5 Questions with Dr. Lara Patriquin

5 Questions is a new series of Blood, Sweat and Smears, hosted by our Senior Director, Bjorn Stromsness, who asks 5 questions to physicians in and around the disease areas we work in. 

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Lara Patriquin, a radiologist at the University of Utah and a speaker and coach for Thinking2Point0.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Blood, Sweat, and Smears, your
Macheon Diagnostics podcast withtag team hosts, including our
medical director, Dr.
Brad Lewis, senior director,Bjorn Stromsnes, that's me, and
other guest hosts.
We hope you find these podcastsinteresting and informative.
Thank you for listening, andaway we go.

(00:26):
Hi, my name is Bjorn, continuingour series Five Questions,
posing five questions tophysicians in and around the
disease areas we work in.
Today, we are going to get alook under the hood, or at least
we're going to talk about it,because our guest is Dr.
Laura Patrick-Quinn, aradiologist with the University
of Utah, but also a speaker andcoach with Thinking 2.0.
And we at Mechion Diagnosticsrecently brought in Dr.

(00:49):
Patrick-Quinn to talk to ourleadership team about dealing
with the stresses of everydaylife and providing stat terms
turnaround times for criticallyill patients around the country.
It can get stressful.
So let's take a deep breath andthanks for joining us today, Dr.
Patrick Nguyen.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07):
It's my pleasure.
Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09):
Absolutely.
All right.
So five questions and let's getinto it.
Our first question is medicinecan be in many situations, a
very stressful profession.
Is there one thing you'dchampion for physicians who need
to lower their stress levels?
What What might that be?

SPEAKER_01 (01:29):
So yeah, thank you for this great question.
I can only really speak to myexperience in this regard.
I went into medicine thinking itwas going to make me happy.
So a little bit of background onme.
Never voted most likely tosucceed in high school.
And mostly I think because I hada pretty anxious mind and my
mind was always super busy, fullof judgments of myself, full of

(01:50):
judgments of others, rarely inthe present moment.
And how I experienced that as ayoung person was I did
everything to get out of my mindAnd so I started drinking and
doing some drugs and high riskbehaviors in high school, mostly
in retrospect, I think just toget out of this anxious mind
that I was carrying around withme.

(02:11):
And so then I had a kind of cometo Jesus moment when I realized
that I couldn't have asuccessful life based on the
grades that I was getting inhigh school and also noticing
the types of people I washanging out with and just seeing
that my life wasn't going in theexpected direction.
And so I decided that momentIt's time to get my life
together.
And being from a fairly educatedfamily, my mom was also a

(02:34):
radiologist, decided to pursuemedicine.
And so I worked really hard toget my grades up and to do all
the prerequisites and all thework that goes into getting into
medical school.
And I was lucky enough to getmyself into medical school at
McGill University in Montreal,where I'm from.
And I really thought that thatwas going to be my path to
happiness.
I really thought, you know,doctors are honorable, focused

(02:56):
people.
They're certainly not interestedin drinking too much and doing
crazy things.
They were autonomous and theywere just good people.
And I just thought that thattraining was going to make me
that kind of person.
And so I met my husband firstday of medical school and we got
married at the end of medicalschool.
And we realized about 13 yearslater, when we finally finished

(03:19):
all of this medical training,that we were significantly less
happy on at that point, eventhough we had on the outside,
everything anybody would everwant, right?
Physicians may We were makinggood money.
We had two beautiful children, abeautiful home, you know, all
the trappings.
And from the outside, reallyjust looked fantastic.
And from the inside, clearlyless happy than we were when we

(03:41):
first met.
And so I realized at that point,what is it?
Why can you take two people andgive them everything they want
and make them less happy?
And so it got me into reallyfocusing on how do we become
happy in this life?
And what can I do mostly just toget out of my own anxiety and my
own pretty significantunhappiness at that point.

