Try one of the following strategies to help cope with stress relating to cultural or identity related issues:
- Connect: Though no one will have lived through your exact same experience, there may be others who share parts of your identity and can relate to many of the things you have lived through. An important part of honouring your own complex identity can involve connecting with others that have shared experience. Seek out others who share parts of your identity and connect over the nuanced ways those parts of you impact (or are impacted by) your work as a heath care worker.
- Take some time to think about the parts of your identity that are most important to you. Write them out in a list and indicate which, if any, you feel conflict with your role as a Health Care Provider. For each of them, jot down a few examples of ways you are (or can continue) engaging with and expressing these parts of your identity.
Or try one of the following writing prompts:
- What were you taught about mental health growing up? How has that changed over your lifetime?
- How has the Covid-19 Pandemic and co-occurring racial pandemic impacted you uniquely? Which parts of your identity do you feel were most impacted by these events?