AMA VICDOC_Spring 2026_09.09.2026 - Flipbook - Page 42
A CULTURE DEMANDING SUCH
CONCEALMENT CANNOT, AT THE SAME
TIME, CULTIVATE GENUINE CONNECTION.
SAFETY CANNOT BE CREATED BY A
CULTURE WHERE ITS MEMBERS ARE
ENTRENCHED IN FEAR AND SILENCE."
Of course, maintaining this neutrality is
But, the impacts are, indeed, real. The very
itself a decision to not be neutral at all.
qualities we are asked to suppress – emotions,
It requires us to adopt a shape and put on
identities, experiences – are the same that
a mask. To set a tone and adhere to a set
enable us to care authentically for others.
of norms that are approximated by some
more easily than others. Our culture
becomes a kind of flattened beige,
sanitised and framed as safe. One that
is inherently quiet and exclusionary.
A culture demanding such concealment
cannot, at the same time, cultivate genuine
connection. Safety cannot be created by a
culture where its members are entrenched
in fear and silence. It is created, instead,
And so we fracture. We become clinicians
by the ability to be seen as us true selves
in one space, and our true selves in
without risk of penalty. Until that is possible,
another. We learn which parts can cross
until we can genuinely do that, our culture of
that boundary, and which must remain
care continues to sit uneasily alongside one
outside. Over time, the effort of maintaining
of concealment. And so many of us remain,
that divide becomes invisible, even to us.
quietly, stuck in the space between.
Dr Kieran Allen (MBBS(Hons) BMedSc(Hons) GradDipHlthMgmt MPM AFCHSM) is a Psychiatry Registrar at
Monash Health and a Doctors’ Mental Health Advocate.
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