How Do You Feel? 😊😭😫🙄

Vulnerability is good for your health.

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Jessi Gold, MD, MS, is a practicing psychiatrist, the Chief Wellness Officer of the University of Tennessee System, and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the Yale School of Medicine, and Stanford Medicine. She has written widely for the popular press and is a sought-out expert on everything from burnout to self-disclosure. Her new book, HOW DO YOU FEEL?, is out today. 

Jessi and I got to know each other during the pandemic, when both of us were writing and speaking about mental health. I’m delighted to present you today with her essay about the power of vulnerability.

Hi, Lucy’s Substackers! 👋

My name is Dr. Jessi Gold. I am a board-certified psychiatrist and a friend of Lucy’s. I am writing this post as a challenge to all of you, right now, to consider being more vulnerable in your day to day lives—at home, at work, with your friends, wherever. 

Why? Because despite all of the reasons not to do it, being vulnerable is an essential life skill. It makes us courageous and empathetic. It is also necessary for creativity. If you aren’t open to failing, which is inherently vulnerable, why would you even bother trying something new? 

The definition most people use for vulnerability, often attributed Brené Brown, is the combination of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Uncertainty means you don’t know the outcome of doing it. Risk means it could be dangerous to you in some way. Emotional exposure means you can’t control how other people are going to react to it. 

In other words, it’s: everything that sounds miserable, even scary, to do, all in one package!

Now, I am not just sitting here from behind a computer telling you to do something I haven’t tried myself. I first dipped my toe into being openly vulnerable about my own mental health when I started talking about going to therapy. I did that for a long time with friends, and then on social media, even educating people with tips and tricks I learned from my therapist. But, over time I realized I wasn’t telling the whole truth about myself and my mental health: I don’t just go to therapy, I also take medication for depression. I have taken it consistently since college.

Something was holding me back from saying that part out loud. Despite being a psychiatrist who quite literally spends all day prescribing meds to people and telling them that taking mental health meds is like taking blood pressure meds (which I wholeheartedly and authentically believe), applying that to me somehow seemed different. I was just like the med students who were asked if mental health was a weakness, and overwhelmingly they said no, but they worried what their supervisors, peers, residency applicant reviewers, and patients would think, and as a result, said that if they got help, they would not talk about it. 

In fact, I didn’t even realize this self-stigma was there.

It is this hidden curriculum and the public stigma around mental health that prevents sharing so often. It did for me for a long time, too. But, after conversations with my therapist and some self-reflection, I finally wrote about my self-stigma here. Writing that piece was hard. It took time and working with an editor I trusted. I realized I had to unlearn a lot of what I had learned in my own training about self-disclosure and just being a mirror who reflects back a patient (thanks to Freud). I also had to push back on what the field of medicine taught me about mental health and feelings—which was basically not to have them because they distracted from the patient, got in the way, or implied weakness.

I also spent time trying to understand my own pull to self-disclose. Why did I want to tell my whole story? Did I have to tell it to practice being vulnerable? Is it something social media is making me feel like I need to do? I don’t actually think we owe our stories to anyone. I wrote that piece because I thought it was important for people to know that even a psychiatrist stigmatized herself for being on medications. Because if I do, we all do. 

When I put it out there, the response was mostly positive. There’s a thing called “self-disclosure reciprocity” which is when you are vulnerable and share, someone else does, too. It is how we make friends, but is also how we get a mentee or a supervisee to open up about what is going on. If we pretend like we have it all figured out, or, in the case of mentoring someone, if we lead with criticism or suggestions—or something we notice they aren’t doing well enough—that can put the other person on the defensive. But instead, if we lead with curiosity and empathy—and even with an observation from our own lives, e.g., “It has been really hard to balance work and life,” for example—we are more likely to get the truth.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Author: Charlie Mackesy

That is what I am hoping this piece inspires you to do: say some of the quiet stuff out loud. This is not about oversharing. I don’t expect you to do what I did and talk about your psychiatric medication or your burnout or details of your personal life that could do you more harm than good. But if you want to and are ready, try to put names to your challenges and feelings and some of the daily struggles we all face yet still feel alone in the silence of it all.

What if you answered “How are you” or “How do you feel?” with the truth (instead of “Okay.” or ”Fine.”)?

Just TRY it.

I’ll do it with you. If you want to join me, post your authentic answer on social media until the end of the week and tag me (@drjessigold). You can even challenge some friends to join you. 

I believe that simple action can change our workplace culture and help us all be more vulnerable. It’s why I went as far as to write an entire new book, HOW DO YOU FEEL? (OUT TODAY!!), that is part memoir, part patient narrative, and uses stories to discuss how hard it is caring for ourselves when we care for others. 

I truly think our stories have more power than we realize. That authenticity can give you permission and space to feel. Vulnerability is a super power, and it is about time we all start using it.

So tell me, when was the last time you shared your story?