In this episode of The Scalpel and Sword, Dr. Lee Sharma sits down with Hesha Abrams to explore how to create a climate conducive to conflict resolution. They discuss why intelligent people become irrational under stress, the power of curiosity over certainty, practical techniques like naming emotions and asking questions, and how “holding the calm” can transform high-stakes interactions in medicine and beyond.
What if the key to resolving conflict wasn’t winning, but learning how to hold the calm?
In this engaging conversation, Dr. Lee Sharma welcomes Hesha Abrams, a master mediator who has resolved thousands of high-stakes disputes, from corporate battles involving Google, Amazon, and Apple to the secret recipe for Pepsi. Drawing on decades of experience and her book Holding the Calm, Hesha shares why most of us in healthcare tend to avoid or accommodate conflict, how the amygdala hijacks even the smartest professionals, and why so many conflicts boil down to a simple dynamic: people trying not to lose rather than trying to win.
Together they unpack practical, immediately usable tools: the power of asking questions instead of making statements, the four-step VUCS method (Validate, Understand, Clarify, Summarize), the surprisingly effective technique of simply naming an emotion, and the disarming sentence stems that can shift even the most difficult people. Hesha also explores how holding the calm is contagious, why a few seconds of genuine curiosity can prevent years of fallout, and how laughter, awe, and a little “bacitracin on the railroad tracks of life” make the whole process sustainable.
This episode offers clinicians concrete skills they can use on their next shift, whether with a frustrated patient, a stressed colleague, or a high-ego administrator, and a powerful reminder that becoming better at conflict is one of the most practical acts of self-preservation and leadership available.
Three Actionable Takeaways:
About the Show:
Behind every procedure, every patient encounter, lies an untold story of conflict and negotiation. Scalpel and Sword, hosted by Dr. Lee Sharma—physician, mediator, and guide—invites listeners into the unseen battles and breakthroughs of modern medicine. With real conversations, human stories, and practical tools, this podcast empowers physicians to reclaim their voices, sharpen their skills, and wield their healing power with both precision and purpose.
About the Guest:
Hesha Abrams is a master mediator renowned for turning high-conflict situations into amicable resolutions. She has mediated thousands of complex matters for major corporations and high-stakes parties, including the dispute over the secret recipe for Pepsi. She is the principal of Hesha Abrams Mediation and the author of Holding the Calm.
Learn more at holdingthecalm.com and heshaabramsmediation.com.
About the Host:
Dr. Lee Sharma is a gynecologist based in Auburn, AL, with over 30 years of clinical experience. She holds a Master’s in Conflict Resolution and is passionate about helping colleagues navigate workplace challenges and thrive through open conversations and practical tools.
[00:00:00] Hello, my peaceful warriors, and welcome to the Scalpel and Sword Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst. And I have this very clear memory of being a second-year resident in obstetrics at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, and I was busy getting a patient ready for a cesarean section, and of course, I needed to make sure anesthesia was in the loop.
Anesthesia was having a challenging day themselves, and as a result, I got angry. And I did not realize at that point, because I hadn't had any kind of experience or training in conflict or conflict management, that was probably not only not a good way to help get the patient taken care of, it didn't create the conditions necessary to have the best outcome for all involved.
And it wasn't until much later when I started studying conflict that I understood, and am continuing to understand, how important it is to create a climate that is conducive for [00:01:00] conflict resolution. And I can't think of anybody better to help us learn about this than our guest today. I am so excited to welcome Hesha Abrams.
Hesha is a master at turning high conflict into amicable resolution and resolving delicate matters with diplomacy and skill. She is renowned for her success in resolving complicated and high-risk disputes, from corporate disagreements to political conflicts. She has resolved literally thousands of high-profile or difficult matters, including mediating the case over the secret recipe for Pepsi.
I would love to get into that, by the way. She has worked with Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Verizon, Apple, and other large multinational companies. She is the principal of Hesha Abrams Mediation, and she is also the author of the book, Holding the Calm. Hesha, welcome to the [00:02:00] podcast.
Thank you so much. And to everybody listening, you know, because this conflict is like having a root canal without anesthesia or a colonoscopy without anesthesia, depends on which end you're going from. So the fact that you all are listening wanting to get a few tips, God bless you And I think this is such a big thing in medicine.
You know, we are by nature conflict avoiders. If you look at Thomas Kilmann in the healthcare profession, 25% to 30% of us are avoiders and another 20% are accommodators. We're not good at it. And so anytime we are in these situations, we tend to run away. We tend to just put our heads in the sand. And I think that's why the work that you do is so important, because you're actually showing us how to create a really good environment, which makes it more likely we're gonna get what we're looking for in terms of [00:03:00] resolution and outcome.
What convinced you? What was the first time that you really had the light bulb that holding the calm was actually something that we could learn to do? Oh, goodness gracious. That probably came from years and years of practice, and one day I went, "Whoa, this really works." And I wanna comment on something you just said when you said basically a little over half of you are more gentle souls.
