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The True Self – Guest Post

 

The True Self

All around me I hear people talking about finding your “True Self.” I hear it in podcasts, coffee shops, in magazines and even books.

What the hell was everyone talking about and if there is such thing, how does one find it?

What is meant by “True Self?”

First, apparently, it depends on who you ask.  If you ask a therapist you get a vastly different answer than if you ask a spiritual guide.  Honestly, even from one person to the next your answers will vary.

Authentic Self.

Real Self.

Original Self.

Vulnerable self.

These are all synonyms of this mysterious phrase. After looking at countless websites, I like what the Huffington Post said in the article, “What does it mean to be your Authentic Self by Judith Johnson.”  “Living in a place of profound authenticity involves being rooted in your deepest beliefs, values, and truth and living a life that is a true reflection of them. It is about being true to yourself through your thoughts, words, and actions.”

So from what I gather, the true self is something that is within us.  Is it nature or nurture? Or is it something in between (the damn gray area that surrounds our lives)?  I don’t have an answer for this, but from what I read and what I have experienced, it is a real thing. It’s ingrained deep in our heart and soul.

Why do I care about this?

When I was younger, I was working at a camp in Ensenada for the summer.   It was one of the best summers of my life and I felt that I was becoming the best version of myself. That same summer I met a girl (yes, you can roll your eyes now).  I fell head over heels for her and we ended up getting married.  We were together for fifteen years, and often I would look back and wondered what happened to the man I was becoming and why wasn’t I feeling any closer to being a better version of myself? I felt that I was slipping away and losing myself.

I wrestled with why.  Did I fool myself that summer? Did that woman I fell in love with strip me of my manhood?  What happened?

The marriage didn’t go.  I decided I wanted a divorce, which happened to be one of the first real decisions I had made for myself since I met her.  Pain of the failed marriage filled me, but I also felt the emergence of the boy 15 years earlier.  My “true self” surface and that I didn’t have to look back in remembrance of that person. I decided that I was going to become the man I had always desired (I do not blame my ex for the hindering of this man, but blame myself.  More on this in another post).

I care about the true self because I struggled for years to step on the road and begin the journey.  Guilt, shame, and fear were around every corner.  This trifecta left me questioning everything I did (and I still struggle with it at times).  Being in that dark place is hard, and I want to help others know there is a better way.  It’s not the easy way, but it’s the better way. Or as my friend, Major Lewis would say, “The hard right over the easy wrong.”

How do you find your “True Self?”

The easy answer is to be real with yourself.  The hard answer is that I only know how I did and it might differ from person to person.

In my first marriage, I was a fraud and could become whomever the person I was talking to wanted me to be.  I was like Julia Roberts in, “The Runaway Bride.” Depending on what guy she was with, she liked a different type of egg.  Poached with one man.  Scrambled with another man. I morphed myself into someone in order to be liked.  Sadly this left my true self-hiding behind layers of falsehood.  I pushed away those close to me in shame.  My unconscious was wreaking havoc on me.  I was messed up.

Be true to yourself.  Look in the mirror, and know who you are.  It takes time and won’t happen overnight.  The first time I went to the shoe store to buy shoes after my separation I ran out in a panic because I didn’t even know what shoe I liked.

I started by giving myself permission to experiment.  I would try things and then evaluate if I liked it.  Slowly, month after month, year after year, I began to understand what I liked.  Then I would do more of that.  The small steps of trying something new and being honest with yourself will start to open your heart up to seeing deeper questions.

Self-care Tip: Take a chance on yourself.  Try something new. If you hate it, great! If you loved it, great!  Either way, you are opening yourself up to new opportunities and trying to ignite the flame of your true self.

Brandon Fries lives in Southern California with his lovely wife and daughter.  It was through his life struggles that he found a path towards happiness.

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Daughters of Dementia – book

Introducing a lovely book written by Leslie Birkland, and Lindsey Denhof, who are sisters who felt compelled to share personal and revealing stories about their father as he fell deeper and deeper into the tragic memory robbing abyss called Dementia. The two sisters narrate their experiences born from different perspectives, but very much driven from the same heart.

dementia

 

Please enjoy and comment. Dementia is everywhere. It affects all of us. Whether we have  a parent, a spouse, a friend, or a neighbor with dementia, we are affected. Even if a community member is suffering from this, known or unknown, we are affected, although to differing degrees.

