How emotional antibodies can help recover from the impact of COVID-19 [PODCAST]

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“In my lifetime, I have encountered those who have seemingly endured far greater states of human privation than I could ever imagine (though I try to eschew establishing comparative equivalencies [or non-equivalencies] among human suffering as much as possible because such an impossibly herculean task never ends well). And what I have come to realize is that the nexus of all of these extraordinary stories of tragic afflictions being overcome was the individual’s remarkable propensity for gratitude and their mental aptitude to reorient, reframe, and reappraise all that was bad … into all that is good.

Unlike biological antibodies that fight microbial marauders just by our very nature of existing until the illness passes, the acquisition of emotional antibodies is a far less passive process. We have to be proactive in our efforts to construct and build meaning around the negative impact of the trials around us, and integrate all that we ascertain into the person that we are … and the person that we become—our identity.”

Jay Wong is a medical student at the University of Michigan Medical School. He received his undergraduate degree in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from Yale University. He can be reached at his self-titled site, Jay Wong, and on Twitter @JayWongMedicine, Instagram @JayWongMedicine, and Facebook.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, “A vaccine alone will not be enough to recover from the impact of COVID-19: Emotional antibodies against it are needed as well.”

Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, the founder and editor of KevinMD, and today we have Jay Wong, who is a first-year medical student and a recent contributor to KevinMD. He’s written several provocative stories for the site, and I want to welcome him to the show. Jay, thank you so much for joining us.

Jay Wong: Thank you so much for having me.

Kevin Pho: All right, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Tell us about your story and what brought you to where you are now.

Jay Wong: Yeah. So again, my name is Jay Wong, and I’m originally from Long Island, New York. I was born and raised there. My parents actually immigrated here from China back in the late ’80s, so I’m Chinese by ethnicity. I’m actually also first-generation to go to high school and college and to medical school now, which is really exciting. I went to undergrad at Yale, I graduated a couple of years ago, and now I’m a first-year medical student at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Kevin Pho: And this is probably a first year unlike most first years. How are you managing through the pandemic, and how’s your class managing?

Jay Wong: Yeah, so it’s a little bit of a transition. I mean, everything’s now online, so it always takes a little bit of a period to acclimate. But I think, you know, it’s nice to not have to be in class all the time. I get to just be back at home and with people that I really love and care about.

Kevin Pho: So medical school has changed since I went to medical school back in 1999. We had to go to these lecture halls all the time. I’ve talked to medical students within the last five years, and a lot of them just show their videos, and then they run them at like five times speed, so they could just, you know, view everything pretty much online anyway. So has it been a huge change from the beginning of the year for you?

Jay Wong: So to be completely honest, I pretty much stream everything. I don’t even think I’ve gone to maybe a single day of lecture. Actually, I take that back. I think I may have gone once. So that transition was pretty easy for me. I didn’t have to make that much of a big change, but I mean, there were still mandatory classes, which now we don’t have to do anymore either. So for me, it’s pretty amenable. I think those who go to class all the time, who require that type of didactic style, are probably going to have a little bit of a tougher time, but for me, I think I’m pretty good.

Kevin Pho: Sure. So you’ve written several stories on KevinMD, and you share a lot about your personal life and about your travels. So tell me about your story of becoming a writer and sharing some of your stories on social media platforms.

Jay Wong: Yeah. So even when I was really, really young, I always loved writing. I always loved to write. In fact, I actually wanted to become an author when I was a lot younger and write books. So it was never in my sort of purview or in my dreams at the time, when I was a young kid, to even become a physician. Because I always felt like writing was a way to talk about a reality that is not. It was a medium through which I could connect with other people and really use my voice to express something that either isn’t there or a story that other people have not lived. It was allowing me to sort of not only be a storyteller but to connect with people on a really intimate level and to share experiences that, you know, they would otherwise not have, and the only way they can get that experience is through my writing.

And it wasn’t until I went into medical school, and going into medicine, that I realized I was sort of not engaging with that part of myself that I valued so much growing up, which is being able to write stories and connecting with people. And so I felt like I didn’t want it. I wanted to return to that a little bit, and I felt like this was a good way. Writing, you know, for your publication allowed me to sort of marry my two interests and passions together, which are medicine and, you know, connecting with others through writing and storytelling.

Kevin Pho: Now, did you have a lot of opportunities to write during undergrad, when you were at Yale, or even during the first few months of medical school?