And that's what I say, you're nice people. You're gentle souls. Someone who likes conflict, who enjoys arguing, they may be super skilled at what they do, but man, are they hard to work with and difficult to be around. And, I have dedicated my life, I've been doing this my entire career, to being a peacemaker, and I think that I probably, in a past life was an old warrior because I'm tough.
You have to be tough. You can't be win-win problem-solving. Yay. That works between two accommodating [00:04:00] people with low stakes. That works. Okay. That's great. What about all the other times? And that's really why I wrote this book, 'cause I've been doing this now for, What? Turn it that way. so long, that I thought other people need to have some quick tips because you're not all gonna go get a master's degree in conflict resolution.
You're not gonna do thousands of cases. You just need a couple of quick tips to handle the jerk that you gotta deal with tomorrow, whether it's your brother-in-law, your neighbor, someone at work, the chief surgeon, the CEO of the hospital. I've done a lot of hospital cases, a lot, and I understand the admin, I understand ego and politics, and in the end, what I tell people is it's just ego.
We are giant meat suits doing bumper car egos into each other. I really don't care how educated you are, how old you are, where you come from. It's all the ego, and once you learn some of these tricks that I really [00:05:00] wanna share today with great specificity, and then that's again what I did, in this little thing is life just becomes easier because you're not panicked.
Your amygdala doesn't trigger with, oh God." You go, "Oh, okay, I do this. Okay." Or, "Oh, I try that. Okay." Now the panic subsides, then you're more skillful. It's literally as simple as that, and that's really what holding the calm is. It's not being calm and zen and mm. Like, no, it's not. It's you being the grown-up in the room, not reactionary and losing your cool.
And we lose our cool because we don't know how to get what we want done, or someone's trying to push us, and we bounce up against each other. So that's why I'm excited to do this today and be able to share some of this with your wonderful listeners. Oh my goodness. and I love how you talk about this, 'cause I think this is one of the thing that scares people about conflict is, you know, as you're [00:06:00] talking about all the different forces we encounter during the day, administration, time demands, economic demands.
I mean, there's so many things, so many forces we're dealing with in healthcare, and I think sometimes it's tempting for us to say, "I can't deal with conflict because I'm scared of it, but I also can't deal with conflict 'cause I don't understand it." And so when you start breaking this down to something as simple as we're a bunch of meat suits that are bumping egos, it really-
starts to make it something that sounds more approachable, right? Because if we're actually just talking about this is literally what it is, guys. and you said something also really interesting that this is not two accommodating people in a low-stake situation. We are not two people playing tiddlywinks just for the fun of it.
We are talking about, unfortunately, many times life and death situations when it comes to patient care. And so the idea that it's even more important for us to learn these skills, it's not less so. It's [00:07:00] actually way more vital for us to learn the things that you're teaching.
So why do really intelligent people, because for the most part, people who work in healthcare are really pretty intelligent people, why do intelligent people become irrational? Yes. Why does the amygdala take over in conflict for us? Because you're a human being, that's why. That's the simple, basic answer.
And so I have this theory. I've been doing this now 35 years. I've done probably very close to 10,000 cases. I see the same patterns over and over and over again. And so I have a theory that everything comes down to power. I'm trying to make you do something you don't wanna do. You're trying to make me do something I don't wanna do.
You're not listening to me. You're pushing me. I'm not getting my own way. That simple dynamic, I guarantee you, is at the root of all conflict. And then, depending on your skill level, your assertiveness level, your anger level, your exhaustion level, there's fear. And, [00:08:00] "Oh, God, what if you make me do that? Oh, God, what if you won't do that?"
Like in the example you used with the woman that needed a C-section and you can't get anesthesia. They're like, "Do what you want." Minutes count in something like that. Mm-hmm. And so your fear actually acts as a, motivator to the amygdala to say, "I'm doing the right thing freaking out here.
Because if I freak out and lose my stuff, people will listen to me." And everybody- Yeah ... comes from this with whatever has happened in their childhood, because we all create adaptive structures. What worked for you? Screaming and yelling, crying, running away, pouting, passive aggressive, aggressive aggressive?
What thing did you unknowingly, unconsciously adopt? And most of us, basically that's the MO, right? Unless you examine it and say, "Is that the best for me now with my power level, with my skill set, with my knowledge base? [00:09:00] Maybe that's not the best way I wanna be able to handle it." So it's just a habit, and we all know habits change within 21 days of consistent use, blah, blah, blah.
So That's why literally when I did this thing in this book, it's 21 chapters designed to match what the learning curve is of the human brain, and I spend a lot of time in neuroscience. I probably know enough to be dangerous in it. And I find it fascinating how people think, what they do, what motivates somebody, what doesn't.
And can I share just one quick story? Yeah, absolutely. Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist- Know him well ... okay? "Thinking, Fast and Slow." You got it. You got it. And that was very good, that book, but everything he wrote really can be distilled down to one es- I'm a big believer in DNA.