Dementia worldwide is estimated at 47 million and is projected to increase to 75 million by 2030. It is a huge economic impact – in the US, $818 billion dollars a year. People with dementia and those with family members with dementia are often discriminated against. Awareness and advocacy are needed. Dementia is a public health priority. Let us know where you stand. Thank you for reading.

Self-care tip: Everyone has a story. Tell yours.

Keep on!

Family is Family
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Family is Family

She must be in her mid-thirties, I thought. Kids – it looks like she has kids. She was well dressed, with a pleasant, kind face. Everyday Mom – a person who is easy to like, a person next door who everyone wants to be friends with.

Just right now though, she was spouting angrily, full of righteous indignation.

“And just to think that they could have easily killed him, I just could not believe it.” Her eyes were flashing. “I told them right then and there, I will never take him back to this doctor. He almost died and ended up in the intensive care for DAYS!”

The reason for the outpouring, my new patient, was sitting quietly, fondly looking on as she continued. He looked to be around eighty, which I knew was about 10 years more than his actual age. Recently diagnosed heart failure, stroke last year – this would make anyone look older.

The daughter was at the end of her rant. “So, we just decided to come straight here and find another cardiologist.” She pulled out a large binder. “Here are all his records – we want you to take over now.”

Usually I try to be understanding of my own profession and not be quick to join in the blame game. After reviewing these records, however, it was difficult not to be blunt in my judgment. Her father’s case had indeed been poorly handled – he was prescribed two medications at the same time with predictable life-threatening interactive side effects. His daughter’s diligence likely saved his life – when his mind started slipping, she had checked his blood pressure, found it extremely low, and immediately called for help.

After some painful experiences in my career, I had learned that instead of pronouncing judgment, it was best to find things to praise.

“You are quite lucky to have such a devoted daughter, sir,” I remarked. “If you are not aware, I can tell you – research shows that men with daughters live longer, so you have an edge there.”

The patient smiled. His daughter looked pleased.

*************

As I was going through his medical records, I was relieved that this new patient had been scheduled into an hour-long slot – there was a lot to cover. Making notations in the chart, I asked follow-up questions – what other medical problems he had, what were his habits, when was he first diagnosed with heart disease. The daughter answered most of the questions – not unusual when the patient is elderly; younger people tend to have better memories.

Working through the records, I noticed a condition the daughter had not mentioned.

“So, the prostate cancer – when did you have that?” The daughter looked confused for a moment and then turned to the older man. “When was that, Dad? This must have been a long time before I met you.” They started discussing the possible dates – the patient did not have the best memory.

This snippet in the conversation caught me off guard. First I thought I had misheard the word ‘met’. Surely one would not use that word for one’s own father? Should I ask? Social history is an important part of the medical exam. Also – let’s face it – I was curious.

“That was an unusual word choice,” I started carefully. “So, I assume you are adopted then?”

“Oh no,” the woman answered cheerfully. “As biological as can be.”

The utter confusion must have shown on my face. She decided to have pity on me.

“Well, of course, I didn’t know who he was.”

…. That did not make things any clearer.

“My Mom refused to tell me who my real father was – so after she died, I started looking for him. Went through as many genetic tests as I could – and I finally found him!”

There was an unmistakable triumphant note in her voice.

The patient just smiled and continued looking at her fondly.

She went on. “So, then I asked him to come visit us last year. That’s when he had the stroke. Of course he would be better off here, so I just asked him to stay and he lives with us now.”

I tried not to react. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure how one would react. The commitment she described was flabbergasting… and to a father who had never been in a picture. This woman had taken a virtual stranger into her home and into her life and acted not only as a forgiving daughter but as a caregiver to an elderly man with multiple medical problems.

“Family is family,” she announced. “I am so happy I could finally be with my Dad.”

*************

I must confess that there was a small suspicious part of me wondering if she will stick to it. The old man was not healthy and with the recent stroke needed a lot of help. After the initial euphoria of having a father wore off, would she think it too much?

