Being both a chameleon and a blank slate

Below is the reflection I shared in this week's newsletter. Sign up if you haven't already!

There was a lecture in midwifery school that really affected everyone. The topic caused personal reactions, to the parents and the child-free, to the single and the partnered, to the young and the wise. Feeling the ripple, the professor encouraged us to share our reactions, and we all responded with how wefelt. When the discussion completed, she paused, and after some silence, said something to the effect of, “It’s important to know how this makes you feel, and your own opinions about what to do. And then to know, when it comes to providing care, it isn’t about you anymore.”

It was a jarring moment. I remember it well. I had never worked in healthcare before entering the program, and the concept was brand new to me. At first it felt offensive, almost like a direct attack on my own interest and passions, calling them irrelevant, when they had been my entire intention in applying to school and becoming a midwife. I was acutely annoyed at the notion that my work toward developing a personalized approach and care based on who I was as a person might be unimportant. But then, suddenly, it felt like freedom. To acknowledge that what I would do in a clinical scenario for myself or a family member was just that, for myself or my loved ones, and that every individual I might care for would make those decisions for themselves. To realize that my personal style mattered, but my personal stake did not. That my personal presence was paramount, but specifically in the way the person needed me to be, not how I needed to be. That I could be beautifully freed from how I was feeling in my own world or about someone else’s scenario, and instead should be poised for any facet of my joy or empathy or peace to be called into action, depending on someone’s day, circumstances, or needs. That my midwifery would need be centered in my ability to chameleon myself to others, from room to room, moment to moment. That in a major way, healthcare was about how I could be for someone else, not for myself, even though I had my own reasons for being there in the first place.

Now in practice, I realize that these are two distinct skills in healthcare provision that are essentially overlapping Venn Diagram circles: the ability to chameleon others’ emotions, and the ability to blank slate one’s own opinions and beliefs. It’s like walking into every room dressed up as a clinically-trained blank chalkboard, and the person receiving care gets to write nothing, or scribble, or write their complete autobiography. And then after fifteen minutes or an hour, the provider leaves, and somehow must wipe the entire chalkboard clean before walking into the next room. When it comes to creating a blank slate for my opinions, I feel pretty successful in my work toward supporting all informed decisions, regardless of my personal beliefs. (But really? Obviously we all have filters so I must acknowledge mine, so I’ll write a bit more about this another time.) Lately, it’s the chameleon work that is hitting me to the core.

In theory, the need to chameleon makes sense. My brain wraps around this well, academically speaking, that part of holistic healthcare is someone’s emotional well-being and, in addressing someone’s acute need, their emotional state is part of that. And often, it works. This person is happy: provider, reflect their happiness. This person is devastated: provider, reflect sadness. This person is heartbroken but is seeking clarity: provider, be caring but firm. This person is confused: provider, affirm their limbo. This person is on their own rollercoaster: provider, provide a stable presence. There are days when the joy outweighs the pain, and either rushing between fun labor rooms or fun clinic rooms fills my fountain and I am able to carry the rarer, heavier moments well. There are days when the student’s learning, always non-linear and thus unpredictable, is soaring and our mantras are in sync and people are open to engage fully with a learner. There are days when I, personally, am doing well, and so the highs and lows feel manageable, control over the fifteen minutes is well within my hands, and those are the days when I successfully maintain a certain baseline barrier between the chameleon abilities and my personal response, and I can go home and still have maintained my own sanctity of space.

But in all honesty, the practicality can be messy. There are days when the work toward being someone for everyone, in any situation, borders the impossible. There are days when my ability to chameleon is only through giving myself fully to everyone, which means full absorption of people’s joy and pain: at the end of those days, depending on the highs and lows, I leave a culmination of others’ lives. Those are the days when I feel myself lost in the whirlwind. There are the days when I am personally having a difficult time, and so I chameleon only on the surface, partially present all day while struggling fully just below the surface: in any job it’s hard to show up when you’re having your own hard time, and in healthcare there can be days of bearing witness to individuals and families and communities having hard times. Those are the days when my own hard time feels heavier with the weight of the world. Some days, I have found myself challenged when I realize that the chameleon work is easy because in actuality I am numb from all of the chameleon-ing, that I’m able to be a blank slate because my wall is up so tall and wide that I’m not even fully present, so the ability to be anyone is almost robotic. Other days, I have found that the chameleon skill takes over to the point that I continue to chameleon at home and with friends, unintentionally, and finding my own opinions and beliefs and emotions takes intentionality.

So what started out as freeing, sometimes still is. And sometimes it can create its own complexities. And, as a midwife to other midwives and providers, being honest in naming and addressing that experience is part of my own processing and is part of my teaching. (see also: trauma-informed care. see also: secondary trauma. see also: abortion care. see also: all healthcare).

Be gentle with yourselves, all.