Everything is great. You're a man, you're a woman, you're Black, you're white, you're Asian, you're old, you're young. Distill it all down, it's DNA. It's two lungs, two kidneys, a liver, right? And this [00:10:00] is just what the meat suit is. And one of the things that he did, and when he won a Nobel Prize in this, in economics, is that everybody thought it was Adam Smith's rational man.
We make rational decisions. We're intelligent. We look at the facts and the information. No. Absolutely fricking not. No. And what's more important is that 80% of us are trying not to lose rather than trying to win. So think about that. We've been sold win-win problem-solving as this great panacea. It's not.
It's garbage. It really is, and it's like the thing du jour, and it works low stakes. It works when everybody agrees, and we can talk about it. That's great. That's 20% of the time, 25% of the time. Let's be generous. What about the other three-quarters of the time when I hate you, and I don't trust you? Or we're so different, and I'm an introvert, you're an extrovert.
You're a big [00:11:00] picture. I'm a detail. Just those small little things are enough to just make us go cattywampus off the rails. But if you start looking at any conflict situation and think it's not that they're trying to win, it's they're trying not to lose. Complete paradigm shift. Complete. Now the fear drops down because now I'm aware of your fear.
If you're trying not to lose, then fear is motivating you. You don't wanna look bad. You don't wanna look stupid. You don't wanna make a mistake. You don't wanna be pushed so that you do make a mistake. Now I have more tools when I look at it that way, and honestly, the big ego, obnoxious, grr, orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon types, it's exactly true for them as it is for the meek little, girl in the back of the thing just trying to help and save her job.
It is exactly true- Mm-hmm ... because it's a human
experience .
That's what's so effective about this is once you understand that, I don't need to understand the [00:12:00] Myers-Briggs and all the complicated cuca. I don't have to do any of that. Now you can. I have to because in my world, I'm a professional at this.
But if you just wanna get better at it, let's go for some quick- Mm-hmm ... and dirty things, everybody,
to just make you better today ,
right now.
100%. So one of the things that you said that I think is really hard, especially people in healthcare, but I think maybe for all of us in professional realms, is the idea that we're still just human. Even if we're playing these parts, even if we have titles, even if we have roles, we're still just human and we're going to react in this way.
But I absolutely agree with you on this idea, especially when you get clinicians in conflict with each other. You are getting into this right and wrong. I'm right, you're wrong. I win, you lose. And so that does contribute absolutely to this power dynamic because then we start bringing in identity. I've been doing this longer than you have.
My specialty is harder than your specialty. I see more patients than you do. My patients are sicker than yours. [00:13:00] All of the things that we use to bolster that identity leads to bolstering power, and so the more we start to drill down on that, the more we start to absolutely intensify the conflict. So how do you get people to walk from winning and not losing?
How do you get people to see that those are two completely different things and make that paradigm shift? So you usually don't say that to people. this is an, educational podcast- Right ... so people are listening to it. Right. But in the midst- ... of a scenario, you're angry, you're upset, your amygdala's triggered, and we all know when the amygdala's triggered, the prefrontal cortex goes dark.
You don't think. You don't have logic anymore, so you don't explain anything. You wanna stop the train from running. And what happens- Right ... is that we make statements. We don't ask questions. Just immediately, number one, just start asking questions. Because if you ask questions, the other person, number one, feels automatically [00:14:00] respected.
Mm-hmm. Yes. Amygdala calms down, doesn't it? Yes. And you need the amygdala... I can't talk to you if your amygdala's crazy. there's no point in doing that other than me holding you and going, "Oh, poor baby. Oh, poor baby." There's nothing- Right ... that can be accomplished. But what's interesting, 'cause neuroscientists have, you know, shoved people in MRIs and freaked them out and watched the brain and the amygdala work.
The amygdala, if it's triggered and then not re-triggered, guess how long that cortisol bop goes? 20 minutes. Yeah. That's it. 20 minutes. Mm-hmm. So it's not a long time. So you just calm down yourself, hold the calm yourself, start asking questions. Why is that important to you? Now, you don't make it a third degree.
"Well, what experience do you have that justifies that explanation?" No. Right. You're a human being. Right. Yes.
Why do you think
That's the best way? Have you considered other options? Do you have experience with other options? Do you think we should bring in a consult with somebody [00:15:00] else?
Like with your anesthesiologist example, you can't get here for the next 30 minutes. What are the barriers in your way? What's preventing you from doing it? Maybe I can help remove those barriers. Completely changes the tone, and what happens is that when the amygdala gets triggered, it's friend or foe.
You're foe. You are not friend. You start asking questions in a gentle way, maybe you're friend. Maybe. Let me see maybe. And it starts to calm down. Then you can start talking about what you think as, "Well, have you considered? I've had really good success with this. Do you think we should try it?"
Now, I can say, "You're an idiot. You're a resident. I'm the lead. I know what I'm talking about. We're gonna do it my way You can do that. You can, but there's consequences to that. So why not learn this other way, which gets you- Mm-hmm ... exactly to the same place, and maybe it takes four minutes longer. [00:16:00] Maybe.