On the next scheduled visit, the daughter was there, with the same updated binder. The father was looking better – the combination of optimized medications and stable home care had done wonders for his health.

On the visit after, the granddaughter had joined them. She was a bright-eyed little thing, curious about everything and intently looking at her new grandfather’s heart pumping on the ultrasound screen I was showing them. The daughter was making notes about medication changes. While I talked to the her about the home care, the granddaughter was trying to talk the grandfather into playing a game once they got home. The whole visit had an atmosphere of care and contentment.

*************

I never asked more questions about their history. Why had the mother refused to talk about the father? What skeletons were in that family’s closet?

She probably would have told me. But it was not my place to ask. As a physician, I was happy enough that my patient had good social support.

Family is family. In this case, family that almost wasn’t.

 

 

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False Thoughts about Getting Healthy

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Think of walking in a rainstorm. Your clothes and hair hang heavily. They provide no protection. They offer no remedy. You take a hand towel out of your bag and try to mop up your icy wet face. Wring it out and continue to wipe. 

This is like choosing to do all the psychosocial efforts in your life, but missing the biological. Until you treat the underlying illness, much of our efforts to heal are like using a hand towel to dry off in the rain storm. We think that we can get better without medication. Or, we may reject other treatment options, like ECT or TMS. We think false thoughts. 

It’s not healthy to take pills. 

I’m better than that. 

All I need is God. 

My parents would be upset, so I shouldn’t. 

If my work found out, I’d lose my job. So I shouldn’t. 

THC is better. 

Exercise is better. 

Some of these are entirely false. But some are just partly false, encased in a disconnected truth. This “rain and the hand towel” idea is not an analogy meant to minimize or bring shame to those who choose not to engage in treatment. It is not meant to talk down. Please forgive me for the crudeness and limitations. It is just meant to crack open this idea.

Yesterday, Louise commented that her physician told her taking sertraline, or Zoloft, was like taking “a vitamin for my brain”. That clicked for her! Vitamins were ok.

Question: How has your physician helped you get past not wanting to take treatment? How could your provider do better with this?

Self-care Tip: Allow healing with medical treatment for medical disease.

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Get You Some of That – Medical Treatment for Medical Illness

…Continued from yesterday.

Cole_liveCole Swindell – Get Me Some Of That

Why do I feel so horrible when I start a treatment that is supposed to help?

Medication treatments for depression and anxiety, and some other brain illnesses, often worsen how you feel before you feel better. I can’t tell you how many patients have told me that if they had known this before, they never would have stopped their mediation(s).

Yesterday, our post discussed a Dr. Jones and Presley.

Presley fired Dr. Jones when after following her directive, he subsequently experienced an extreme panic attack. Dr. Jones may not have done anything wrong in her treatment recommendations. Presley was just an individual, as compared to a “number on the curve” of treatment responders. Escitalopram, the medication discussed as an example yesterday, (one medication option out of many), may have been dosed at an initial amount that Presley’s body couldn’t handle “straight out of the gait”, so to speak. But likely, if he had started at a lower dose, maybe ½ or even ¼ of the tablet, and then waited for his body to accommodate to the medication. Then Presley would have tolerated it. Presley would have tolerated slowly increasing the medication if approached, rather, piece-by-piece of a pill. I’ll even joke with patients,

I don’t care if you lick the pill. Just get on it.

When slowly titrating a medication, it allows the individual’s neurotransmitter receptors to down-regulate whilst the agent floods the receptors. If there is a neuron targeting another neuron, there’s a baseline balance in time. There is a baseline understanding between these neurons. An agreement, of sorts. “I’ll sit here and receive your messages,” (neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and/or dopamine). “I’ll then carry those messages on your behalf to their intended recipients,” (such as the amygdala or hippocampus). But then this person artificially takes a higher quantity of these messengers, for example, by way of medications, and floods the system. The receivers, (or neuroreceptors), have to adjust to this to establish a new healthy baseline. 

In this initial time of treatment, when 1st introduced to the increased neurotransmitter-load, (ex: as released by a tablet of Escitalopram), there can be a negative response, such as panic and/or depression emotions. We call this, “initiation side effect’s.” Once the neuroreceptors get used to the new load, then the response improves. 