(04:02):
And so at that point, I sawstudies demonstrating that
meditation could change thestructure and the function of
our brains in a way that waspossible to see by MRI, right?
And so here I am, a radiologist,totally stressed out and pretty
skeptical.
You know, medicine does teach usto be very conservative and

(04:23):
skeptical in terms of newmodalities and new ideas.
And so I never really had aparticular particular propensity
for meditation.
I was seriously agnostic and nointerest in sort of the
spiritual life.
But when I saw these imagingstudies, I really had to see
that this was certainlyfantastic science and if not a

(04:44):
real sign that it was time to bedifferent, show up differently
in the world and cultivate aninner life, cultivate a mind
that could work for me.
And these studies really made mestart to think, well, maybe I
can be happy in this certainsituation by changing how I
relate to my thoughts andfeelings, which is really what
meditation is about.
Meditation is about developing amind that keeps you in the

(05:05):
present moment, but it alsoteaches you how to work with
your thoughts and your feelings.
Before that time, I assumed thateverything I thought was true.
You know, everybody keeps sayingI'm so smart, so everything I
think is true.
And I also had developed apretty common aversion to my
feelings, right?
And what meditation does, notjust trains your mind, but it

(05:28):
makes you kind of want tounderstand how this mind is
creating both thoughts andfeelings.
The quality of our life dependson the quality of our thoughts
and feelings, but we rarely go,as we were saying, under the
hood to look at this operatingsystem that's delivering us
these thoughts and feelings.
There's a lot of bugs in thatprogram and the meditative life

(05:49):
and dedicating myself into sortof developing a model of the
mind that made more sense to me,that was more functional in
terms of how I could learn to behappy in this world was really
the most important thing for me.
And so I would recommend that toanybody who's not feeling like
they have the happiness thatthey want, finding a model of

(06:10):
how the mind works, reallygetting under the hood and then
practicing in particularmeditation is I think the
greatest entry pre-levelpractice and developing, you
know, consecrating it just a fewmoments every day and having a
better understanding of the mindand also practicing meditation,
which can really really helpwell-being

SPEAKER_00 (06:31):
great fantastic the second question my wife is
actually a physician and achampion at compartmentalization
when you have grief at work sayif you lose a patient which
happens should you feel all thefeels or do you need to wear
some sort of emotional armor andunderstand that's a spectrum

(06:53):
really so where on that spectrumwould you think is the sweet
spot for preserving your mentalhealth, but also staying human?

SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
That is such a rich question and something that I've
been thinking a lot.
And for a long time, I did thinkit was a spectrum, but I'd like
to bring a nuance to this idea.
First of all, one of the firstmost important things I've
realized is that not allthoughts are created equal.
There's really two systems inour minds that produce the

(07:26):
thoughts that we experience on aday-to-day basis.
The majority of the thoughtsthat we have, just sit for 10
minutes, you'll start to noticeall of these thoughts that show
up in your mind.
They're often very repetitive,very mechanical.
People say same shit, differentday.
They're referring to the seriesof thoughts and feelings that
they're having on that day.
But many of these thoughts andfeelings that we have, I'd say

(07:47):
almost most of them, are createdby our subconscious mind.
Our subconscious mind is arepository of everything that's
ever happened to us, inparticular, the negative events
that we've had, right?
So certainly, extreme case, whena kid is traumatized, it'll
affect the quality of theirthoughts and feelings on a
day-to-day basis and often untilthey die.
We have all of these eventshappening in our life that are

(08:12):
trapped in our subconsciousmind, and they're trapped
because we've repressed theassociated emotion.
We have not allowed ourself tofeel the emotion associated with
that event.
And instead, what we Westernerstend to do is we go into our
heads and try to figure themout.
So with a child, right, younotice the child, and I'm not

(08:32):
going to say that raising kidsis easy.
It's really very hard.
But when a child is in his orher thrive mind, when they're
really themselves within thepresent moment, the child is
dialing because they're sopresent, they're so connected.
Now, when a child then feels anegative emotion, such as their
diapers is dirty or they're coldor they're hungry, that emotion

(08:54):
comes in and goes out, right?
The emotion is allowed to haveits normal life and the child
might express it very intenselyand cry and throw a tantrum, but
the child is really feeling hisfeelings.
As we age and as certain thingshappen to us, we start to feel
that our feelings are notacceptable.

(09:15):
I like to say that all of ourunhappiness comes out of the
thoughts we have about ourfeelings we don't just allow our
feelings to come and go in thespace of awareness because what
are we at the end of the day weare that awareness in which all
of these thoughts and feelingsare happening and instead we
have this judgment aboutfeelings that then puts us into

(09:37):
our heads we go into our headsand we think i shouldn't be
having this feeling so what'sthe next thought well that
person shouldn't have died andbecause why did that person die
well it's because i didsomething wrong and then the
mind just goes on and on and onand we tell stories and stories
and stories And these storiesare mostly based on the fact
that we're unable to completelyconnect with our feelings and

