Awakened Anesthetist

Thriving Through Mindfulness as a Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant

• Mary Jeanne, Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant • Season 4 • Episode 58

Share episode

Gain the confidence to make decisions aligned with your true desires and embrace a compassionate approach to life. We'll explore how mindfulness can help break the cycle of equating worth with productivity, fostering inherent worthiness and resilience. I'll also share my personal experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder, illustrating how mindfulness has been pivotal in managing anxiety and building resilience. Whether you're a seasoned CAA* or an aspiring student, learn about the unique potential within our community to harness mindfulness for overall well-being. 

*several times I misspoke and left off Certified Anesthesiologist ASSISTANT. This was not intentional.


You can now text me! Questions/Suggestions


Want more? Stay in the know by subscribing to the Awakened Anesthetist Newsletter- more resources, exclusive content and ways to connect.


Interested in practicing mindfulness with this CAA community?

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA. At one of my lowest points, I decided to turn my passion for storytelling and my belief that stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the AwakendAnesthetist podcast. Welcome in. Hello again to this Awaken Anesthes community full of practicing certified anesthesiologist assistants. I know there's a ton of AA students out there listening and, of course, the huge and ever-growing mass of prospective AAs. Welcome to Awaken Anesthes. I'm so happy that you're here and joining me. My name is Mary Jean. I have been a long time practicing CAA for the past 17, going on 18 years and today's a personal episode. I wanted to jump in on the theme of season four, which is how to stay healthy and thrive as a CAA or AA student or someone who's in their journey to become a CAA. I'll be diving into that topic specifically with my process guests, as well as any other offerings that I do outside of the podcast through Awaken Anesthetist, so these are things like webinars I might host or Instagram conversations. Certainly this includes CAA Matters, which is the wellness curriculum I created for first-year students that I am currently marketing to AA schools and trying to push out into our CAA universe and trying to get going to have some more support and resources so that we can all start taking steps to be healthier and thrive as CAAs. And I just have so much to share and say. But I'm really going to try to summarize the last six years of my own journey, of my own effort to be healthy and to thrive as a long-time CAA, into about 20 minutes. So that's the goal. So let's get started so that you can get as much value from this as I can possibly pack in.

Speaker 1:

I've been talking about this and interested in this for a very long time and actually, when I was prepping for this episode, I looked back on my Quad A conference lecture from 2023. I think the conference that year was in Dallas and it was the first year that I was speaking on stage and, lo and behold, I decided to talk about how to flourish as a CAA and what that exactly meant, and how we do that as a collective like of a CAA, and what that exactly meant and how we do that as a collective like of a CAA professional body, and then how you also do that as an individual. And so I wanted to share the insights from that Quade lecture of what exactly are those things that go into a healthy, thriving CAA life. Because when I looked back on this list, I'm like, yep, that still resonates, that's still definitely true, that's definitely what I want to keep in my life and keep moving forward with. So here's the list and you can let me know if these resonate with you. So, to live a thriving life, a healthy life, as a CAA, you live with purpose and meaning. You also feel fulfilled and satisfied on a daily basis. You feel a sense of control and choice in your life. You spend quality time with family and friends, you foster connections with your work colleagues or with your school colleagues, and you take care of yourself mentally, spiritually and physically. So that was the list that we came up with in 2023, sort of en masse at the Quade conference, and when I look back on my journey and think about what I want to share with you all.