After accommodating to the new pharmacology, the brain is allowed to experience the blessing that comes from treatments, and heal.

Some individuals are outside of the curve and cannot tolerate the standard initial treatment dosage, like Presley was. Some are inside, and can without much difficulty. The point in treatment, though, is that the person just needs to get on it.

Get on treatment. However you do it. You have to make the treatment work for you, an individual, in your own way. The prescriptions are there to serve you. You aren’t there to serve the medications. I like to analogize Jesus’ statement,

The Sabbath is there for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Make it yours as an individual and reap the benefits; the blessings inherent there. (See Mark 2:27). 

If you don’t get on the treatment, you won’t get better. Anything less than this will be inadequate. It’s like drying water off your face with a hand towel while still walking in a rainstorm.

What is your agenda in treatment? List it. Write it out. Then, go get you some!

Outside a medical approach is like flicking water off in the context of a rainstorm. If your agenda is getting to your healthy self. Get out of the storm and get dry. Then go get it. 

You have a medical condition. Treat it with the assistance of a medical professional. 

I don’t go to a plumber to help with my electrical home repair. I don’t go to an accountant or a church counselor to treat a medical one. 

The plumber, the accountant, the church counselor are what they are. This is not minimizing their efficiency in their own fields of excellence. But why do we seek care in psychiatry from those who haven’t studied this? From those who are not experts in this? Maybe stigma keeps us away from psychiatric care. Maybe misinformation directs our search for mental health treatment elsewhere. 

Self-Care Tip: Get you some medical therapy for medical illness.

Question: What are further concerns you may have about taking medications? How would you prefer your medical providers to work with you? Please tell us your story. 

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But I’m Not Someone Who Likes Taking Meds

pill

Presley couldn’t breath. A truck just drove through his thorax. A monster-hand was closing around his heart. He couldn’t swallow well. Was something stuck in there? Dizziness nearly dropped him, but instead of moving to sit down, like any other normal person would do, he bolted. A fire chased him. He had to escape or he would die. In the bathroom where he found himself, the mirror reflected a sweaty face and crazy eyes. Was he dying? Presley’s phone looked blurry as he dialed, 911.

Please help! I’m having a heart attack!

That was the first time this had happened. After the third visit to the emergency room over the past month, Presley was able to avoid calling 911, although still convinced he was going to die when the next episode hit. He agreed to seek counseling, where he was taught different skills to connect his mind and body, to slow his breathing down, to process, even when he was convinced he was dying.  For a time, Presley improved. It was like it never happened. He was almost able to convince himself that it wouldn’t happen again.

This turned over and over, feeling like he was going to die while losing his mind, re-engaging in counseling, thinking he was better, stopping counseling, and then another violent emotional event, thinking for sure, he would die.

It was after his second trip to the ER when he received the recommendation to schedule an evaluation with a psychiatrist. But he preferred to work through this in therapy. Presley didn’t like pills. He wasn’t someone who medicated. An olive-skinned athlete, he lived clean and didn’t believe there was much that healthy living couldn’t cure. And Presley did live clean. He ran fifty miles a week. He ate raw foods. He read his Bible.

After several months of this, his therapist, Dr. Wu, recommended he get a psychiatric evaluation. However, Dr. Wu agreed that he would continue to work with him, whatever Presley chose. (Was this the right thing for Dr Wu to do?) Presley chose, no. No psychiatrist. What would a psychiatrist do to him anyway?! He wasn’t crazy. (Except when he thought he was.)

Presley visited his primary medical physician, Dr. Belinda Jones. It had to be better than seeing a shrink!

Dr. Jones, I don’t want to take meds.

Dr. Jones, cleared him for any medical condition that might be contributing to his events. Only then was she able to convince him to try a “safe antidepressant”, escitalopram. After one pill, Presley had the worst event of his life. He’d never had any experience that was more terrifying. Presley didn’t go back to Dr. Jones, “of course.”

When these emotional tornadoes hit more frequently, he became paralyzed with fear that he would have them in public and be humiliated by them. Presley stopped going to work.  If it wasn’t for his rent, he’d never go back. But he had to. So finally Presley agreed to see a psychiatrist. …

To be continued

  • Sincerely, Dr. Q

Questions: What would you tell Presley? 

