Doctors Anonymous: The Steps of a Codependent Doctor and Her Journey through the Twelve Steps

By Jennifer Plumb Tam

Jennifer Plumb Tam MD, is a mother, physician, author, artist and coach. She is an OBGYN and a co-founder of GrooveMDs. Graduating from Brooklyn College and the SU

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Mar 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889266648

Book preview

DoctorsAnonymous-COVER.jpg

Doctors Anonymous

The Steps of a Codependent Doctor and Her Journey through the Twelve Steps

Jennifer Plumb Tam, MD

Illustrated by Marlena Jbara, MD

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2023 Jennifer Plumb Tam, MD

All rights reserved.

Doctors Anonymous

The Steps of a Codependent Doctor and Her Journey through the Twelve Steps

ISBN 979-8-88926-663-1 Paperback

979-8-88926-665-5 Hardcover

979-8-88926-664-8 Ebook

Dedicated to Zachary, Matthew, Anthony, Becca, Bridget and Allison, the Plumb Cousins, and the loves of my life.

Contents

Author’s Note

Part 1: THE UNRAVELING

Chapter 1: My Rock Bottom

Chapter 2: My Background

Chapter 3: Premed and Medical School

Chapter 4: Aunt Margaret

Chapter 5: The Bill W. For Docs

Chapter 6: Brené Brown

Chapter 7: Kindness or Sorrow

Chapter 8: Codependency

Part 2: THE RE-RAVELING

Step 1: Honesty

Step 2: Hope

Step 3: Surrender

Step 4: Courage

Step 5: Integrity

Step 6: Willingness

Step 7: Humility

Step 8: Love

Step 9: Responsibility

Step 10: Discipline

Step 11: Awareness

Step 12: Service

Part 3: WHAT NOW AND NOW WHAT?

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Appendix

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

—Laozi from the Dao De Jing

Author’s Note

This book was cooking for a long time. In a simmering pot with my dysfunctional childhood was my desire to be a doctor, but achieving that dream led me only to severe burnout. Mixing in a dash of people-pleasing, a bit of perfectionism, and a pinch of analysis paralysis led to the unraveling of the recipe of my life and to a table set with all the utensils and platters of my codependency. The side dishes and main course were being plated, but the dessert was still ahead, and although I couldn’t taste it at the time, the cherry on top was a reconnection with an old friend named Marlena.

It was the summer of 2015 and my life had been in turmoil for the last several years. I was a test tube of blood spinning in a centrifuge, helplessly watching all my parts separate. I struggled with my OB-GYN career circling the drain, the deterioration of my fifteen-year marriage, and even the loss of my identity. Around this period of my life, I received a phone call from my childhood best friend, Marlena. Overwhelmed by my misfortune, I let it go to voicemail.

Marlena and I had met in the summer of 1989 at the orientation for our seven-year BA/MD program at Brooklyn College/Downstate Medical School and had been inseparable for those three years of college and four years of medical school. We bonded over similar backgrounds in separate boroughs of New York City, and we became sisters in the true sense of the word.

Then life happened. After medical school, we moved on to the grueling training of our residencies—her into radiology in New York and me into OB-GYN in Philadelphia—and although we were not far, our busy schedules drew an ocean between us. We made valiant attempts to remain close, but we rarely had time to talk, much less see each other. After all, this was before the age of the internet and cell phones. All we had were pagers and house phones.

What followed was marriage, kids, first jobs, and busy practices. Alone, Marlena and I struggled to balance it all. Individually and separately, our lives took the shape of a precarious, unbalanced pendulum that swung back and forth day after day, one with which we could not keep up.

In this pressure cooker of our lives, time flew. All of a sudden, it was 2015, and while we had talked occasionally and exchanged holiday cards and pictures of our kids growing up, we hadn’t been as close as we had been those seven years together deep in the throes of Brooklyn. While she was still in New York City, I had moved all over and was now living in northern Virginia, going through a difficult divorce and no longer practicing in my beloved field of OB-GYN. I was close to rock bottom and this was clear to everyone but me. I was just going through the motions of life, a shell of my former self.

Eventually, I listened to the voicemail Marlena had left on my phone. In the recording, she invited me to New York City to spend a couple of days and go see Ed Sheeran live on SNL with her. I desperately wanted to go. I wanted to have fun and feel joy. I loved hearing from her and felt a pull to her and New York City, but because I was so deep into my personal and professional unraveling, it felt almost impossible to call her back.

Luckily, not only did I eventually respond, I got myself to New York City and actually had a bit of fun for the first time in a very long time. In New York at the French restaurant before the show, I finally began to conceptualize the menu of my life in all of its deliciousness. My journey of discovery and transformation began to take its shape.

See, as doctors, we both thought we had to be strong and not share our feelings with each other, our colleagues, our family or friends, or even ourselves. That’s what happens when you are raised in a family that doesn’t express or talk about emotions. The culture of medical training reinforces that early conditioning. We learned quickly in medical school and beyond not to show any emotion or vulnerability and definitely not to express any insecurities. Not only were we not to show them, but we weren’t even supposed to have them.

This was completely out of alignment with what I had experienced day to day as a practicing OB-GYN as well as personally in my marriage, in parenthood, and in life. In reality, I was chock full of emotions, vulnerabilities, and insecurities, but nobody talked about anything besides the positive emotions.