Speaker 1:

Today I really want to dive into the but how? So we've identified that we want purpose and meaning in our life. We want a sense of control and choice. We want to feel like we're connecting to the people who are immediately in our life. We want to have a sense of belonging. And then I ask but how? Like, please tell me. I will gladly do the things that I'm supposed to do to get that sense of thriving, but how? And so, truly, the past six years has been a journey of figuring out that, but how? And the need to answer that question has taken me to so many places. It's obviously brought me here to this podcast, but it's also brought me several different types of therapy, really going back into my childhood and healing a lot of pieces of me that I thought were truly forever broken. I was diagnosed with OCD at a point in this journey and received some healing and treatment for that. I've been to marriage counseling, I've been to parenting experts, I have been on meditation retreats and silent weekends away, and I have tried truly every self-care practice in this quest to figure out but how. I want to feel purpose and meaning. I want to have control and choice, but how? And very, very interestingly about two years ago when I started being introduced to a formal mindfulness practice. So a friend of a friend told me about a mindfulness community here in the Kansas City area. It is a community that is built around practicing mindfulness in many different ways and it's a place that you can go physically to practice as well as there's a lot of online offerings. A friend of a friend introduced me to them and that started my very concrete journey into the actual practice of mindfulness.

Speaker 1:

And once I started practicing mindfulness, I could see that in every single therapy session, in every single expert conversation, every podcast that ever really resonated with me, all of these other external forces were trying to get me to practice mindfulness. So it was all a little bit here and there. It was sort of diluted down in everything else I was doing, but the piece that really moved the needle forward in all of these different types of therapies and all of these other resources that I was accessing to try to live my best life, the through line was mindfulness. And I could start to see that when I started practicing just pure mindfulness about two years ago, really intentionally, with this mindfulness community here in my area, and that's really what I want to share today, which is how my mindfulness practice has allowed me to be healthy and thrive as a CAA, to really get all those things that we laid out at the Quad A Conference purpose, meaning, control, choice, freedom, a sense of agency you know all the beautiful things that you know we hear about in a good life.

Speaker 1:

Mindfulness has really been the path that has allowed me to step closer and closer to having those things in my life, and something that I've never heard people do on a podcast or in resources or in you know other forms of media, and specifically never heard them do for certified anesthesiologists is just really lay out the very practical analytical basics of how mindfulness can bring about purpose and meaning and really break it down in that way that I love doing so much, which is to constantly ask but how, and I hope just hearing it laid out really plainly encourages you to try some different practices in your own life, to maybe start identifying what's working in your life, what's not working, to give yourself some more time, freedom to then use to, you know, work on your next project, or to think more deeply about the next subject that comes your way and it builds and snowballs and you know I wouldn't say this is a super quick process. I don't know that I can really um tout that, because for me it's been a good six years and I'm still sort of figuring some things out, but I can see how far I've come by using mindfulness as a tool. So here's how mindfulness has allowed me to become healthy and thrive as a CAA. Number one, mindfulness has given me actual time back in my day. So it is no surprise that as a CA or an AA student or just a normal American person living in our world today, life is very, very busy and oftentimes when you're trying to make a change, when you're trying to be healthier, to institute new good habits, you're like how could I possibly have enough time to do anything differently because I'm so pressed for every moment of the day already and, very interestingly, when you start practicing mindfulness, you're carving out 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes at some point in your day, meaning you're giving up doing something else. You slowly start to see how creating the time from mindfulness builds more time into your day, and this is how it happens. This is the part I feel like no one has ever said out loud that I just wish someone had clearly laid out. So when you allow yourself to connect to your own inner awareness in mindfulness, it creates the skill, like the actual neural pathways and neuroplasticity changes in your brain, to allow you to be more aware of yourself when you're not actually practicing mindfulness. So it strengthens the connection specifically in your prefrontal cortex to just be able to feel into what's the next best right decision and when you more clearly can make a more efficient and quick decision. You don't waste little moments, little pockets of time throughout your day. You have more motivation, you're more effective and slowly, all of a sudden, you start feeling like you have more time in your day to make the next right decision.