How would you like your physician and/or therapist to handle this, if it were you?

Why is Presley so opposed to taking medical therapies?

Please speak! We need to hear you.

Self care tip: Keep on! 🙂

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Looking at your better future

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Dr. Kowalski walked into the hospital cafeteria and found me at our usual table, saying, “I hate it when I go to hug someone really sexy and my face smashes right into the mirror.” It wasn’t his joke but he always had something like this to toss at us other onlookers at the caf on our lunches.

He made me laugh and I felt like there weren’t enough of his type of friendship in my town. He was a peer in my community. He was a professional, a parent, a spouse. I enjoyed working with him and I respected so much about him.

Most of the time, with Dr. Kowalski, we talked about random stuff; hospital politics, his parents in England, God in his life, his kids’ latest antics, and the conversation rolled with content and interest. This day, after his short stent with humor, he skipped the food line, and just sat down to talk, starting in with a doozie.

My son is smoking a lot of marijuana.

Dr. Kowalski described the skeletal points of Frank’s, his son’s, journey with anxiety and then with marijuana. Now nineteen, Frank had anxiety his entire life. Paralyzing anxiety at times, and completely preoccupying at others with worries and inner tension.

Once when Frank was seven, “such a beautiful boy,” Dr. Kowalski told me, how Frank reacted when he was twenty minutes late picking Frank up from school. Most of the kids were gone already and Frank had to wait for Dr. Kowalski in the administration lobby next to the “mean secretary,” quietly in a big chair by himself, until Dr. Kowalski arrived. For three months after this, with his fluffy cheeks and round blue-blue eyes tilted up, Frank asked his dad over and over again, if he was going to pick him up from school that day. Would he pick him up and,

“Would he be on time?”

It was super hard for Dr. Kowalski to witness. Sometimes he would get impatient and snapped at Frank in response. Maybe raised his voice, or just ignored Frank’s questions. Dr. Kowalski felt a lot of guilt about this. He blamed himself in part for the persistence in Frank’s anxiety. If he had been more patient with him, if he hadn’t scared him with his voice, if he had gotten him into treatment… If he had been a better father, would Frank still have anxiety? Would Frank now be using three bowls of marijuana three days a week? Dr. Kowalski states that he would do anything to help Frank get better, and often does. Just about anything he can.

Whether Dr. Kowalski did or did not, Frank believed that anxiety led him to using marijuana.

Dr. Kowalski was the director of the adolescent psychiatry unit at our hospital. He knew that, although marijuana use often decreases the perception of anxiety at the moment, over all, in the way it affected gene expression, it exacerbated their anxiety. The disease exacerbated. So the user felt better at the moment, perhaps, but then the underlying anxiety process became worse and worse. Frank told me,

Using marijuana for anxiety is like a diabetic who takes insulin so he can eat a big cake.

But what could a father do for his son in this scenario? Being right, being correct about something, having knowledge apparently isn’t always how things, like convincing one’s son to stop using, are won. Dr. Kowalski did not know what to do.

Perhaps the guilt, perhaps the love, or for other reasons, Dr. Kowalski had spent the last several years of Frank’s marijuana-using and anxiety ridden life, trying to help Frank get into treatment. Treatment for anxiety.

When treating any biological psychiatric condition, something medical, we have to first look at anything we are doing to harm ourselves. Is there anything that is pushing us in the opposite direction of our efforts? Maybe we are drinking caffeine. That triggers anxiety. Or maybe we are using another substance that triggers, and/or worsens an underlying mental illness. With this in mind, Dr. Kowalski spent much of their discussions trying to engage Frank into preventative measures as part of his treatment recommendations. But what could a father do? Dr. Kowalski was not Frank’s treating psychiatrist. He was Frank’s dad.

Dr. Kowalski told me, with lines seemingly appearing out of no where on his usually bright and happy face, about his frustrations.

The amount of energy I am putting into helping him without results bothers me. And a lot of money to help him get better. I feel it is wasted until he puts in the effort to help himself.

I want to invest in my child! I do! But to help him get better. Not to just spin our wheels. He isn’t working to stop doing the things that actively work against this goal.

