When I don’t feel well there is always part of me observing, noticing, and diagnosing.

I wonder if other doctors do this. And indeed if non-doctors do this. 

Frequently when I am faced with an illness, injury, or surgery, I notice that I am in a dual state. 

I am both the patient experiencing the health challenge and a clinician observing the patient, taking notes, and filing them away in my personal MHR (Mind Health Record). 

After I take medication, I monitor my symptoms and look for side effects. Isn’t that interesting, the clinician thinks, even as the patient within me finds relief or feels worse.

That hurt more than I thought it would, thinks the patient. Or maybe, that got better faster than I expected. In any event, the clinician registers it in memory for later retrieval, comparison, or analysis.

Perhaps it is a way of distracting myself from the unpleasant present, using the compartmentalization that all doctors are trained in. A way of numbing.

But I don’t think so. I still feel all the physical and emotional effects.  I think it’s due to a lifelong habit of observation and evaluation, trained to have a medical point of view. And also trained to compartmentalize. So I switch back and forth between the personal experience and the mind’s experience. 

This turns out to be a very useful skill. Not just in the practice of medicine, but in leading a life. 

It is metacognition, thinking about thinking. It is taping into the observational aspect of human experience where judgment is suspended, reactivity is diminished, and we watch as life unfolds around and to us.

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