Mm-hmm. But then people don't walk around going, "What a jerk. You can't get anything done with him or her," or, "Geez, drama queen," or whatever it is that they say. Right. Think about those barriers. Think about that as a difficulty of getting stuff done, being known as a person that's difficult to work with.
That's miserable. And if you do- Yeah ... this kind of stuff, then No one's gonna say, "Oh, my godly, you know how to hold the calm." No. They're just gonna say, "You just get stuff done." Yes. "I don't understand how you do that." Mm-hmm. "Everyone just likes you, and you're just looking to get stuff done."
And I, quite frankly, I'm all about results. when Google hires me or a big hospital hires me to get something done, they don't wanna feel your feelings. They know that you feel okay. They want the darn thing done. Okay. So you've gotta be result-oriented. So this is not kumbaya, let's all feel good together stuff.
No. No. This is real [00:17:00] life, let's get this sucker resolved. Okay. This is so awesome, and there's so much I wanna talk about. Okay. So one of the things you just talked about, and this idea of using questions as kind of the door that openings this place to getting results, 'cause this is one of the themes in the book, this idea that curiosity is more powerful than certainty.
The idea that when we are curious, when we are asking these humble questions, that we are getting into a place that the person across from us They can let their guard down. They can actually have that space. We can have this conversation. But there's something else that you said in here, too, because I wanna do a big circle around this.
I think a lot of the idea of, "Oh, we're all gonna be holding hands and happy after this is done," is still this concept of we wanna try to preserve relationships in the course of resolving a conflict. And what preserving relationship may look like is that since I have expressed [00:18:00] curiosity to you and I'm asking you a question, and all of a sudden you're buying into my process, that the next time we have a conflict, because we will the next time we have a conflict, maybe we will get to this space of calm and getting results, 'cause that's what this is about, actually getting a result a little bit faster than we did the first time.
You're right ... And what I'd like to offer to our listeners, because people are saying, "Oh, that's hard," or this or that, I wanna do, always do the advanced course.
What if I hate you ?
Okay. Yeah. What if you're a liar? What if you cheated me? What if you screwed me out of blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever? I mean, let's do the advanced course here. This is what real life is when we do that. Correct. Or let's say that you're a quieter, more introverted person, and the other person is flailing, emotionally vomiting, all over the place.
What do you do? How do you handle that? They can't even handle asking a question. That was in regards to, like, with the analogy you did of the two doctors saying, "I wanna do it my way," right? But let's say you [00:19:00] get somebody who's just freaking out. how do you handle them? Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.
Yep. Just think about that for a moment. And what we all do- Mm-hmm ... every once in a while I even fall prey to it. "Calm down. Calm down." Oh, my God, it's like putting oil on a fire. If I could calm down, I would. Clearly, I have lost control. Clearly- Yeah ... I am dysregulated, and I can't do it. So pointing it out- Right
to me doesn't make me calmer, it makes me crazier, right? So- Mm-hmm ... this is the trick for everybody in the book that is just so good. I have a whole chapter on it called VUCS, validate, understand, clarify, summarize. It's a four-part thing that you can do literally in five minutes to get to the essence of
Instead of saying, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" This is a- Yeah ... better way to do it. But number one is validate. Now, it's hard to validate somebody who's losing their stuff, right? It's just very hard to do. So you know what [00:20:00] a cheap, low-rent form of validation is? Naming the emotion. Yeah. That's it. "Wow, you're really angry."
"I am not angry. I am frustrated." "Okay, you're really frustrated. Tell me about it." Boom. Mm-hmm. One, two, boom. See how fast- Yeah ... that was? Yeah.
And that's how it
happens. And you don't get the, "Don't tell me what to do," and, "Who do you think you are?" And, you know, all that kind of garbage. Name the emotion. "You seem really sad."
"I'm not sad." What are you feeling?" "I'm a little depressed." What's going on?" Now what does your amygdala say? Friend or foe? See how easy it is? Friend. Yeah. Yeah. So naming emotion is a spectacular trick, and it's part of this four-part thing that I've got in the book, validate, understand, clarify, summarize, that's a problem-solving technique.
But the naming the emotion thing is a standalone baby. I mean, it's a standalone baby that can work anytime, anywhere, at Thanksgiving dinner with that crazy uncle who won't shut up, [00:21:00] right? Mm-hmm. Now, let me give you another, just a corollary of that, 'cause I think about this with the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving.
You know, the guy- Yeah ... that either is so stupid he says stupid stuff, or he's smart enough to know he's getting your goat, and he's just doing stuff to push your buttons. Either way, right? Right. This is what I do. I turn and I look at him and I smile and I say, "You know what I admire about you?" What?
You could hear a pin drop. No one- Uh-huh ... is gonna say a word, much less the loudmouth- Yeah ... blabbermouth who's taken over the meeting or taken over the dinner or whatever. "You know what I love about you? You know what I respect about you? You know what I admire about you?" Those are sentence stems that you have right here, right?
