Physician, Heal Yourself: Starting from the Inside Out

By Phyllis Chisala

This is a book written for women by a woman. It is a true story of brokenness, courage, faith, and hope that no matter how low you may sink, you don't have to stay down. Get up and dust yourself because the best is yet to be.
Bullying, Rejection, anxiety, Low self esteem and lack of Self Confidence are simply words that you can use as stepping stones to a higher ground. The book brings an awareness that bullying and rejection in the work place destroys one's self confidence and hampers one's productivity and it reveals how to deal with bullying by being assertive through knowing yourself and your life's purpose. Rediscovering yourself after being bullied and emotional healing are absolute, and this is a straight forward help you can use to help yourself. You only live once, so don't waste your life. Quit blaming other people and circumstances and take charge of your life. You are in the driver's seat.
The book is packed with wise lessons that will make you wiser as you learn to trust yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781481791182

Phyllis Chisala

Phyllis Chisala, RN, Dip. Life Coach, Dip. NLP, SNHS Dip. (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), MBACP, is the director and co-founder of Let My People Hope LTD, a Life coaching organization that helps women from all walks of life to live purposeful lives. She uses CBT in her work to help rebuild broken lives starting from the inside out. A professional Life coach, with a nurse's caring heart, she speaks from her heart and wins the hearts of other women and allows them to soar to higher heights where only eagles dare. You can e-mail her at; [e-mail]

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I dedicate this book to all the nurses who are doing a great job of caring. You have been given a talent and you will only find happiness through executing it without fear.

With no threats, caring comes naturally.

It is a painful thing to lose your confidence because of bullying and discrimination, to such a one I dedicate this book and say, take courage and don’t give up!

I would like to thank the two men in my life, my son Luyando and my other half Mo Orisakeye for being so patient with me and encouraging while I spent most of my time reliving my past, dreaming and writing.

To my two best friends Ennie and Cathy, I say thank you for being my inspiration. We have come such a long way. I met you when you were single teenagers and you encouraged me to stick at it when I felt like leaving the world of nursing. Without you, I would not be talking nursing today. How time flies.

To my friend, Dr Adam Szczesny for believing in this book and wanting to read it the minute I typed the first letter. You are an inspiration.

To my friend Alice Angela Ngulube, who helped me find my feet in a land where I knew nobody, I say thank you for your kindness. You will richly be blessed.

And my big thank you to Author House Publishers for making my dream come true.

To my parents who have always believed that they have contributed to this world the best nurse ever, she’s not just a nurse, but one above all nurses, my dad boasted to his friends at one time, trying to differentiate between an Enrolled nurse and a Registered nurse. What could he have said? I love you folks.

To my sisters Marjory, Ivy and Sheba and my brothers Chris, Francis, Brian, Victor, Emmanuel and James. Thank you for believing in me and telling me that I’m great and making me feel important. That’s what family is all about. If you don’t look out for me, nobody will.

And last, but not the least, with all my heart, thanks to the Almighty who raised me up for this reason and made me see what he sees, feel what he feels and stirred the seed of compassion within me and the passion to do this and made me to believe in myself. One more time, he allowed me to be the person he created me to be and my heart will forever rejoice in him for lifting me up from the ash heap! To him be the glory now and forever more!

INTRODUCTION

A useless life is an early death. As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A very overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Behaviour is the mirror in which everyone show their image.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven;

Wrote my favourite author, king Solomon.

"A time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain….

A time to be silent and a time to speak…." ( ECCL 3:3-5,7 - NIV, 2004).

Now is the time to build, time to laugh, time to gather and time to speak. Time to have a call and a destiny, time to break free from all restraints and contentment and live abundant lives, spirit, soul and body. That’s a holistic way of living.

Our creator wants us to live abundant lives, spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially and more so, professionally. Our professions and chosen careers, for some, have to do with our purpose and destiny. Why ‘for some’? Not everyone does what they were born to do. Their purpose go undiscovered and so endure whatever they find themselves doing and live unfulfilled lives. The frustrations of not being fulfilled lead some who have no idea how they can break free from their limitations to bullying others in order to make up for their lack. Let this not be you. God put time in place and has made everything to exist within the time frame, so make the most of the time you have. Don‘t waste time living your life under the control of circumstances. No activity under the sun lasts forever, no matter how good or bad. Change is inevitable. Seasons have come and seasons have gone. Centuries have come and centuries have gone. Years have come and years have gone. Babies are born and they grow old and go the way of everyone. And no-one remains the same. We all change to keep up with time. No-one wants to live in the past and dwell on things gone or live on past victories. The best is yet to be! Don’t let time go by without rediscovering yourself and your purpose. Don’t work under the oppression of those who do not know where they are going.

Many times, we experience times when we are torn down and uprooted and we find it hard to move on in life. We keep talking about our bad experiences and every time we talk about such times, we hurt just as much as we did when it happened. But I’ve got good news. There is healing and that time of hurting is not meant to last forever. It is not what happens to us that matters but the meaning we give to what happens.