Feeling violated to a degree, used, Dr. Kowalski didn’t get it. He was giving his energy, his finances, his time, his emotion. He was giving every time Frank came to him or called in an anxiety crisis. Dr. Kowalski no longer wanted to do the “energy wastage.”

“It’ll be sad if Frank doesn’t get this idea,” Dr. Kowalski said. Frank may never choose to further work on his wellbeing, but the difference is that Dr. Kowalski decided he wouldn’t continue, with Frank, through talking therapies, and talking emotional rescue efforts, pretending they were working on something.

Dr. Kowalski wanted to tell his son,

I’m being taken advantage whether you realize you are taking advantage of me or not.

However, Dr. Kowalski was scared of stopping. He was scared of not staying on the phone for the long long conversations with Frank in crisis. He was scared of not continuing to pay for the talk therapy. He was scared of not continuing to give Frank his monthly living allowance while Frank was in college.

I asked Dr. Kowalski what the difference was between where Dr. Kowalski was now and wherever he thought it would be for him when he wasn’t being “taken advantage of?” If Frank wasn’t going to put in whatever effort Dr. Kowalski thought Frank should be doing to get better, where would that put them? Dr. Kowalski feared that this bond, yes maybe a bond somewhat founded on illness but still a bond between him and his son, would fail.

Their relationship, true, has strengthened, like an Indian trail that is treaded down daily on the forest floor from their repeatedly hashing out the anxiety. If that changed, Dr. Kowalski feared that maybe Frank would not see much reason to call Dr. Kowalski. Maybe what Frank valued in his dad was just that.

Dr. Kowalski told me that he believed there was, in reality, a sustainable bond between them. But Frank? He didn’t know what Frank would believe.

Dr. Kowalski and I rolled this story around in the air between us. After a stretch of disclosing his sincere grief, real fears, and underbelly of sorts, Dr. Kowalski decided, rather than starting with what he would stop giving and doing for Frank, he’d like to ask Frank,

What do you think your life would look like if you didn’t have this anxiety? Who would you be? Who would we be?

Dr. Kowalski said, “I’d love to find out.”

Self-care tip: Start with open-ended questions with yourself and look ahead.

Question: What is keeping you where you are and where would you be if it weren’t?

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The Path of More Resistance, and Brain Health

 

The bar hummed with the energy of human emotion.  It was one of the few places Alfred could still smoke in public. He remembered the first time he was directed to a smoking area in the airport that looked like an enclosure for zoo animals, with glass walls, and positioned in the line of traffic. What in the world?! So Alfred felt unjudged at the bar, and also pumped up.

Alfred got energy from being with people – gravitated to them like a little brother follows his big sister around. If it was the bar, or the smoke break, Alfred got energy if he wasn’t alone. He absorbed every moment, marinated in it no matter how brief. The “moment” was his forever, for however long that moment would last. He was inside the color, flavor, aroma, texture, and song. He noticed. And, Alfred grazed. Amongst ideas, people, choices, and of most anything that came into his field of vision, he chewed it up in that space of time, and then moved on without guilt. Generally people didn’t hold grudges when he moved on. Alfred was just so nice!

When Alfred was in sync with his energy, senses, feelings, and perceptions, and his wife was in sync with her own, she looked at him like he was someone she was interested in. He could make her laugh and play, whereas she was never normally someone who was playful. This was nectar to Alfred’s pollinator.

Out of sync, however, Alfred’s wife called him names when they argued. He was “flakey,” or “narrow-minded.”  And Alfred, awkward with conflict, developed the habit of escaping during those times. He did not like conflict.

Alfred began to drink a lot more alcohol. After work instead of going straight home, he’d “catch a few beers with the guys”. When entertaining clients he started joining them when he offered alcoholic beverages to his clients, imbibing during work hours. His work performance started to smell sour like his alcohol.

You can see where this is going for Alfred. When he came into my office, he reported his inability to enjoy anything, increasing hopelessness, and now when he left the bar in the evening, his mood regularly plummets, a false weight in the scale of life.

Alfred looked at me with a degree of distrust, expecting judgment. But of course, he was also coming to me for judgment – an evaluation and diagnosis, and then to present a plan for treatment.