Like we're like snakes with like things in our jaws, right? That is right there.
they wanna hear what
You have to say. Now all of a sudden you are the most important person in the world. And then you say- Mm-hmm ... something validating and true "You're so, convincing. You have [00:22:00] such strength of conviction.
You're so passionate. You're so, interested in trying to do the right thing." Who cares? What difference does it make? People will say, "Well, I don't know how to validate them," or, "I think nothing good about this person." And I say, "Would he pull your kid out of a burning car?"
Yeah .
There's something redeeming there, right?
Now maybe is a low skill set. That's what I look at. When people are vomiting all over the place, it's just immaturity and a low skill set. They just don't know any better. And so what would you do to a five-year-old screaming and yelling? They just don't know any better, right?
Yeah. So that's what you have to do. So the way to do it though is a five-year-old you pick up in your arms and you go like that. What do you do with an adult? Yeah. "You know what I admire about you?" Boom. Now, there may still be the problem-solving piece that has to be dealt with.
But the animus around it
That's [00:23:00] contaminating the radioactive circle, the radioactive decay, you calm that sucker down. Look at, 30 seconds. Yeah. How do I do that when I walk into a case with, let's say Google or Amazon- ... and somebody says, "I want $500 million," and Amazon says- Yeah ... "Here's 5,000.
Go away." Right. How do we settle that? it's not with logic or reason or rationale, being smarter. It's this stuff to get past all the fluffy garbage down to what is the real issue, and now we just problem solve. We problem solve. All solutions. Yes. All problems are just solutions waiting to be found, but we can't find them because we make ourselves crazy.
So we get ourselves calm.
So one of the things that I love about this idea that you are validating people's emotions, and I wanna really make sure we kinda really take time on this, because I think this is such a valuable tool for clinicians, especially if you are in a situation with a patient.
I have [00:24:00] done this several times where the patient's clearly upset with something and it's like, "I can see you're really upset about..." "Oh no, I'm not upset, I'm frustrated." Like, when you said that, I have actually heard that come out of somebody's mouth before. And it's like, "Okay, you're frustrated. Tell me what you're frustrated about."
And then all of a sudden you have brought that room down and you do have that person willing to actually interact with you. So in the book where you have this, this is one of those things that everybody, medical student, resident, intern physician, if you've been doing this for 20 or 30 years, that is one of the greatest things I have ever heard.
So we're definitely gonna put the book in the show notes, but I also wanna make sure that we put that chapter in the show notes because that's something that, like I said, people can actually walk away and they can use tomorrow. I love that so much.
Every single bit of that I'll tell you ,
that's why short little chapters,
You could read it all the way through. I mean, it's a two-hour book- [00:25:00] Right ... 15 bucks on Amazon. I purposely did that cheap and fast and easy so they can get it. You can flip it- Yeah ... and just go, "What's that? What's that?" To anything. that. And get one technique and say, "Huh, I'm gonna try that one today.
I wanna see how that works." And the thing is like with the patient that says, "I'm not angry, I'm frustrated," the labels are irrelevant. They are emotionally vomiting. They are emotionally out of their comfort zone. They're sad. Yeah. They're angry. They're frustrated. They're scared. People usually don't want to admit, "I'm scared, I'm sad."
It's easier- Oh, no ... to be angry or frustrated. So- Absolutely ... okay. But you know what it really does? When you do that, there's a little switch right above your heart- ... that you flip on. Right I call it your, give a darn meter. Okay. And when you take 10 seconds to literally say, "I see you.
I see what you're going through. maybe I can't solve this, but my give a darn meter is turned [00:26:00] on," I'm telling you guys, that's medicine. Yeah. People will say... You know, 'cause I've done a lot of hospice work. I've helped a lot of people die. I've done hospital chaplaincy work in hospitals, so I've done a lot of this stuff.
You can't fix a lot of things. You just can't. But you can care. You can act like you care. You can act like you see them, and that you're not crazy because you're going through what you're going through. You're not crazy because you're feeling what you're feeling. That, my friends, is Prozac right there.
So as you've taught people how to hold calm, how to actually get themselves in a place where they can be calm enough to have these conversations, to ask these questions, to create this understanding, do you feel like that's contagious? 'Cause you had talked about earlier- Oh, yeah ... the people who are around you who see you using these things, they're [00:27:00] not gonna say, "Oh, look at you holding the calm."
That's not what they're gonna say. They're going to say that how effective- Right ... you are at your job, how environments change around you. So you definitely- That's right ... feel like that's something that's contagious. That you are completely correct, and I go to the DNA on everything.
The reason is because, neuroscience has proven, I think at this point, I think we're up to, like, 127 biases. And what's so interesting is the bias of reciprocity is very strong in about 85 to 90% of us. You have 10% that are kind of, you know, "I don't care about you at all."
