Thread by @usnehal

Yesterday did a double session with a new #womenshealth specialized #mentalhealth clinician - have possible ADHD
my usual brain hack strategies are not effective in entirely online grad school + #endometriosis + #fibroids + move to Boston in #pandemic
psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-be…

Cuz, in online/Zoom group executive coaching, if a topic is brought up around how women psychologically respond to sexual assault in the workplace, & I have not slept all night & I am in 8/10 pain - I just don’t have psychological reserve for that topic
https://t.co/nHwNYVwRUE

Interesting thing: tho my class is ~80% male, have felt much more comfortable being open about #womenshealth issues affecting my overall well-being or attention span among male engineers & execs

than when in all female environments of fellow physicians who expect “suck it up”

In fact one guy will message me 1:1 to share his spouse deals with similar things and appreciates my openly expressing it so other people don’t have to guess

taboos/silence can be broken

I have done a lot of work to reject shaming
of
illness
bodies
(female) communication

In fact, for many women, online networks have been a opportunity to connect with each other as well as to get past many taboos

“revealing participants’ experiences of stigma and silence ....gender, as well as race and class...”

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15…

It can also be women who often police, silence, shame, or block other women (online or otherwise), however. This stuff gets complicated

A needed line in this blog IMHO is if we are factual. An antidote to gossip is fact-checking, transparency, standards

nsvrc.org/blogs/feminism…

Whatever the reason, have felt more psychologically safe in a majority male group than in some all female groups or even in coaching from a female coach who may not anticipate reactions to the topic of sexual assault raised in group coaching via Zoom.
thriveglobal.com/stories/transf…

I ended up doing a deeper dive + consulted experts, on differences between coaching & therapy. Turns out there is a LOT of very clear guidance, standards, definitions. A lot of us have trauma so requires following #coaching #ethics

@ICFHQ @ICF_NYC

coachfederation.org/code-of-ethics

What has happened in our immediate or remote past certainly can be barriers to our openness, growth, pirates of behavior, or otherwise. Yet there is supposed to be a partition between therapy and coaching.

Disease and illness are the key words.

That belongs in therapy.

Thankfully, my migraines - that in past caused me to even go on medical leave - are so much improved in the last two years, I still have not gotten through the (acute) migraine medications that I last filled in October 2018. But, I worry online format of grad school as trigger.

While I don’t meet the criteria now, in the past, when I was monitored for 4 separate potential reproductive cancers, I had substantial mental health stresses.

Pandemic causes stresses. Online format is exhausting, stressful. Now class bidding delayed.

psycom.net/chronic-pain-i…

I can definitely see a number of these as issues that are resurfacing as I go from self employed & able to manage around my own needs to feeling loss of control over the very things I picked the program for (customized course selection) + coaching is bringing up personal topics.

Also, my apartment is stressing me out. (For the record, you can see the floor but the other day I stabbed my foot by stepping on an earring - tho I did not have to miss class as may otherwise happen, as I could pour 3 disinfecting solutions on my bleeding foot and still Zoom in)

My foot did not get infected, by the way, so I must have done a good job. (Or maybe the profuse bleeding did a good job.)

I am not picking a gif because the gif options are really disturbing and now I think I won’t be able to sleep for a week. LOL. (Am a really visual person)