As we go through different stages in life, we learn from the good as well as the bad things that we experience in life. Life is a classroom. The lessons we learn help to shape us and make us better people. Bad experiences are the best teachers that shape the unseen you, I believe.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 COR. 4:16, NIV, 2004)

The unseen you is the part that matters most and without that unseen you, there will never be you.

The wellbeing of the entire world begins with one individual, and that individual is you, the nurse. To add to the well being of your workplace, and so to the world, your own wellbeing has to come first. That’s not selfishness. You cannot give to others what you don’t have. Love your neighbour as you love yourself, Jesus said.

This is also evident in Paul’s words, …who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received…if we are comforted, it’s for your comfort. (2 Cor.1:4-6,NIV, 2004).

I believe there is an inter-connection between the nurse’s wellbeing and improving client experience. When you feel cared for, you care for others. When you receive comfort, you comfort others. The nursing profession is highly focused on improving patient experience because it’s a career that is driven by compassion. One becomes genuinely compassionate when they have experienced that compassion themselves and they operate on the principle of denying oneself and putting others first. This is only possible when the work culture is that of support where nurses are given an opportunity to express their feelings. In being compassionate, you are sharing in the burdens of others and you need times of refreshing yourself. Denying self is a very important principle that is still exploited by many, nurses themselves and patients at large. There is even a risk that the nurses can easily forget about their well being as they strive to deliver care to meet the prescribed targets. This is due to the fact that, with no support, in case of any eventualities, they are deemed to be without compassion and being negligent. In every business, health or otherwise, the sore reason for going into that business is to bring satisfaction to the client. And as is the case everywhere, the customer is always right, but more so in the health sector because of the fragility of human life. This adds to the fears that makes one so focused on delivering to meet targets and bring satisfaction to the client fearing to be labelled otherwise and so makes one more susceptible to forgetting about self and vulnerable to being bullied by both the cared for and any opportunistic bully who hides behind regulations and policies.

This book is about you being aware of who you are and how well you can help others if you have yourself. It’s about you being aware of bullying which is so prevalent among nurses but goes unquestioned in many cases because of the Jekyll and Hyde personalities. Improving customer experience is about you improving yourself and putting a stop to the emotional virus that will destroy your wellbeing. Being assertive gives you the self confidence to increase your productivity, and so increasing the productivity of whichever organisation you work for. You are the tool by which that organisation achieves whatever goals they have in place. If you are destroyed, the organisation is slowed down. You are the hand that gives, the ear that listens, the heart that feels and the voice that comforts, with only one life to offer. If you don’t offer that life, never will you have another opportunity to offer it again because you only live once. So go on and touch those lives, one at a time.

Most importantly, your purpose and vision in this life is what matters. If you don’t know that, tough. People perish because of lack of knowledge. Knowing yourself and your purpose allows you to focus on developing yourself in the areas of your strengths and so serve others better doing what you are good at and love doing. This also helps you not to compare your talents and gifts with others who are gifted in other areas you are not gifted in. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Lacking that knowledge leads to someone taking everything on and becoming insecure and start fighting for what is not even threatened. Insecurities lead to people becoming bullies. The only way you can stop that kind of behaviour is by you standing up for your gifts, talents and your life.

The purpose of my story is to show that people can bully you and discriminate against you because they don‘t know what your life is all about. That’s destructive. You should not let people’s actions and words make you a victim unless you choose to be one. If you just complain and do nothing to stand up to that, you will simply hand over your power to whoever and whatever circumstances you are faced with. There’s a time for ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ in everyone’s life. Bullies come in all ages, sizes, shape and form. Knowing yourself is the means to prevent that unjustifiable behaviour. If you consider yourself to be a victim, you can still learn to heal yourself. The creator has already set you free!

Some of those who lead or manage are also part of the problem. Understanding their uniqueness will help them to focus on what they are called to do and not feel threatened. This will help them to support others well and lead them well to the desired destination. Being a leader is about one acting as a compass and showing people the way and not bullying them or bossing them around. A good leader has the vision and the ability to communicate the vision in an acceptable way and have the ability to motivate people to work the vision. A good leader is someone who believes work will still be done well even when they are not there to supervise. That’s trusting your subordinates. Don’t supervise people to their bone marrow, it is bullying and it demotivates.

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, advised King Solomon, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations. When the hay is removed and new growth appears and the grass from the hills is gathered in, the lambs will provide you with clothing, and the goats with a price of a field. You will have plenty of goats milk to feed you and your family and to nourish your workers. (Prov. 27:23-27, NIV,2004.)

How true is that! If you understand yourself, you will be in a better position to understand those under you. That’s giving careful attention to your herds. Supporting everyone will produce good results and good experience for those who come your way and all of you will have something to be proud of. Remove the hay which is bullying and discrimination and you will have plenty for you and your workers.

