James Moriarty. While watching the recent episode of Sherlock: The Abdominable Bride, it suddenly became very clear to me exactly who—or what—Moriarty truly was: the little voice of negative self-talk, of self-doubt, the incarnate version of Sherlock Holmes as his own worst enemy.

     Professor Moriarty is that little voice in the back of the great detective’s head that nourishes self-doubt and self-recrimination. He is the niggling voice in that never shuts up, constantly reminding Holmes: “You’re not good enough/smart enough/strong enough, and you never will be, to defeat me.” Since the detective is already in a highly suggestible state courtesy of his affinity for the Seven-Percent Solution (cocaine), he is also vulnerable to the drug-induced paranoia that that feeds his innate insecurity and questions about self-worth and identity. In short, the great intellect and sleuthing genius that characterizes Sherlock Holmes also make him the perfect foil for Moriarty, the only criminal whom Holmes has not definitively bested or defeated.

     Two scenes in Sherlock: The Abdominable Bride particularly illustrated the men’s symbiotic relationship for me. In the first, Holmes hallucinates that Moriarty is visiting him at the detective’s flat on Baker Street. Their conversation, if it can be called that, is more like a verbal duel. Ultimately they each draw their pistols and face off. Moriarty challenges Holmes: “We don’t need toys to kill each other. Where’s the intimacy in that? What do you want?” When Sherlock says he wants to know “The truth”—presumably about the nature of their constant stand-off and how Moriarty, whom Sherlock saw die several months previously, is somehow always at the center of Holmes’s cases and in his life. The criminal merely smirks and says, “It’s not real. None of it. It’s all in your mind.”

     In the second scene, Holmes and Moriarty are shown fighting in the rain on a slippery cliff at Reichenbach Falls. Once again, the criminal seems to be having the upper hand in the verbal and physical battle, even telling Sherlock: “Congratulations, you’ll be the first man in history to be buried in his own mind palace.” When Holmes insists that Moriarty is (should be dead), his nemesis merely replies: “Not in your mind. I’ll never be dead there. You once called your brain a hard drive. Well, say hello to the virus. This is how we end, you and I: Always here, always together.”

     At one point during the fight Holmes tells Moriarty, “You have a magnificent brain, Moriarty. I concede it may even be the equal of my own.” But just as Holmes acknowledges that he may have met his match, Moriarty reminds the detective: "I am your weakness. I keep you down. Every time you stumble, every time you fall. When you are weak… I. Am. There. Don’t try to fight it. Shall we go over together? It’s always together. In the end it’s always you and me.” That statement—and what happened next—was a turning point in their conflict. It was also a great metaphor for Holmes (finally) realizing that he might need and even welcome some kind of (therapeutic) intervention to finally terminate the pathological relationship with his nemesis (himself).

     As if by magic, Holmes’s best friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson, appears on the cliff to protect and help save the detective’s life. Rather than use the pistol in his hand to shoot Moriarty, Watson gives Holmes permission to simply push his nemesis over the cliff. In order to truly work through the conflict in his subconscious mind and quiet that negative voice (Moriarty) forever, Sherlock Holmes had to make the first move. The time had finally come that the detective found Moriarty “a shade annoying” and was ready to make room for a new challenge outside of his own mind (palace).

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

 © 2016