A professional setback in 2012 had been stewing in me, and only me, up until that day in New York City, but now it was ready to boil over. Seeing my beautiful friend and recognizing her concern for me on her face, my grief all came pouring out after being repressed for so long. The experience was cathartic, and do you know what happened next? Marlena proceeded to share with me her stories of being a woman in medicine, and while they were unique to her, I couldn’t help but notice how similar our experiences actually were.

The realization that we weren’t alone brought the simmering pot inside the both of us to a boil. I didn’t know until that moment that it was okay to be vulnerable. This conversation jumpstarted in us the creation of the menus that would help us, and eventually other doctors like us, recover. Not only is it okay to talk about our vulnerabilities, it actively benefits the doctor, their partners, children, parents, and especially their patients.

While life didn’t immediately get better—in fact, it would get much worse over the upcoming year—I came away from that weekend with a craving to seek out any and all resources that I could find. I came to realize I was exhibiting symptoms of codependency. Over the next year, I went back to my roots by reading and researching. I devoured books, podcasts, TED talks, and a twelve-step group program with Co-Dependents Anonymous which became the foundation of my recovery.

As defined by Melody Beattie in Codependent No More, a codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior. While I had had glimpses of this behavior in myself previously, it was on this night in New York City with my best friend that it started to become clear to me just how ingrained it was in me. I had not hit my rock bottom yet, and while I did not identify as a codependent just yet, it was coming. Within my stressful life, the seeds began to be planted.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown was one of the first such books to find me on this journey. Reading about her work on vulnerability and shame was eye-opening. She says, We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions. This book and her words were like a balm to my soul.

This led to what Jim Collins calls the flywheel effect in his book Good to Great. The flywheel effect is the concept that no matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.

I stood at the beginning of a path to many other resources, people, books, and ultimately to Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA). It also led me to where I am today, which is a gratefully recovering member of CoDA since 2016.

In my research, data and studies suggest that children who are raised to believe their feelings aren’t significant learn to live through other people’s emotions, leading to codependent behavior. While there is very little information or data on codependency in physicians specifically, there are many personal stories of such issues. The financial, emotional, and psychological cost of codependency is extremely high and can affect all aspects of the life of a codependent. (Crary 2012; Childs 2015).

While the prevalence of codependency is difficult to ascertain, some estimates suggest over 90 percent of the American population demonstrates codependent behavior. In addition, while there is very little data or information on codependency in physicians specifically, there are many personal stories of such issues. Physicians are trained to be leaders and to feel they can’t make mistakes and never have any issues, such as burnout (The Recovery Village 2022). This, among other factors, has led to higher rates of physician suicide and burnout than ever before.

Physicians’ poor mental health is related to codependency in many cases. Awareness and vulnerability are key to turning the tide on this trend and unlocking the tools to move forward and reduce codependency, burnout, and physician suicide. Resources are available, but most physicians are either not aware or fear consequences and retaliation upon seeking help.

In this book, I will share how I discovered I was codependent and how I became that way in the first place. I will share how it affected me during my medical training and as a practicing OB-GYN. I will share my learnings from the experts in the field of codependency and burnout, how I took their tools and skills, and how along with my immersion into the twelve steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous, I turned my life around and went down a path of recovery and transformation. When the pressure cooker stopped boiling over, what was revealed had developed into a dish I could be proud of.

This book will resonate with you if you or a loved one is a physician. My goal is for every medical student to have early access to mental health care and to become aware of codependency and its effects early on in their medical training. I’m hoping that by sharing my story and my work, other doctors will feel more comfortable being vulnerable and seeking out resources.

This book details my journey from a simmering pot to a complete dish. A journey of understanding codependency, what it actually means, why physicians may be at higher risk, and what to do if you recognize codependency in yourself or someone you love.

Time to rise!

(And yes, Ed Sheeran and SNL were amazing!)

PART 1:

THE UNRAVELING

Chapter 1: My Rock Bottom

On a dark and cold November afternoon in 2015, I was curled up in a ball, crying under my covers. I was devastated because my nine- and twelve-year-old boys had just left with my husband to fly across the country to San Francisco without me, their mom and wife, to celebrate a wedding.

I had been so looking forward to this wedding, especially as our boys were going to be groomsmen and looked so adorable in the tuxedos for which I had taken them to multiple fittings. We had booked flights and hotels and the boys hadn’t been able to stop talking about it for months. They were so excited for their Uncle Andrew, my husband’s sibling, to marry Jamie, whom they loved.

Though I was not surprised when my husband told me he wanted a separation and that he couldn’t take it anymore, that this was not what he had signed up for, I was devastated nonetheless. We’d had several tough years, had been in marriage counseling, and had even separated for a couple of weeks that June. This new confrontation did not come out of nowhere, but I had not expected it right before our trip.

Despite everything, the plan was still to go to the wedding as a family. That was until my husband informed me that he had found a place to rent and would move out on the Monday after we returned.

At that point, I just knew I couldn’t go to the wedding with him and pretend all was fine, so I made the tough decision to stay home, thinking it would be okay.

It was not okay. It was excruciating.

Being without my boys during such an exciting event and missing the wedding of the only sibling of my husband was bad enough, but worse were my feelings of complete inadequacy, worthlessness, and devastation. It was then, curled and crying under my covers, that the realization came to me that I had hit my rock bottom. I realized this even as I was in complete denial about so many things in my life and had been for years.

To

Reviews for Doctors Anonymous

[Asma · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this memoir so much. I love how the writer shared her struggle and experiences in a very simple and clear way. Highly recommended!