Jay Wong: So I think during my undergrad, I spent most of my time, if I was writing, writing for English classes, or writing for, you know, like a Bible class that I was taking. And then all the creative writing stuff, you know, the stuff where I could just write whatever it was that was on my mind, that mostly came out in Instagram posts or Facebook statuses. So that was the extent of my ability to write, you know, free form during that time. So unfortunately, I didn’t get to exercise that as much as I would have liked.

Kevin Pho: Well, I think it’s fantastic that you’re here writing so many pieces, and I certainly encourage pretty much every medical student to write, because that’s what medicine is, really. It’s all about stories. It’s all about our patients’ stories especially, but our stories as health care clinicians, as we’re going through this long journey. We have to be able to tell our stories as well. So I think that’s fantastic.

So I do want to focus on one of the stories that you wrote for the site. I’m just going to pull it up here. It was written earlier in May, and it was titled “A vaccine alone will not be enough to recover from the impact of COVID-19: Emotional antibodies against it are needed as well.” So tell me, what are emotional antibodies? Tell me how this story came about.

Jay Wong: Yeah. So the ideation of emotional antibodies, and the genesis of the concept and the immunology of resilience, really came out of a conversation that I was having with a friend one day that was completely unrelated to COVID-19, actually. We were just talking about suffering in general, like human suffering, and why it was that we noticed in our personal lives that people who had endured such great states of human privation were able to be so, you know, strong and able to just overcome, while others were sort of crippled by it and cowered and crumbled. Like, what really made that difference?

And we felt like suffering wasn’t something that was bad. We kind of talked about the gift of tremendous suffering and how suffering is kind of the sandpaper that I think shapes us in many ways. And what makes the difference between those who cower, crumble, or are crippled by it versus those who don’t are, in my mind, people who are able to forge meaning from it and build some sort of identity from those experiences. So they were proactively taking what, you know, they were experiencing and gaining, not only trying to define meaning but forge it, and really going after making sense of something and turning all that is bad into something that was good.

And every time you do that, I think that we actually build what I call emotional antibodies. So basically, what that is, is essentially antibodies. Just like how, serologically, whenever we are attacked by an actual microbial pathogen, we mount antibodies against that, I think experientially, when we experience things that are traumatic, or things that make us suffer, and we are able to somehow shape that experience into something that makes us better or sort of improves us in some way, we also build up sort of a sense of immunity, sort of an immunity in terms of our resilience. That manifests itself as emotional antibodies, such that when we recognize or see, you know, similar experiences, or endure similar hardships or reversals in the future again, we are more apt to similarly and analogously launch an immunological reaction emotionally to these things so that we can fight it off and overcome it.

Kevin Pho: Now, there was a great quote in this article which I think articulates that proverbial fork in the road that you’re talking about. I wanted to read it to my audience right now, and you write, “It has been my experience that there is a bifurcating pathway with which we can navigate our interplay with an adverse event. We can either cower, crumble, and be crippled by it, or we can face it, fight it, and no matter what the outcome is, forge positive meaning from it.” And I think that’s really the choice that you were talking about in terms of taking meaning from an adverse event.

Now, when someone’s going through an adverse event, sometimes they don’t have that gift of perspective. They’re not thinking, you know, “This is going to help me in the future.” What kind of advice can you give to someone who is going through an emotionally adverse event at that moment?

Jay Wong: Yeah, I would say that for anyone who’s going through something where it’s really traumatic and really difficult, the answer lies within yourself. And you can’t have, I mean, we can talk to other people and get advice from other people, but just in terms of, you know, the big picture, I think it really is incumbent upon us to find the answers within ourselves. A lot of it, I think, is about situational reappraisal and cognitive reorientation, where we try to see that it’s not just about finding the silver lining, but it’s about forging something out of that negativity.

I mean, there are so many people that I know, for example, who have been in prison for a really long time, and sometimes you wonder, how were you able to maintain such positivity and optimism while you have been imprisoned for so long and endured so much hardship? And a lot of them sort of say that they have taken that time they were imprisoned to really work on their thinking, and that prison gave them a space and a medium through which they could really spend time reflecting and sort of building their emotional and mental musculature. So they were able to take that time of imprisonment and turn it into a time of contemplative thinking that really sort of helped them emotionally actualize. So they took something that one might perceive as so traumatic, being sort of left in a solitary, sort of confined space for so long, and changed that into something that really contributed to their life in a positive way. I think anyone who’s suffering can probably forge something out of what they may perceive at the time as nothing.

Kevin Pho: Now, you’re just starting out on your medical journey. You’re a first-year medical student. So with the concept of emotional antibodies, I guess, in your journey so far, what’s an example where that concept and construct has helped you?

