Performance to Peace: A Doctor’s Journey to Healing

Dr. Thomas McGovern is a renowned dermatologist, surgeon, and author. Despite tremendous professional accomplishments, he reached a crossroad that led to his profound transformation.

Finding Identity

Relationships give us our identity—typically, relationships when we are young, and our relationship with God. From that, we develop our identity, and from it flows our mission.

I didn’t have that identity from my early formation; therefore, all the things I did, all my missions, kind of cobbled together an identity. 

When I was young, I was told: “You’re not very bright; you don’t have common sense; you’re not going to amount to much.”

I developed a false belief that others are only going to love me if I perform. So, I took an unconscious resolution to be the smartest guy in the room, the most accomplished guy in the room, so that no one can ever say I’m lazy or stupid, and maybe they will like me.

I hoped I would have relationships where people would maybe love, care, and respect me. And you know how that worked out? It didn’t.

I kept trying to do more and more, but it did not fill that hole, which only unconditional love could, something I had never experienced. I began suffering from anxiety and was on medication for over 30 years because I could never meet the expectations.

At home, I discovered I defaulted to things I could do well, but I didn’t have a model. I didn’t know how to be a father. I didn’t know how to be a husband. So, I would often disappear and do the things that I was good at.

As a result, those relationships also suffered. But with my wife’s patience and because of some amazing things that happened, God has led me on this healing journey. 

It probably started five years ago with a prayer to Saint Dymphna, the patroness of those with mental and nervous disorders.

Several things have happened since then. It has been an amazing journey once I let God take over my healing process.

Often, we want to control life as human beings, and so did I.

That was the weak point in my spiritual life—control—which would, of course, lead to probably the biggest sin that I would confess, which would be about anger. And the antidote to that is letting God take control. 

Healing…

How did God help me heal that wound at the center of this behavior and probably the source of most of my confession material for decades? I was seeing a priest for Deliverance Prayer every week, and he was praying the Prayer of Saint Leo XIII over me and another Deliverance Prayer over me.

In March of 2023, one day, while praying over me, I had the first-ever mystical experience of my life. As he was praying over me—just praying the words, for usually those sessions were emotionally dry as dust—I saw Mary stand up in my imagination, pointing her arm to the left side, saying to the demons to take off.

I broke down in deep sobbing tears in his office. After that, I came up two weeks later for a Healing the Whole Person Retreat.

On the second day of this retreat, the leader was guiding us through a healing prayer, and all of a sudden, I was brought back to a memory of when I was a 7-year-old boy.

Somebody was telling me: “You’re not very bright. You’re pretty dumb.”

At that very moment, Jesus came into my imagination in a form that I had never seen, imagined, or heard of, and just grabbed me from behind as a seven-year-old boy, just loving me in that moment when I was so hurt. And I just broke down for half an hour.

I felt unconditionally loved for the first time in almost 60 years of my life.

Half an hour of that experience was worth everything and more than I had ever accomplished in my life.

It was at that moment that my wound healed, and I no longer felt that I had to prove anything to anyone regarding my accomplishments.

Decisions Made and Why?

In 2023, God gave me the word of the year as ‘rest.’ As my spiritual director and friend, who is a psychiatrist, said: “Unless you rest, you’re not going to heal.”

Resting would involve giving up things that took my time. So, I gave up being on the national board of the CMA.

I had reorganized the young members of the CMA—the students, interns, residents, and fellows—and gave that up. I had also been doing, for six years, a podcast and radio show called Dr. Doctor that had won many awards. I gave that up too.

He gave me complete peace to give up and to just revel in knowing that He loves me. I have since stopped working five days a week; I now only work four days a week.

Since that December, a providential series of events brought me to see a psychologist who does Catholic parts therapy (Internal Family Systems) with me, which has been incredibly fruitful. 

In other words, I had to strip away these false sources of identity to justify my identity as a man, husband, father, and beloved Son of God.

I am waiting for Him to show me things He wants me to do.

I know He will show them to me because I am getting to the point where I have rested so much that I think that I am ready to do something, but I want it to be from Him. So, in the meantime, I am just waiting, and if I don’t have something, I will just go about my daily life as I am supposed to.

Like my spiritual director said, I’m living my life now the way that most people do, not the way that hyper-successful people do.

What Gives You Hope? 

I have great hope now because I have had an experience of unconditional love that I can always return to.

That was the most real thing I had ever experienced in my life. When I realized how much God loves me, and that He only works in gentleness, I can now hear and tell the voices that are lies, those that are not from Him but might claim to be Him.

Sometimes, in healing, it is a season, a painful season. For me, July and August were almost all desolation.

I felt no warmth and fuzziness, but I still have the memory. I knew God loved me, not just up here [points to head] but in my heart. And so, every time I go by a Crucifix, I would say: “Jesus, I love you. I don’t feel it right now, but I love you, and I trust you.”

To abandon myself to God, I learned that I had to follow *Merton’s advice to know ourselves and be ourselves. We must first learn to accept love and compassion from God and others, and accept and have compassion for parts of ourselves that suffer.

It now makes sense to me when Jesus told us to love others as we love ourselves. We typically love others the way we love ourselves, but we often love ourselves poorly because there may be parts of ourselves that we dislike or even hate. 

I know that He wants to heal me. Knowing that He wants my healing more than I do, I will just wait for Him because He has brought me great things in His time when I least expected them. 

God wants your healing more than you or I ever could want it, and He will take us there if we let Him, for He wants it to be complete in Heaven.

Pope Benedict XVI said: “Essentially, Christianity is a religion of healing.” That is what salvation is— it is the healing from the wounds of sin so we can be who God made us to be.

*Thomas Merton OCSO, was an American Trappist monk, a writer, and a theologian.

Dr. Thomas McGovern Dr. Thomas McGovern is a dermatologic surgeon in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is the author of What Christ Suffered and has served in leadership roles with the Catholic Medical Association. He co-hosted the award-winning Doctor, Doctor podcast.