The Doubt We Cast on Others

My parents’ first reaction when my older sister said she was considering pursuing a residency in cardiothoracic surgery was “Are you sure? We don’t think that you have the hand skills needed to be a surgeon.”

Don’t get them wrong. My parents are generally very supportive and my sister has always been someone that is competent in what she does. She is, however, someone that most would categorize as more “brainy” than “crafty”. In the perfectly stereotyped world of med school, most people, including my parents would consider her to be more suitable for something like internal medicine residency, which was also what she had in mind for the longest time. It was a surprise even for me at first, because all along we all thought that she’s already quite determined and driven to pursue it, not realizing that it’s possible to take interest in other medical fields, like surgery, along the way.

Being the sweeter daughter she is, she didn’t argue with my parents’ comments and took them further on the path of self-doubt. If it were me, I’d 100% have had responded “Why not? How can you predict what I can or cannot do in the future? Even I don’t know that.” Uh yeah, like I said my sister is the sweeter and less rebellious one among us two.

It turns out that those kinds of reactions do not only come from our parents. Some of her friends and colleagues, especially men, were also throwing off comments like:

“Are you sure? You’re a woman, it’s going to be difficult”

“You will not have a life other than your job”

“Be mindful, all successful female cardiothoracic surgeons are either spinsters or divorced”

I grew up believing that my sister is one of the smartest and most competent people I know and the fact she became doubtful of what she can do because of this kind of comments saddens me. I can’t totally blame the people making these comments though, they came from the same place that we all at some point were. They came from the same thinking of, “Let me tell you all these things I think can go wrong so that you can think about it.”

This also brought me to reflect that people respond to comments expressing doubts differently. When it comes to people we care about, sometimes we genuinely think that we’re expressing our concerns by making this kind of comment. We feel that just because we’re close to this person, we know them more than they know themselves. This kind of illusioned understanding leads us to think that we’re entitled to doubting them, for their sakes. What we often don’t realize is we can’t control how the other end would receive and process this “expression of concern”.

For some people like myself, receiving comments of doubt from other people becomes a propeller, an additional fuel to proving even more people wrong. For some, it becomes a hindrance. For most, it becomes yet another reason not to pursue what they want to do, another reason to stay in the comfort zone and say, “Yeah right, I wasn’t born for this. Let’s just pursue that easier way.”

We know we shouldn’t be feeding that inner voice of ours that says “I can’t”, so we should be more careful not to feed others’.

Like most of my other posts in this blog, this is a reflection. I realize that I’ve expressed doubts on other people, especially those that I care about, many many times before. Sometimes even without realizing that I was doing it. Going forward, instead of saying “Oh, that’s cool! But from what I know…” I would want to say more things like “…then, what’s stopping you?“.

Oh, and for my sister, she hasn’t yet decided, but I, more than anyone else believe that she will one day become the nation’s best physician in whatever field she chooses. This blog post will one day be quoted in articles featuring her so feel lucky that you’re one of the first few readers 😜

I create this little space on the internet to write my thoughts and reflections on being a human, a woman, and a software developer. I don't have Instagram/Twitter but I can be found on LinkedIn. Feel free to contact/give feedback/tell me your story through my email: ivanaairenee@gmail.com