Jay Wong: Yeah, so I think what I would probably link this back to, just because I feel like it’s super relevant, is, I mean, just COVID-19 in general and the pandemic. I think that right now, more than ever, as a medical student, I was seeing a lot in the news, in the media, just this almost hot pursuit toward getting a vaccine, toward having a biological cure. And I feel like more germane than ever is the idea that that is a really reductive and self-limiting solution. A vaccine itself, a biological one, is not going to be able to ameliorate the damage that’s going to be left by the vestiges of this pandemic.

And what I really wanted to sort of convey is that, you know, a vaccine is but a blip in the stratosphere of what it’s going to take to overcome the strife and the trials that have come out of this. In order for us to really just move on and really grow from this, we have to recognize the individual and collective despair that happens on a day-to-day basis since the incipience of this pandemic, and recognize that we have to take that despair and repurpose it, and weaponize it even, to our own advantage. Whether it’s, you know, taking this global pause and this hunkering-down period as a time to recognize that it cannot be a squandered opportunity to really build on our psychological and spiritual selves, so that we can tackle a lot of these things like vicarious trauma, emotional insult, and learned helplessness, which I collectively call the “trifecta of emotional assault.”

Kevin Pho: That’s fantastic insight. So I just wanted to shift gears and just ask you, what are you currently curious about now? What are you currently passionate about right now?

Jay Wong: Yeah, so personally, I mean, this also goes back to why I write to begin with. I really enjoy telling stories from the perspective of the underdog, but not only just the underdog, but also stories that I feel like are really controversial or are hidden or are considered, just, distant, like the stories of the disenfranchised and the disempowered. And so I’m really passionate about, like, sex positivity, which is something that, you know, in the realm of the medical profession, is still something that, I don’t want to say taboo, but in terms of its norms and mores, I would say it’s a little bit more on the unconventional side, and there’s still a lot of headway to be made there.

You know, things related to, I mean, I recently wrote a piece about chlamydia and STIs, and just the idea of talking about, you know, having had an STI, for example, that’s something that seems super controversial and could be seen by others as too much. And so just really trying to be a vanguard and a pioneer and a change agent in those areas, not on the fringe, but on the side of being part of communities or populations that are frequently disenfranchised and disempowered.

Kevin Pho: And that’s so true. It’s really you as medical students who are going to be the vanguard of that change, because you don’t need me to tell you that the medical culture today is so conservative, and it’s really up to the medical students and younger physicians to bring about that change. What do you wish you had known, that you know now, when you were first starting on your medical school journey?

Jay Wong: Wow, that’s a tough one. So many things, so many things. I wish I could have known that making friends, real, true, genuine friends, would be a really challenging thing. I think so often, you know, in school we’re taught all these subjects like math, science, physical education, all these different things, but we’re never taught exactly how to make a friend, which I think is so critical, right? We’re social creatures. We evolutionarily are built to engage in some way with someone other than ourselves.

And so often, I think we are left disillusioned or frustrated because our social relationships aren’t working out, and we kind of expect them to, because we think that, oh, just because we’re human, just because we’re social, therefore we are privy to having some sort of insight or knowledge about how to cultivate or foster these relationships in the most perfect of ways. And when expectation is not commensurate with reality, we immediately get sort of frustrated with ourselves. But then we take a step back, and I think it’s important for us to recognize that we, as a civilization and a society, are not taught how to actually make these relationships and what it takes to actually make these relationships work. And I wish I had given myself a little bit more self-compassion a while back, and tried not to put too much, you know, stock in how things would pan out, and just let things flow and not be too disappointed.

Kevin Pho: Well, it’s fantastic insight. Jay, thank you so much for being on the show. I’m going to give you the last word. What’s a message that you want to give to my audience?

Jay Wong: I think the message, the biggest message for me, is just don’t ever underestimate the power of, you know, your voice. The greatest weapons you have are your voice, your mind, and your heart. So really use that, and use the person that you are and the person that you become to help others and change the world.

Kevin Pho: Fantastic. And how can readers get in touch with you?

Jay Wong: Yeah, so you can reach me, I have my own personal website, which is called therealjwong.com. I also have a Twitter, and that’s JayWongMedicine. And I mean, there’s also Instagram and LinkedIn, which you can also find on KevinMD on my personal profile page.

Kevin Pho: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your stories and insight, Jay, and stay safe, and good luck on your medical school journey.

Jay Wong: Thank you so much.

Kevin Pho: All right, take care. Bye.

Jay Wong: Take care.

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