(09:58):
let them go in that space ofawareness.
And this is where practice is soimportant.
A great example, I have a friendat the University of Utah who's
a chaplain.
She's a Buddhist chaplain there.
And all day long, she's withpatients dying.
She's rarely does something goright.
She's dealing with patients whoare dying, terrible situations,

(10:20):
burn victims, cancer victims.
I mean, it's just, you name it.
And to see how she processesthat is such an inspiration for
me because she has to have atremendous understanding of how
mine works.
And she has to be able to workwith her thoughts and her
feelings in a way that allowsher to show up for work the next
day.
I mean, there's some realconsequences to her not having

(10:42):
her mind right.
And so when she talks about it,she says, yeah, I feel it.
I'm in the room with thatpatient and I will cry.
I will have tears.
I will feel the weight of it.
She says, but when I leave theroom, for the most part, I leave
it there because the feeling hashad its life and now it's out of
me.
I don't hold on to it.

(11:03):
We hold on to our feelingsthrough our thoughts, right?
So it's this interplay betweenthoughts and feelings that makes
the feeling stuck.
And then we say, oh, I can't gointo that feeling.
We're really not plagued by ourfeelings.
We're plagued by the thoughtsabout our feelings.
And that thought can prolong thefeeling sometimes for a
lifetime.
So what I would say to thatquestion in summary is, yes,

(11:27):
absolutely.
In a perfect mind physiologicalsystem, feelings are allowed to
come and go in the space ofawareness.
That doesn't mean that we'resitting there crying or we're
yelling at people because we'refeeling tremendous anger, but it
does mean that we're feeling ouranger without judgment.
We're feeling our grief withoutjudgment.
We're feeling our jealousywithout judgment.

(11:50):
And I recognize that over mylifetime, my issues haven't
been, let's take jealousy, forinstance, such an interesting
emotion for me, one that I wasplagued with for a long time.
It wasn't that I was jealous andit wasn't the thoughts behind
all that.
It was how was I treating myjealousy?
Was jealousy allowed to come andgo in the space of awareness?
Or was I then judging myself forbeing jealous, being upset with

(12:13):
the person that was making mejealous, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera, right?
So it's not the emotion itself.
It's how are we treating thatemotion in particular, what are
our thoughts about that emotionthat allow us, that then stop
the process of us being able tohave the feelings come and go.
And then we just end uprepressing these feelings even
more.
And the subconscious mindbecomes busier and busier.
Our minds become more and moreactivated, which makes us say,

(12:36):
oh no, I'm going to repress thisfeeling even more.
And then we get in thisconundrum where we're just
constantly suppressing all ofthese events in the subconscious
mind.
And that's why we're stressed.
You know, that's why we wake upand we're sometimes in terror or
why we can't even just sit atour desk without getting on our
phones or why we can't enjoy thepresent moment is that
subconscious mind has become so,so pressurized given our lack of

(13:01):
capacity to meet our feelings inan honest way.

SPEAKER_00 (13:04):
So you work as a physician, as a radiologist, and
you work as a speaker and acoach on wellness and stress and
managing what life throws atyou.
So on the radiology side, what'sthe best part of being a
radiologist?
We don't work with a lot ofradiologists.
No, no, no.
You know,

SPEAKER_01 (13:21):
radiology is great.
I know that when I'm out doingthis intense work of stress
reduction and talking about themind, it gets real fast, you
know, and as you've alreadyseen, I have so many ideas about
this and it brings up so muchemotion and And coming home and
doing some radiology is justlovely because radiology is a
beautifully contained space.
We have these really lovelyreading rooms with people

(13:45):
monitoring our phone calls,really created a very quiet,
lovely space where we can reallyfocus on these studies.
Just that space itself iswonderful to be able to sit, and
I teach residents and medicalstudents, and sit and talk about
medicine from the perspective ofimaging.
Imaging is amazing.
the diagnoses that we've beenable to make and the technology

(14:08):
behind it, it's mind boggling,you know, and there's always
something new.
And our involvement in patientcare is real.
And we get phone calls saying,you know, hey, doc, should I
send him to the OR?
And that's it.
Yes, you should.
Or no, you shouldn't.
And we bring so much intodiagnosis and therapy and have
such a strong role.
But at the same time, we've beengiven such a beautiful

(14:32):
environment that's actually kindof lowered your drama than a lot
of professions.
So it's just a, it's just alovely intellectual quiet space
that exercises a whole differentpart of my life and which I'm
really grateful for.