Speaker 1:

Let me give you an example of this happening in the operating room, because I think it's really clear there, if you are a practicing CA or AA student and you've ever noticed the difference between a surgeon who's just kind of so-so like, let's say, they're a general surgeon doing a lap coli and they're just sort of average so-so versus that surgeon who can do a lap coli in like seven minutes. The difference. There is such an extreme intention to every move they make, every decision they make is made one time. There's no going back and forth. There's no hemming and hawing, there's no like maybe I should cut there. No, I should cut here. Let me put the staple there. No, no. It is so clear what they're doing and why, and they're so comfortable with it that all of those little moments where they're not pausing, where they're not second guessing themselves, add up over time. And now this LACOLI takes seven minutes instead of three hours, and it really really matters.

Speaker 1:

The same thing happens when you're using your mindfulness practice to learn more about yourself through a process of self-awareness that happens truly, literally in our brains. That when you are tired at night and the maybe the house is quiet if you have kids, the kids are in bed and you're like I just don't feel right, something's wrong, I'm not sure. So you open the fridge and see if it's something to eat. You open your phone to see if you missed an email. You get on Instagram to get a little dopamine boost. You sort of meander around your house for a while, thinking, oh, it'll come to me.

Speaker 1:

Once you start practicing mindfulness, you will more clearly know that in that moment. Oh, I'm tired, I feel tired. I'm aware that I'm tired. My next best move is to go upstairs to bed, as opposed to wasting that time trying to figure out what's wrong. You just are more aware of who you are and what you need and how you're feeling, and you can just act more efficiently, and that truly builds time back in your day, hands you back time, and once you have more time, it's so much easier to make the next right decision. Okay, so that's the first thing that mindfulness has given me into this. But how do I become healthy? But how do I thrive as a CAA? Is I need to recapture time? So that's number one. Number two is that I need to more clearly know my intuition. I don't know about you, but for a very long time, I basically just did what other people wanted me to do and I couldn't even tell you what it was that I wanted, very disconnected from my own intuition.

Speaker 1:

As I began practicing mindfulness little bits here and there, through, of course, all the other therapy things I was doing, as I mentioned, and then, once more specifically, I started practicing mindfulness my intuition became so loud and clear that not only did I regain time because I could just do whatever I needed to do, I could tell that that was the exact right next move for me. But it also just got so much more clarity around big decisions in my life. I could turn inward. You know, that thing people say you're supposed to do is like listen to your gut or listen to your intuition. It was just so foreign to me. But the dial of volume on my intuition started getting louder and louder and louder. Then, every time I acted on my intuition and it worked out and I was like, oh okay, that's what it feels like when I say yes to myself and no to the external forces that maybe want me to do something different and I follow my own intuition. This is how life works out for me. And it just snowballed and I kept going and going and going. That was all so directly stemmed from my mindfulness practice.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the next thing is that my mindfulness practice has broken that repeating phrase in my brain that I am only worthy if I'm productive and doing and working and making money. It's like interrupted that record that plays in my head and probably most of your heads. That's the culture we're brought up in. That's our highest purpose. That's where we find meaning is through productivity and my mindfulness practice, because it is infused with compassion as well. So treating myself like I would a good friend has allowed me to truly feel like I do not need to do anything to be worthy, that I am enough just as I am. I just am so much more practiced in being kind and gentle to myself. I can be kind and gentle to other people, which, you know, just fuels everything in life that feels good with belonging and connection.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the last one that I'm going to talk about is that mindfulness has allowed me to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and I'm talking about when you are truly doing a mindfulness practice and you have an itch or your knee is sort of achy or weird or your big toe is cramping. I'm constantly allowing myself to sit in that discomfort. I allow my body and my brain, my mind, all the things to just be in that sense of tension, that sense of discomfort, and practicing that, giving my body and my brain and the neurochemicals, the noradrenaline and the epi coming out of my adrenal glands and the cortisol and my body the sense to withstand that feeling and not need to fight, flight or freeze, but be able to sort of just relax into it and know I'm not going to die, it will be okay. I can sit here for five more minutes and complete. My mindfulness practice has been so transformational because tolerating that amount of discomfort over and over and over again has allowed me to do things like conquer a lot of my OCD discomfort.

