3 Lessons from 2024

Some painful reflections from a painful year.

Hi 👋 friends,

My 2024 was not been a particularly good year and it’s really not as simple as saying I want to leave it behind and 2025 to be better. Life is irreparably different. At the end of 2023 my mum was unexpectedly diagnosed with a rare and complicated cancer and quickly died in February 2024. Since her death, nothing has brought me quicker to tears than this…

Life has never been the same and of course never will be. It very much feels like it is divided in time between before and after this loss for which there is no ability to move on, only to try and find a healthy way of moving forward. How you move forward is still something I’m figuring out. I suppose I'm using these platforms including YouTube to think out loud and just maybe I'll find that in a few years time I can look back on this and understanding the ups and downs of this journey.

I don’t believe in new years resolutions resolutions but I do believe that the holiday periods are a good time to reflect (cue every medic cringing) and check in with yourself in terms of practical goals and emotional wellbeing. So if you’ll join me, here are my 3 takeaways from reflecting on 2024.

Who am I?

Hi 👋 friends, thank you so much for subscribing to my newsletter. I’m Elliott, a doctor and psychiatrist in the UK I make content about mental health 🧠 and mental illness 👨‍⚕️ trying to help improve our understanding of mental health and documenting my own personal and professional journey along the way. My hope is that by sharing what I have learned and what I continue to learn that it will also help you live mentally healthier happier and more productive lives.

Lesson 1: Understand your emotions

I've always been a thinker not a feeler, so it's taken me years of hard work and introspection to learn to do this and to ask myself why is it that I so readily intellectualise my emotional states and avoid them through thoughts as a defence. What am I afraid is going to spill out? In reality, not every problem needs a solution. Indeed, not every problem can be solved at all, particularly if we don’t first understand it.

In my situation, my anger is very much still under the surface and bubbling away about what the world has taken from our family. That anger is interspersed with sadness that comes from the exact same place. Those are not problems that need to necessarily be solved. They need to be sat with, tolerated and understood. Us humans are really bad at this, particularly with what we think of as more “negative” or unpleasant emotions - anger, sadness, worry, jealousy, fear. But how can we ever experience joy without contrasting it to oh so familiar despair?

We all use a repertoire of defence mechanisms and as one of my consultants use to say, defences are not just for Membership (referring to learning them for our psychiatry postgrad exams), they’re for life. Is there anything more human than messy emotions and messy defense mechanisms in response to them?

Lesson 2: People Pleasing has Hurt Me

I absolutely rushed back to work too quickly after mum died. Looking back, I think I took a week off of work and I'm still asking myself why. Was it for distraction? Was it not wanting to let patients and colleagues down at work? Regardless, it was too quick, and surprise surprise, the stress catches up with you, further amplified by neglecting a lot of what used to spark joy like reading and exercise (btw those of you who give me book recommendations will instantly become my favourite people).

I wrote a list of five things that I love for me (not for others) - cooking, reading, exercise, creating and spending time with my nephew (he’s nearly 3, extremely opinionated and I utterly adore him). Notice none of them were about work? I still enjoy being a doctor but this experience in 2024 has shifted me from this live to work mentality to more of a work to live. I feel more content for it.

Lesson 3: Live in the Moment

How many of us have got a one year or five year or ten year plan? Meeeeee or at least I did. None of it has panned out as I expected it to.

As a doctor, I've seen people live to be 100 doing all the wrong things for their health and seen people die all too young who've done all the right things to their health. I’ve seen peoples lives changed in a instant. Yet, naively, there is still that bit of you that thinks it won't happen to you and your family… until it does. Life got turned upside down the moment I saw my mum’s CT scan. I knew exactly what was going to lie ahead. One benefit to being a doctor is you can then navigate that path and the system if that's the inevitable outcome, but you also know exactly what's going to lie ahead and there's anticipatory grief that starts to hit from that very moment. No one year, 5 year or 10 year plan mattered anymore. The journey matters the most as who can ever know what the destination will truly be?

This weeks recommendations

Here are some of my recommendations to check out from the week. If you’re familiar with them or decide to explore them then I’d love to know

Book: The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camila Sosa Villada. The story is set in Córdoba, Argentina, and provides a semi-autobiographical account of the lives of a group of trans sex workers and makes us think about marginalisation, community, police brutality, societal rejection, minority stress the very real dangers that still exist today for queer people being their authentic selves.

Song: Sorrow by The National. An oldie but it cropped up on my playlist again this week and its ability to put the saddest most visceral emotions into words is heart wrenching.

TV: Bad Sisters. My family are Irish so the dark humour and family dynamics are utterly relatable (the badness not so much.

Socials

Twitter (X): @elcarthy)

Instagram: @dr.elliott.carthy

TikTok: @drelliottcarthy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliottcarthy/

Before you go…

I’d love to know any of your reflections from 2024 of if any of these resonated with you. Leave a comment if you’re comfortable sharing x

We don’t move on but we do move forward and do check out my video on how to try and make 2025 your best year, which includes some fresh perspectives that have come as a consequence of losing my mum.

You can also watch the video on these lessons and reflections right here:

Please do share this with anyone you think would like it.

Love you bye!