Okay, I can't fix everybody, but for the 85, 90% of us, there's a bias of reciprocity. If I do something for you, you don't wanna be in my debt. You wanna do something back for me. So if I listen to you first, you kinda sorta wanna listen to me, and now I'm friend, not foe. and it's a pure neuroscience thing.
Just forget it, 'cause some [00:28:00] people will listen to this and say, "Oh, well, it's being manipulative." Well, if you're evil and you're twirling your mustache and you're, you know, manipulating people to get what you want that's not ethical and good, okay, then, you know, people do that. That's what, used car salesman, kind of a thing.
But this is listening to people. This is, "I see you, and right now nothing else exists in the world but you, and what's going on for you is important and it matters." And that takes me five to 10 seconds to fully accomplish with you, and you get an hour of medicine out of it. And what does it cost me to do?
I do it all the time in my personal life always, and I just flow through stuff. And people say, "How do you do that?" And like, I don't remember that person's name, and someone will say... You know, I'll get a call and say, "We had a case, something happened, and you helped me with my kid, and [00:29:00] it was miraculous."
I don't even know who you are, 'cause that's just how I choose to flow through life. And that's what I'm saying to people here. Choose to flow through life with a little more grace and a little more elegance and a little easier. This is sort of like bacitracin or Vaseline on the
railroad tracks of life.
Oh my gosh, bacitracin on the railroad tracks of life. That needs to be on a poster in every doctor's office. I'm actually probably gonna take some bacitracin to work tomorrow and put it on my wall, just tape the tube on my wall. So
I think this is really important 'cause
you talked about this, that this whole process takes a few seconds.
It doesn't take long to be able to do this, to use these techniques you're talking about and holding the calm. It doesn't take long. And I think one of the biggest roadblocks to clinicians using these kind of things regularly, actually employing these kind of things in their daily lives, is we really [00:30:00] do think we are so busy that we don't have time to do this.
And the sad part about it is- Yeah ... the not having time to choose to flow To not thinking we have time to put some Vaseline on the guardrails of our daily schedules and our daily lives, and especially our interactions, our professional and personal interactions, is we don't realize that not putting the bacitracin on, not choosing to flow, not holding the calm, has short-term and long-term consequences.
The patients that we- Yeah ... don't do this with, that are clearly angry, because we can be avoiders, choose to say, like, "I know she's angry, but I'm scared. I don't wanna have this conversation." And say if a patient who's visibly angry that you're not choosing to meet and actually have this conversation with, and that may be the patient that turns around and sues you.
You may choose to not do this with your spouse or your child, [00:31:00] and you know, your spouse is clearly upset with you. And I love this. by the way, I love the emotional vomit analogy. I think that's such a perfect visual. But- ... they are emotionally vomiting all over you, and we've already had a hard day at work, and so we don't wanna deal with it.
We're gonna go walk away. We're gonna sit by ourselves. We're not gonna deal with it. Our children are visibly very upset. and that affects us profoundly emotionally, but we don't know how to have that conversation without getting upset ourselves. So what do we do?
We don't have the conversation at all. How do you help people understand that spending the 5 or 10 seconds to hold the calm, to ask the question, to validate the emotion, how do you show... 'Cause you have to do this all the time is what you do. How do you get them- Yeah ... to understand that 10 seconds may mean 10 years?
You said it so beautifully. Let me give a gross visual because I find- Okay ... that gross visuals help on these things. Sure. [00:32:00] Think of a huge morbidly obese man sitting on a junky sofa that's bowing underneath him with bags of chips and Ho Hos and Twinkies and whatever wrappers all around him saying- Mm-hmm
"I don't have time to exercise." You're all healthcare professionals, right? I don't even have to tell you more than that. That's analogy number one. Yeah. Analogy number two is flossing. any of you are dentists or married to dentists or you go to the dentist a lot? The first thing they're going, "Are you flossing?"
Be- n- flossing- Yeah ... is the number one thing that stops gum disease, and we know that the bacteria in the gums can cause heart attacks. We know that. So flossing is the number one thing. But I'm too busy. I'll brush quickly and get out of there because the extra minute and a half to floss is too much work.
Yeah. So I explain this, what we're talking about, this holding the calm stuff. You know, if I had thought about that analogy first when I wrote the book, I might have called it Human flossing. Mm-hmm. This is flossing. Yeah. That's what [00:33:00] this is. Wow. And you do have the time. What you don't have the time for is big, huge, ugly conflicts or people that won't talk to you or being called down to HR or not getting what you need or all the other little things that accumulate around.
The little tiny things. Now, I have to always be honest too with people. Will it take you a little longer in the beginning like any skill? Of course it will. It's a skill. You're learning it. Then you get it, and then say to yourself when you walk out of that patient's room, "You know what? I was in there for six minutes."
Can I do it in three? I'm gonna give a challenge to myself. That's what I started doing. I'd be listening, my world, it's longer so I'm have to listen to them for an hour, just verbally vomit and vent. And I went, " Huh, can I cut it in half? Can I cut it in half again? Can I still get 90% of the results with a fraction of the time?"