The treatment plan was short this day. Go to alcohol rehabilitation. Telling Alfred that there was nothing else we could do for him until he engaged in a rehab, was nerve-racking for me. (I never know how a patient will respond after similar directives like this. Sometimes they are not kind. Especially when talking about their substances or addictions, of any sort.)

Alfred stood up, a bit like a mechanical man, thanked me for his contact referrals, and left. I thought that was the last time I’d get to see him. It’s impossible not to hope for the best.

The deal with brain illness is that the treatments I am able to offer in an outpatient setting are ineffective in this context. Other stuff going into the body hits those brain receptors, turning genes on and off, like Wile E. Coyote in the back country. It would be enabling the mal-behavior if I diverted our focus onto anything else. Even so, like so many in the company of users, it is wilting not being able to offer more.

About two months later, I was completely surprised when Alfred came back sober! He told me he did just what we talked about, and rehabilitated. More surprising though, was his statement,

Thank you for refusing to treat me. You saved my life.

Alfred was still married, and yes, the marriage was still volatile. But he wasn’t plugging his ears and disconnecting from his wife with alcohol. It was a start. And Alfred still had restarts available to him.

We did end up starting psychotropic medication and psychotherapy, with which Alfred continued to heal.

I am humbled by Alfred’s courage to pursue rehab, the path of more resistance, and recognize that I should never underestimate the same courage in others when they present similarly.

Self-care tip:  Taking the path of more resistance may bring just what we are hoping for.

Question: What have you done courageously? Where has it taken you? Please tell your story!

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The Sins of the Fathers, and Mental Health

 

“We know the Bible speaks of sins of the fathers passing to the 3rd and 4th generations while God imbues his kindness and mercy far beyond that to those who love him and keep his commandments.”

Rosa had no experience in the world of mental health, or so she thought. She had spent her formative years studying the world through the perspective of her church and interpretations of the Bible. As you know, there is a lot in both with a lot to say about emotions and behaviors. However Rosa was taught and modelled that these were moral issues and not biological. An either or, verses, part of the same thing. Could we call it sequent variants, maybe something like genetic alleles? Or maybe something better to describe this is out there, rather than an either or.

Rosa Leticia Montoya, at this point in her development, with her own overwhelming emotions and her husband’s plummet into dark moods, felt forced into considering mental health. She did not want to go there, but here in the space of losing control, not trusting herself or Carl any more, and before she was willing to say she didn’t trust God, she was doing what was a last resort. Considering that she was going crazy was the only thing this chaos could mean.

Before she completely surrendered to the idea that biology was behind this sinister change, she had to ask, “Is this because of our parents?” She had spent her life trying to untwist the bad choices her parents had made and the consequences those choices had on her life. Drugs, alcohol, and cheating were what she had grown up with. Quietly. Hiding it in the church. Rosa there, praying a lot to live well and be forgiven. Praying that bad thoughts would go away. Praying to depend on God and not on herself, as seen through her perseverating worries ever since she was a child. Worried and worried. Not speaking of the wrong Bible-breaking life her parents wore like underwear beneath nice tailored clothes. Would she ever be forgiven? Would she ever stop sinning?

So she asked me, “What do you think?”

That’s a lot to work with as a psychiatrist. So I did what most of us do. Ran to the shelter of medicine. Whew! But there is the added benefit that God created medicine, psychiatry, and all that there is in my tool bag worth working with.

Even so, there was only so long that I could avoid the topic of God and His punishments, per her perspective. It came up every visit.

If you believe in God, at some point within your discovery of mental health, this question will come up. Rosa is not alone. Are the emotions and behaviors gone amok, such as seen in anxiety disorders and depression, secondary to moral weakness? Living with “too little” dependence on God’s power? Is it this? Or is it an “either or”, with our biology? …a matter of cellular grey matter composed of DNA-expressing pathology? And is this something evil woven into my DNA because of what parents did? Well, I’ve spent 30-some years in school and now 15+ years in practice in this space and am still trying to understand.

I’m wondering if you would help me articulate this. It’s fundamental for us in self-care. It’s not possible to be very friendly to ourselves with the dissonance.

So in our self-care question today, please answer us. What is the relationship between “the sins of the fathers” and biology? Please speak!

