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“Advocate for the children in your community. Studies show that one of the most powerful buffering factors for kids experiencing toxic stress is having at least one supportive, caring adult in their lives. Who in your circles needs you to provide this role? Studies also show that a healthy foundation of sleep, nutrition, exercise, and coping strategies can also mitigate stress effects. Don’t forget to promote healthy lifestyle choices to your patients. Remember to model them yourself. Learn mindfulness. Practice yoga. Go outside. Take a deep breath.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘We must become the change we want to see in the world.’ Rather than chasing after our goals at the expense of well-being, let’s care for ourselves and each other. Let the healing begin now.
Have you experienced any ‘aha moments’ that have profoundly affected the way you practice medicine? What are some ways you support your patients in achieving overall well-being?”
Mary Illions Wilde is a pediatrician.
She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Even as a pediatrician, I didn’t realize stress started so young.”
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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, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Mary Wilde. She’s a pediatrician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Even as a pediatrician, I didn’t realize stress started so young.” Mary, welcome to the show.
Mary Illions Wilde: Thank you so much, Kevin. Nice to be here.
Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?
Mary Illions Wilde: Sure, I’d be happy to do that. Even as a really young girl, I knew that I wanted to be a pediatrician. I’m one of those people who just knew from the start that I wanted to go into medicine. I ended up going to medical school at the University of Utah and residency at the University of Minnesota, and I worked for about 10 years part time as a pediatric hospitalist and an urgent care doctor.
But I really felt like there was something more, so I ended up getting some supplemental training in integrative practices, specifically mind-body medicine. I have training in self-compassion, mindfulness, Yoga Calm, and brief therapy. One of my mentors at the University of Minnesota was just a guru in pediatric self-hypnosis, and he sparked my interest in that and in figuring out how it can be so powerful in helping kids break habits, overcome chronic pain, deal with anxiety, and things like that.
Just recently, my family moved to southern Utah, near Zion National Park, and I’ve opened a practice called Imagine Pediatrics Behavioral Health and Wellness, where I primarily help kids with ADHD and anxiety using these integrative, holistic practices. It’s been just a wonderful opportunity to practice medicine a little bit in my own way, so I don’t have to be part of a huge group and be meeting quotas. I really take about an hour to an hour and a half with my intakes and really look at the whole person and all the things that come into play in a child’s situation.
One other thing that’s pretty unique about me is that one of the reasons I have worked part time is because I have a rather large family. I have eight kids, eight sons. So I have worked all through this time to really achieve life balance. Sometimes I’ve done better than others, but it’s really been a high priority to me.
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Kevin Pho: Wow. And what are some of the things that you’ve learned over the course of the last few months when it comes to work-life balance that you could perhaps pass on to some of my listeners?
Mary Illions Wilde: Well, I think that going with the flow is really important. All of my children suddenly came home because of the pandemic. One was in a college program across the country, one was in Thailand doing a service mission. They were all scattered, and suddenly everyone was home. We all had to work from home, and we just cherished it. We actually just really enjoyed the opportunity to be together.
I think one other thing that is really important, during this pandemic especially, is that as physicians, we are caregivers. We want to be accessible, and we want to do all we can to help the situation, but we also have a primary sphere to operate in. For me, I really needed to make sure that I was there for my family and my kids. I think it’s important as physicians to give ourselves permission to show up in our primary sphere in addition to our profession.
Kevin Pho: Excellent, thank you so much for sharing that. So let’s get into your KevinMD article, “Even as a pediatrician, I didn’t realize stress started so young.” Now, for those who haven’t read your article, can you walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?
Mary Illions Wilde: Sure, I’d be happy to do that. I think we’ve all experienced moments where we’ve gone through our medical education and suddenly we have this major epiphany that changes how we practice medicine, and this article really addresses a moment like this for me. I was actually sitting in a documentary broadcast that was happening in my community. The documentary was called Resilience: The, let’s see, I have to get the name right, The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope. It was created by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and others, just talking about how adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress contribute to chronic disease and mental health issues, now and later. I just sat weeping as I watched this documentary, because it suddenly made me realize how much our health is determined at such a young age by what we experience.