And it became a game to me, and I kept doing it more and more and more until I'm real good at it. If I choose to stay longer, it's [00:34:00] because my give-a-darn meter is on and that person's lonely, and I have some time, and so I'm gonna spend some more time with them. But if I don't have time because I gotta go room to do whatever it is I have to do I'm good with 85 to 90% efficacy.
I really am. How quick can I do it? Then it becomes a game. How fast can I do it? How better can I understand it? Your marriages will be better, let's put it this way. I'm 67. I have a fantastic relationship with my husband and my adult children and my grandchildren, and there have been times when they'll say, "Oh, God, Nana, don't give me that mediation garbage.
Just tell me what to do." Right?
And I go, "Okay .
Okay."
if you practice it ,
it's a bacitracin through life, guys. It's just easy. I love your idea like that. Who was that crazy artist that taped a banana on the wall, and then somebody bought it for a million dollars? You could take some surgical tape and tape some bacitracin on the wall.
And then people are gonna come and go, "Lee, [00:35:00] have you lost your mind? What is that?" Yep. And then that's a conversation opener. It's the bacitracin on the rails of life. I flow. Yes. I glide through life. It was one of those- Yes ... what is it? Someone once told me, "Horses sweat, men perspire, women glisten." And women glow.
And I was thinking- But because I'm laughing a lot, I make it fun. And I say this to everybody. I had a horrible childhood. Terrible, terrible. Lots of therapy. Lots of therapy, okay? And so now I laugh all the time. I find everything funny. I'm joyful because I choose to be, so that I'm happy and I'm full, so I have room for you.
And then because you're not giving me grief and aggravation and misery, and I know how to turn your, "You didn't do this," into, "Oh- i'm happier. I'm cleaning up less verbal vomit all day long. So in a way, it's extremely selfish. Getting good at this kind of stuff [00:36:00] and learning these secrets, and like that's why, you know, I called it like The Secret.
Learning these secrets- Yeah ... it's weirdly a little selfish 'cause it makes you better for you. Everybody else- Yeah ... is just the beneficiary. That's really the way to look at it. That's so beautiful, and I think that's a really important message for people in healthcare and caregivers in general, is the idea that doing these kind of things, learning these secrets, y- you are doing it for you.
Other people benefit from it, but you're doing it for you. I think it's really important people to hear your message about having laughter And the idea of laughter making it easier for us to make space for other people. I think definitely in healthcare, and I will freely admit this is something I work with, is taking everything in myself too seriously.
And so at the end of the day, you take yourself too seriously, what are you? You're exhausted at the end of the day. and I think it's really good. My husband, I always say this.
It's hard. The first thing my husband says to me [00:37:00] every day before I leave the house, I kiss him goodbye, and then he always says to me, "Remember to laugh." It's what he says to me every single morning, "Remember to laugh." And I love it- Right. Right ... that you're saying that too. Yeah. That's so beautiful. It's very cool.
I wanna say something else about what you just said about this idea of how fast can I do this? if we have people who are listening who want to do these things and feel like they don't have time, and I think you've made a great case for you have 10 seconds, you have time, you can do this, is the idea that we can turn this into a skill set that we are literally, I wanna see how quickly I can do this.
Because I think anytime you give a challenge to a doctor or a nurse, we're gonna take that challenge. you want me to do it faster? Uh-huh. Okay. I'll take that challenge. You want me to do this case faster? Okay. You want me to see this many patients in this amount of time? I can do that. So I love the idea of as you're challenging yourself and using these skills, that [00:38:00] people can actually say, "All right.
I did this in five minutes, and that was awesome. I had a great outcome, and the patient's happy and I'm happy. Can I do it in two and a half?" You really can benchmark yourself in that way, but what you're actually doing is you're fine-tuning the skill. Good for you. Well said. And, look, life's hard, and especially in healthcare.
My God, the consequences are hard. You know, in sales, all right- Yeah ... you didn't make the sale. you have very serious jobs, and if you don't find ways to laugh and lighten the load, you're gonna burn out. And First of all, it's not right and it's not fair- Yeah
to you guys who do so much work. So if you make it a goal every day to laugh and be aware of it, so at the end of the day, how much did I laugh today? What did I do? ... sometimes I'll listen to music in the car, sometimes I listen to comedy in the car, and I find things funny. And then this is the other piece too.
when you laugh when other people talk, what are you? A great audience for them. [00:39:00] That feeds their amygdala. They think you're awesome because you think they're great. And then what had happened out of it? I laughed. I mean, look at this podcast, how many times I've laughed, you've laughed. We're talking serious stuff.
Yeah. Conflict. We're talking about conflict. Trust me, my friends listening to this, you are too good, if you're listening to this, you are a good person who really wants to get better and get skill set. You don't deserve to burn out. Yeah. You don't deserve it. So think of it as self-preservation- Right
For you. And then besides, the more I laugh, I hope that as I get older,
my wrinkles will go up, not down.
