Staying steady in an unsteady world
They say “how you do one thing is how you do everything”. The way you enter a new assignment—meeting unfamiliar faces, navigating unexpected curveballs—can often mirror the way you absorb the news: reactive, cautious, or overwhelmed.
Anxiety is at an all-time high, especially with how so much media is designed to trigger outrage and confusion. Consuming the news today does nothing good for our psyche. And because there’s never any real resolution, you don’t just become anxious—you become addicted. Addicted to finding out more. Addicted to knowing what happens next. Addicted to a story that never ends. It becomes a loop, a cycle that moves from anxiety → curiosity → doomscrolling → more anxiety. You get more glued to the screen, to social media, to the news outlets, to social media that act like new outlets, which in turn causes more anxiety in a never-ending loop.
How does this affect us as anesthesia providers when, on the day-to-day, we are expected to show up with a calm demeanor?
How do you stay grounded in the operating room—a place that can easily give you trauma fatigue, where you’re often operating in fight-or-flight mode—when that same fight-or-flight feeling is what society seems to run on these days?
How do you stay calm, but at the same time keep your mind activated?
The news exists to inform citizens in a democracy. But it has become industry standard to panic people—to build on outrage, to fuel negativity—because that’s what drives profits and engagement.
It makes me wonder: Do most people actually have it together the way they present themselves?
I feel like as anesthesia providers, we have to carry a sense of self that’s a little outsized—not out of ego, but out of necessity. There’s a certain level of grandiosity, certainty, and precision that comes with feeling like you can save a life, or guide someone safely through surgery, and not have anything go wrong in the process 99% of the time. It requires a sense of confidence that can be heavy. It’s a lot to carry, and a lot to exude every single day when you show up to work.
Some days, our mental strength is higher.
Other days, we show up—but we don’t exactly want to go into battle like we usually do.
The longer I do this work, the more I realize how often anesthesia providers are expected to be calm in a world that is anything but. We hold other people’s lives in our hands while trying to hold our own anxiety together. And like anyone else, we carry burdens that no one else sees.
But maybe that’s why this profession demands so much humanity. Because beneath the precision and the protocols, we’re just people doing our best to stay steady in a time when everything around us feels unsteady.
And these days, the steadiness alone is an accomplishment in itself.