After seeing this documentary, I read the ACEs study, the study on adverse childhood experiences, and I think every clinician should read this. Especially pediatricians, but everyone should understand how trauma and stress affect health. It’s not something we all are taught in medical school, but it really had a profound effect on me to read this. Since that time, I do use the ACEs questionnaire, especially when I see evidence that maybe there’s a history of trauma that may be coming into play. I have also gotten involved in the National Pediatric Practice Community that was created by Dr. Burke Harris through her Center for Youth Wellness, and it’s a community where physicians can gather to really promote trauma-informed care.
Kevin Pho: Now, can you comment on how the pandemic is increasing stress in our children today?
Mary Illions Wilde: I think it’s a huge thing. While it’s not necessarily our children coming in to have diagnoses made of anxiety, depression, things like this, I think we can all understand and relate to the fact that the stress levels are higher for all of us. I think it’s more important now than ever to teach these skills of emotional intelligence and resilience, and sometimes we don’t know where to start with giving our kids this education.
One thing that I did, kind of in response to seeing the need for this education, is I created an online course to help kids dealing with anxiety. This isn’t just kids who are diagnosed with anxiety; this is kids who just experience worry and stress. So I think as parents, we can seek tools to help our kids and ourselves combat this anxiety that we’re feeling, because it’s often said that anxiety can’t exist where resources exceed risk, or perceived risk. So if we can give ourselves and our kids a lot of tools to utilize, then our sense of anxiety naturally goes down.
Kevin Pho: Sure. Can you give some examples of some tools that we could share with our kids, even as parents, not necessarily pediatricians?
Mary Illions Wilde: The course that I’ve created kind of mirrors my philosophy of the types of tools that are evidence-based and very accessible to all people. I kind of go through mind, body, and spirit strategies.
In terms of mental strategies, these include things like just being aware of cognitive distortions, the typical thoughts that can get distorted and contribute to anxious feelings and escalate them. It also teaches mindfulness: just being able to sit with our emotions and acknowledge them, receive the messages that they’re sending to us, and then they can pass along. But if we try to stuff them away and not acknowledge them, then it can be problematic. Also with this, I teach imagery, because our minds are so powerful in creating a narrative. In terms of how much importance we give certain details and how much we pay attention to things, we can kind of rewrite our experience based on what we’re focusing on. When kids realize that this is possible, it just opens a whole new world.
Then in terms of body, now more than ever, even though we’re not supposed to be mingling in large groups, we can still get out and move. We can move our bodies; we need to move our bodies. So exercising. Also, yoga, I think, is a wonderful metaphor, physically, for what we want emotionally. We want balance, we want endurance, we want stretch, and so I think yoga is so powerful in doing this. There are also different energy medicine techniques, like tapping. There’s a lot of evidence that tapping can help reduce anxiety. It’s where you tap on these acupressure points while you speak through some of your thoughts, worries, and concerns, and it’s just one active way that we can process some of our emotions.
Then getting into the spirit strategies, that involves really connecting with our purpose, finding where we derive meaning, really maintaining connection with others, and doing the things that we love. I know that right now, with the pandemic, we feel limited. We can’t do certain things that we have done before, and we have to find new things to do. But if we really survey inwardly to try to find the things that really make us happy, we can probably find a few things that are still doable. And really take time to do those things, because it’s just nourishing to the soul.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking with Mary Wilde. She’s a pediatrician who wrote the KevinMD article “Even as a pediatrician, I didn’t realize stress started so young.” Mary, what are some red flags that parents should look out for that their children may be going through unhealthy amounts of stress?
Mary Illions Wilde: I think in kids, so often stress comes out in behavior. It can come out in somatic complaints, like stomachaches and headaches. It also comes out a lot in avoidance, so one major red flag is when kids are just kind of opting out of doing things that they previously would have enjoyed. So these are three things to watch for where stress can kind of be hidden.
Kevin Pho: All right. And my final question: Do you have a take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?
Mary Illions Wilde: Well, since this audience is really heavy on practitioners, I just want to invite all of us to be responsive to our inward experience and to give ourselves permission to take care of the people that are in our primary sphere of influence, our families, ourselves. That’s the way that we will have renewable, sustainable energy to serve the public.
Kevin Pho: Fantastic. Mary, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.
Mary Illions Wilde: Thank you, Kevin. It was a pleasure.
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