Oh, laughing is definitely the medicine for so many things. Oh, it's so true. So we do have a lot of healthcare people who listen, these are people that are gonna go to work tonight, they're gonna go to work tomorrow. if there was one thing from holding the calm, if there's one thing that you would encourage them to do when they go into their shift or go [00:40:00] into the operating room tomorrow, what would it be?
every time to try to find something that inspires awe Find something miraculous, 'cause I guarantee you something miraculous is happening every single day around you. I don't care if it's a flower that bloomed, that's miraculous. I mean, the fact this little green thing out of nothing blooms into this gorgeous flower, that's miraculous.
You know, the fact that so-and-so showed up for work on time, God bless. Okay, right? That this room is clean, and I didn't have to ask someone to go in and clean it. If you look for the miraculous, you look for the joy, you're a half full person as opposed to a half empty person. Both are true, equally true, but the half empty person has a harder time going through life, and it's the bacitracin.
And I personally love your idea of everybody getting a tube of Vaseline, bacitracin, you know, whatever they [00:41:00] want, and having it around as a reminder on their desk to say... 'Cause this is one of the things I tell people, too. When you get into conflict, it slogs, it's stuck. There's a boulder, there's quicksand like that.
Now, you can try to slog your way through it- Yeah ... or we can try to go around it. So you could focus on what are the barriers that are happening, too. And if you train yourself in being light, you will be light. Now, is that hard? You bet. Did I have a lot of therapy to get to that point? You bet. I'm not making this anything easy.
But a thousand mile journey begins in a single step. You start. Yeah. And that's why I wrote this light, little n- And I told the publisher, I don't make any money on this. I only get a dollar a book." And you know- Yeah ... it's like even then it's
ridiculous .
I wanted it cheap and I wanted it easy so that people could read it and do something today.
And in the back of the book, the publisher wanted me to do a whole training workbook. I [00:42:00] said, "No, I wanna give away for free in the book." So I put it in the back of the book. So all you have to do is get a few people together, you all read the book, you talk over lunch, and then what happens is someone will say, "Well, I thought that was stupid."
And then someone else will say, "Well, I was very inspired by that." Really? Why? Boom, team building. Boom, understanding of each other. Boom, seeing it in a whole nother way. And you can get continuing education credit. Just apply through your organizations and get continuing education credit for it, you know?
And I'm always happy if people call me. I can do Zooms. I'm happy to do stuff to just help with larger groups to kinda get people, jazzed and going because people don't know what they don't know. And it's like before we had glasses, we said, "Squint. What's wrong with you? Look harder." Well, how about giving me a pair of glasses, that's what this is. It's glasses And dental floss and bacitracin. What other analogies did we do today?
but this [00:43:00] is so great though because I feel like now everywhere I look, if I have my reading glasses there or if I have my bath tracery on my desk or I have my dental floss by my sink, I have multiple reminders, number one, of how to carry myself- Yeah ... of how to choose to flow. But also recognizing that I have this really unique opportunity to create a calm space.
I have an opportunity to learn through your book-
and through this experience
of actually telling my amygdala to slow down and actually be able to choose a place of calm.
I think that's really cool. Hesha, if people wanna find you, if they wanna get the book, if they have questions about your work, what's the best way for them to find you? Book's on everywhere, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. You know, Amazon, I think, has it on sale now for, like, 12 bucks, something like that.
Okay. and then, I have two webpages. One is holdingthecalm.com. I've been on 200 podcasts. [00:44:00] All of them are on that website, as well as a ton of articles, all free, just free resources. And if you can get continuing education credit by listening to stuff and doing it, just apply. And if you need me to sign something, I'll sign something for you.
So this way, you can be working on your own skill set involvement. And then my mediation work is heshaabramsmediation.com, and that's where I do my high level, very intense, big personality, giant ego, huge conflict kind of stuff that- Yeah ... you have to laugh because I'm not gonna get sucked down into the bowels of despair.
No. First of all- Yeah ... just saying bowels of despair makes me
wanna laugh .
Absolutely. Oh, and I think I'm on Facebook. My secretary has a Facebook page on Holding the Calm, and I have tons of resources there just for free. Listen to them, read them, do stuff. I mean, and if they're interested in anything, all my contact information is on that. And I'm a big believer in high tide raises all ships.
How can we help? [00:45:00] How can we make our society better? We can't talk to each other anymore. How can we do that- Yeah ... to make it better? In my little tiny circle, I do it in mine. You're doing it in your little tiny circle. And if our little circles go together, then we're like cells in a healthy body. See, I did a medical analogy.
Yeah. I was about to say, you are firing. This is great. It's like we're gonna have so many great images by the end of this. There's no way anybody's gonna forget anything they learned today because they've had great visuals to go with it. Hesha, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.
My pleasure. Thank you everybody for listening and for doing the good holy work you do, you know, healing human bodies. God bless you.
Thank you .
So for all of our peaceful warriors who have joined us today on the Scalpel and Sword Podcast, if this conversation resonated with you, share it with a friend, share it with a colleague, and until next time, be at peace.