Speaker 1:

I have actual true obsessive compulsive disorder. It is a somewhat debilitating disease. I have a lot of intrusive thoughts for the majority of my life that created a pain inside of me that I spent what felt like 95% of my energy trying to hide and I'm only saying this because I lived so much of my life in discomfort that I was constantly trying to hide and push away and not feel. And then I had all these OCD compulsions to cover up that discomfort because it was just too much to handle. And my mindfulness practice has allowed me to sort of uncover that discomfort, live with it, work with it, be in relationship with it and know that I can get through it to the other side. Of course I've done this a lot with therapy. I've certainly not done this all on my own, but that's one of those skills living with discomfort, living with the fear of failure.

Speaker 1:

If you're an AA student out there right now and you are just terrified of getting a B plus or a C plus, or getting called out in clinicals, or you're having the Sunday scaries before you go into the operating room for your clinical day in clinicals, or you're having the Sunday scaries before you go into the operating room for your clinical day on Monday and you're just so overwhelmed with the discomfort of not looking your best, being your best, getting a question wrong. That feeling you can work with in a mindfulness practice and as your body gets exposed to it and I'm talking like on a neurobiological level, as your body's exposed to that feeling of discomfort, you become desensitized, the fear goes down around the discomfort and you become better and better to tolerate it. This is that buzzword resilience that we hear so much in health care and in higher education. How do you build resilience? Much in healthcare and in higher education. How do you build resilience? And it's just allowing your body to feel discomfort, feel stress, in a way that feels controlled and safe to you, so that you know, and your body knows, that when the big discomfort comes, when the real stuff happens, when you're really in the operating room and someone's coding, that you will be able to get through it because you've gotten through all these other little discomforts along the way and it's built up, your capacity, so so important for me, where I can now be my healthiest self, because I know that discomfort won't kill me and that there is another side, on the other side of that big scary feeling, and I will eventually get through it. So long as I wait it out, stay calm, use my coping skills, use my resources, find my sense of connection, find the positives in my life, lean on the people who understand me and know me. So much has happened through this ability to withstand discomfort because of my mindfulness practice. I just could go on and on, but I'm not, because we have come to the end of my 20 minutes and I'm so excited to have shared this personal journey with you, shared about mindfulness.

Speaker 1:

And if now you're asking but Mary, how and why, like how do you do mindfulness, how do you build this skill and why might I want to build this skill, I want to direct you to a free resource I just created. I actually hosted a live webinar called Introduction to Mindfulness for CAAs. You can access it by putting your email in the link in the show notes and you will receive that instantly to your inbox. It's a video and also I send you the podcast-style audio and there's also ways to continue practicing mindfulness in a CAA community. You can sign up to receive those emails. I will be doing these Mindful Connection workshops once a month through Season 4 of Awaken Anesthetist. So if you're listening to this in real time, you can sign up through the link in my show notes to receive more information about mindful connections.

Speaker 1:

And, yeah, I really feel excited about bringing mindfulness and the skill of mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness specifically to this CAA community. There is so much to gain through this practice and so much accessibility to us as CAAs. Because of who we are and how our brain works, I do think we have a unique ability to practice mindfulness and to understand the science and the why behind it, and that can keep us going when sometimes the practice feels tedious or maybe not the most exciting thing to do. I just think there's such a huge potential for the CAA community for us all to use mindfulness as a tool to live our best life, and I'm just really proud to bring this directly to this certified anesthesiologist community. It's a resource that I feel really called to create and I'm hoping that you all find it useful and helpful. So, again, you can get the link to the introduction to mindfulness for CAAs in the show notes. It's a webinar and also a podcast style audio, and then you can sign up to continue practicing with a community of CAAs by the link in the show notes for Mindful Connections.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I think that's all for today. I'll be back next week. I'm so excited to see what you all think about mindfulness and I hope you all take advantage of that free resource. All right, let's talk again soon, y'all.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Mary Jeanne Roberts, CAA

Host