SPEAKER_00 (14:46):
And I can see that the, the other side, and this is
actually question four, thatother side that the speaker, the
coach, the getting in and pokingall the emotions and talking
about them and that being aspeaker and coaches seems very,
very different.
So what's the best part of thatpart of your two-pronged career?
Oh,

SPEAKER_01 (15:04):
I've a pretty wrong life.
I mean, I'm not going to lie.
It excites me so much.
I've been so lucky.
I go all over US and Canada now40, 45 times a year.
And so it's just fabulous.
The people I've met has beentremendous.
And so I'm a peer advisory groupfor CEOs and entrepreneurs.
So that's part of my business istalking to them.

(15:26):
And so I walk into a room andthere's 14 different CEOs and
entrepreneurs with tremendousvariety of backgrounds.
Sometimes they're engineers,some Sometimes they're
scientists, sometimes they'reHR, sometimes they're HVAC, you
know, but they're out theredoing tremendous things with
tremendous courage.
These people all have tremendouscourage.
And so to talk to them and tobring this notion of how the

(15:47):
mind works and have theseintimate conversations kind of
in short order is amazing.
I just, you know, when I walkedinto Makey Island and met so
many, I mean, the brilliance inthat room was just something and
it's just so inspiring.
And so it just feels like such aprivilege to be able to, to be
open and have really meaningfulconversations with really

(16:08):
interesting and bright people.
It just feels like I've won thelottery in that respect.

SPEAKER_00 (16:15):
Yeah, maybe you did.
I think I did.

SPEAKER_01 (16:17):
Yeah, I know I did.

SPEAKER_00 (16:19):
Our fifth question here is, should we be seeking
happiness or should we beseeking contentment?
And in what ways are those twothings the same or different?
Just an easy one, a softball for

SPEAKER_01 (16:34):
you.
I know a great thing is I feellike given an exam and you're
like, yeah, I studied this one.
I'm good on this question.
And so this question has plaguedme for a long time.
I used to think the choice was alife of occasional happiness or
a life of contentment, right?
There was an or there where thefirst one would be, yeah, you

(16:56):
get these happinesses every nowand again and they're intense
and they're great and they'refun.
Or you can choose B where youhave like a two out of 10
happiness but more consistentlevel.
Like that's how I was framingit.
I love steak.
I grew up on a farm.
So the first seeking happinesswould be like, oh, you get to
have steak twice a week orcontentment would be, oh yeah,

(17:16):
you get tofu at every meal.
And that's how I sort of felt itwas.
And I totally changed myunderstanding of this from some
teachings that just blew thisall right up.
And that's this one, this notionthat there's only one happiness.
There's only one happiness.
The happiness you get when theoutside world lines up for you,

(17:37):
such as when you get a new jobor someone you've asked out on a
date wants to go out with you oryour child gets into a good
school, whatever it is thatmakes you happy.
That happiness is reflective ofthe happiness of who you truly
are.
Peace and happiness is thenature of our being.
We are our factory settings.

(17:58):
This operating system that we'reborn with right from day one is
one of peace and happiness Andthat's why we're seeking peace
and happiness.
If our true nature was jealousyand anger, we'd be seeking
jealousy and anger.
I have a lot of jealousy andanger, but I'm not seeking it,
right?
And so when we get what we want,for a moment, the voice in our

(18:21):
head that says, this life isn'tenough, you're not doing it well
enough because you're notfeeling joy, all of those
thoughts of insufficiency, allof those thoughts of scarcity go
away, quiet down, because whatyou wanted, you got.
Now, we know that that never,ever translates to durable,

(18:43):
enduring happiness, right?
Like every group I ask, have youclosed a deal?
Have you met a person?
Have you bought a car that'sgiven you enduring happiness and
nobody's ever been able to findsomething from the outside that
gives them enduring happiness?
But the outside happiness iswhen we get that to line up,
it's pointing us to our truehappiness.

(19:04):
Now, we can get that truehappiness nature by working with
our minds, by developing thecapacity to allow emotions to
come and go, by getting out ofour heads, and by letting go of
all of this accumulated garbagethat we have in our subconscious
minds, right?

(19:24):
This is what spiritual peoplecall, quote, letting go, right?
So by learning this capacity ofletting go, staying in the
present moment, allowingfeelings to come and go, not
going into our heads, this skillset, we can tap into that innate
happiness of who we truly are ona pretty consistent basis.