If bullying and discrimination are not stamped out, it will continue and it’s like paying credit with credit, solving one problem while creating another. We must be health givers and not health killers. Every time someone goes off sick because of bullying related stress, they increase the number of the sick being seen by the doctors. You help someone to get well in your hospital, but add to the numbers of those seeing stress doctors in other hospitals.

We only come to know the worth of water when the well dries up. And life in the city becomes precious only when you get to the jungle. So it is with self confidence. You only realise how important it is after you’ve lost it. If you have it, don’t lose it and guard it well. If you have already lost it, then by all means get it back. You can’t afford to live without it, let alone work without it. It is the oil by which the spokes of life are made smooth. Self confidence is so important when dealing with human life. No matter how hard the blows you‘ve suffered, you can still bounce back. That’s absolute if you are ready to receive it.

So, come on a journey down the pages with me and discover that fact.

There are two parts to this book. Part one is my personal story that unfolds to the lessons that I have learned along the way and written down in part two.

PART ONE:

JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN.

CHAPTER ONE 

THE EARLY YEARS

Phyllis, there’s a telegram for you on the dining table. We don’t know where it has come from. shouted my elder brother from his bedroom.

A telegram? I thought to myself. Who can send a telegram to me and what could it all be about. I wondered to myself as I dashed to the dining room to go and check it out.

In my country, Zambia, telegrams where in those days a way of communicating urgent messages as phones where not very common then. Three quarters of the time, these telegrams where used to deliver funeral messages to distant relations. I found the brown envelop on the table waiting for me. I felt a shiver run down my spine and goose pimples came out all over my skin as I shook to open the envelop. It was the end of January 1988, though it was the rainy season, the temperatures were not that low to call for goose pimples and shivering. I was just over anxious because it was not common for a twenty year old girl to receive a telegram. If it was a funeral message, why didn’t they address it to my elder brother who was my guardian and in whose house I lived. My brother and his wife joined me in the dining room because they were also anxious. They wanted to know the contents of that telegram.

Sit down before you read it. my brother Chris advised as he pulled out one of the chairs for me to sit on. I sat down and took a deep breath as I looked at the words on that telegram.

I finished my secondary education (GCE ’O’ Levels) in December 1985, the month my Dad retired from his mining job. He had planned to go and settle in the country away from the busy city life. He was allocated a big farm land and he built a big farm house on it and his plan was to start farm life. He retired at the age of 58, so he still had some energy to do farm work. The only problem was that only 3 of his eleven children were in employment. The remaining eight of us were either still in school or waiting to go for further education. They waited for me to finish my exam before travelling to go and start a new life in the country. We left for our new home on the 22nd of December and Christmas for us that year was miserable, with no bright lights and noise of the city as if that’s what Christmas is all about.

Communication to and from that part of the country was difficult at the time. Letters could take over a month to get to us or to the people we wrote to. None of my two immediate elder siblings were keen on going to college. My immediate elder sister opted for marriage and my elder brother who my sister followed decided to go back to the city to look for employment to help support his younger siblings through their school years.

I was next in line and my ambition was to become a journalist. I had no clue just how that would happen. When I was at secondary school, my dream was to become an Air Hostess but someone had told me that if I became an Air Hostess, I would not get married. Tough! I had always dreamed of one day getting married and starting and being happy with my own family. So I dropped that dream, not what I wanted. So what next? Truth was, I just wanted something that would take me places because I loved travelling. So I stuck to my journalism dream. Prior to taking junior secondary school exams, a Career’s master spoke to us so we could choose the right subjects if we passed to go to senior secondary school. I was told that in order to be accepted into University or college to study journalism, I needed to have a pass in a local language they taught at school. I passed my exam to go to senior secondary and I chose to go into a class where they took a local language. There were three classes with different subjects. It wasn’t long before I realised that I was treading on hot coals. The local language, Bemba to be specific, though it happened to be my language, proved to be tough for me. It was a hard nut to crack. The language they taught at school was different from the one we spoke in the city which was mixed with some English words. We were expected to write the difficult one that was used in the country side. It was like someone is expected to use proper grammar in English. So I dropped out of that class and joined the Biology and physical science class. If I had known what I know today, I could have persevered to improve on my language so I could pursue the dream of becoming a journalist. So what could I do with biology? Didn’t know. Nursing or anything to do with medicine was not even in my subconscious, let alone my conscious mind.

When I finished secondary school, my plan was to have a gap year for a year and then start looking for whatever would come my way. Dangerous place to be, waiting for life to happen to me rather than making it happen. One is supposed to have a dream about what they want to do in future and be passionate about that. It is important to know your purpose from a very young age. If you are a parent, you will do well to identify the talents and gifts your children have and encourage them in those areas. Don’t leave it until it’s too late like I did, learning the hard way. Nowadays, there are so many options to choose from. You only need to know the seed that’s within you or your children. Looking back, I loved reading and writing even as a small girl. I loved playing with dolls pretending I was taking them to school and teaching them and