(19:45):
And I have myself and myhusband, I've got an N of two in
this experiment to reallydemonstrate that.
I lived with near constantanxiety, depression, or just
that feeling of like, meh, lifeisn't anything great for a long
time.
And once I started working withmy mind, I noticed periods of

(20:06):
feeling tremendous connection,tremendous joy, tremendous awe,
respect, love for life.
Even when I was washing thedishes or doing something that
otherwise wouldn't have excitedme, it is possible to tap into
our true nature of who we trulyare through practice.
And the amazing thing is thatright now, it's actually, in a

(20:28):
sense, never been easier, right?
So I opened my YouTube and allof these teachers who figured
this stuff out are there andready to give you those keys,
often for free, on a YouTubevideo, right?
There's people out there whoreally understand how the mind
works and how to work with it tolive in a very consistent
feeling of joy and peace, evenwhen outward circumstances are

(20:54):
difficult.
And I understand outwardcircumstances are difficult.
And in medicine, outwardcircumstances are often
difficult.
And that's why I would say thatthe system that would make you
happy is your innate factorysetting, right?
We are joy and happiness on theinside and love and connection
on the outside.
And so once I startedunderstanding that, then this

(21:17):
notion of contentment versushappiness went away, which was
great because it's not how itactually works.
And so say, absolutely, you'renot going to get away from this
desire for happiness becausethis desire for happiness is
synonymous with discovering whoyou truly are.
It's synonymous with cominghome.
right?
So, you know, people say, oh,enough happiness.
I would say, yes, continue thisdogged, dogged desire for

(21:40):
happiness, but understand,completely understand that it
comes as an inside job.
It doesn't come from an externalthing.
It doesn't come from youbecoming better.
It doesn't come from you losingweight or you finally getting
your act together or you finallybeing organized and all these
other external things we thinkare going to do it, right?
And medicine, it's probably likethat in science too.

(22:02):
It's really very much like, oh,I'll be happy when I get my life
together.
And even though our lives aretogether in so many ways, the
mind doesn't get that.
The mind will actually neverdeliver you that happiness.
So yes, a convoluted answer.
An

SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
answer all the same.
I do think I would be happier ifI could get rid of 10 pounds
though.
We'll see.
We'll see.
You

SPEAKER_01 (22:27):
know what?
I'll tell you what, you know,I've had chances in my times in
my life where I've been 40pounds heavier than I am now.
And noticing that really theinner level of contentment
hasn't changed specifically 10pounds.
I wish let's lose 10 pounds ofour subconscious mind is what I
would say to that.
right?
Let's lose the stuff.

SPEAKER_00 (22:46):
Let's lose these faulty

SPEAKER_01 (22:48):
understandings of who we think we are.

SPEAKER_00 (22:49):
The way it would work is if I was a little
lighter, my knee would hurt lesswhen I did more activity.
And the activity is actually thething that gives me the
happiness.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 (23:00):
absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 (23:01):
It's a roundabout way.
That's right.

SPEAKER_01 (23:02):
That's right.
And also just noticing what arethose things that also do that
for you, right?
So maybe your first step intothis is, yeah, I feel happier in
nature.
I'm going to go into naturethree times a week.
I feel happier when I do yoga.
I'm going to do yoga three timesa week right for sure absolutely
those kinds of external thingsbut they're helping us in the in
the way that they're changinghow our minds work they're not

(23:24):
saying oh gold star bjorn youlost 10 pounds right

SPEAKER_00 (23:29):
right yeah yeah all right so if you are keeping
score at home that is fivequestions and so we get to our
bonus question which is what issomething you would recommend

SPEAKER_01 (23:42):
I think to me, some of the biggest gifts I've ever
gotten were the names ofteachers that have helped me.
And so I listen to a teacher bythe name of Rupert Spira every
day.
He's amazing.
Michael Singer, anothertreasure, American-based
teacher.
Byron Katie, the work teachingsof Lester Levinson.

(24:03):
Nathier Ricard, just differentteachers.
And I would find one of theseteachers and just listen to what
they have to say and really takethat in, really be open to the
possibility that some peoplehave cracked the code on the
mind and they have some amazingthings to teach us.

SPEAKER_00 (24:22):
Fantastic.
So that concludes the podcast.
Thank you very much for yourtime and your insights and your
thoughts.
And merci bien pour

SPEAKER_01 (24:29):
tout.
De rien, de rien.
A la prochaine.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 (24:35):
That's it for us here at Blood, Sweat& Smears, a
podcast produced by MétionDiagnostics.
You're a reference to Thank youfor listening.
And if you have a question orcomment or there's a topic you'd
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Lewis to speak to, please sendus an email to blood, sweat, and

(24:55):
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