Self-care Tip: Pursue kindness in your belief systems toward yourself.

Thank you for speaking with us! Keep on!

Portrait of an Old Woman
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Portrait of an Old Woman

It is New Year. Another year.

Another year older. I hate getting older.

I joke about it – about forgetting a name here and searching for a word there, about new wrinkles, about an age spot, about the difficulty of getting rid of a flab around the stomach. But it bothers me. It feels as if somehow every day I am getting closer to being a smaller, weaker me with less ‘me’ in it.

Couple of days ago, I stumbled onto a new app on the phone that ages your picture for you. Supposedly, this will make you friendlier towards your future self, so you will take care of it better. Well, ‘it’ being me, really. Obviously. I knew that.

I found a picture of me on the phone I thought looked like ‘me’. The ‘me’ I know. The ‘me’ I like. I hit the “aging” button on the app…

****************************

I had come to visit Mrs Beren.

Her face looked small and fragile against the white hospital sheets. Old. Quite a bit older than her fifty-nine years, in fact. With so many chronic diseases, it was no wonder.

She had put on lipstick, I saw. Not a bright garish red I would have expected from someone who was vain enough to bother with makeup while being in the intensive care unit. No, it was a tasteful light pink that did not clash too strongly with her tired and pale face, wrung out from endless nights on a hospital mattress.

She was a strong woman, I knew. Not her body – that was weak – but her mind. I had always been fascinated by it for the years I had known her.

Strictly speaking, I didn’t have a reason to be here, monitoring her progress with the disease that had landed her in the hospital, for the umpteenth time. She had everything wrong with her. She could no longer walk due to neurological damage and depended on her husband to lift her from the chair to bed at night, and back to the chair in the morning. Her kidneys had failed her and her husband brought her to dialysis three times a week. Just this year, she had been in the hospital with pneumonia, urinary tract infection and now again with fever and sepsis that the doctors had not found a reason for yet.

Mrs Beren was not my patient.

Her husband was.

I had no reason to be here.

But her husband had asked me. I had run into him unexpectedly in the hospital hallway, looking out of place and out of sorts. I had been surprised to see him – he was one of my healthier patients, with a minor heart problem, who I saw for routine visits only once a year. He always came with his wife who drove herself into the room in a motorized red wheelchair. I had been confused by it at first – why bother coming to her husband’s appointments when clearly she was so much sicker than he? But after a few visits, I realized that this was their life. The edges of individual lives had blurred. It was a unit, with her being the guiding force. It had always been the two of them, all their lives since they were teenagers. When I asked questions from Mr Beren, the wife answered half of the time. They joked about how the new reliance on a wheelchair for transport no longer allowed them to enjoy traveling that they had been fond of in the earlier days of marriage. When I asked for a report on his exercising, it was the wife who proudly told me how she pushes him to go for a walk each evening – with her driving her motorized wheelchair, right next to him. They told me about the adjustments of their house they had to make, about the new car they had to buy. The life in their little unit had changed to accommodate her increasing disability but at the core they were still the same people.

I had not asked for their life story. It had just naturally flown out of them, piece by piece, over the years’ worth of visits.

So here I was, staring at Mrs Beren’s pink lipstick.

“I ran into Roy in the hallway”, I started. “He told me you could use a visit.”

“Good old Roy”. She looked up, pensive. “How did he seem?”

Confused by the question, I hesitated slightly. “He seemed … well. Worried, of course. About you. I know you have not had it easy lately.”

“No.” I could see she was testing the words before speaking. “I don’t think it will get any better, frankly. And I am pretty tired of being sick. I just don’t know what will happen to Roy when I’m gone. He is not strong.”

Implications were heavy between us. Not strong like her, getting herself to all her husband’s appointments in a wheelchair. Not strong like her, worried about her husband while lying deathly ill in the intensive care. Not strong like her, making herself pretty with lipstick on what she thought may be the last days of her life.

***********************

After I first hit the “aging” button, I slammed the phone down. The woman who had looked back at me from the picture was old. Heavily wrinkled, with saggy skin and grey hair.

Also, unmistakably me. It was chilling. Unnerving. A little nauseating.

I picked up the phone again and tried to look past the wrinkles. The confident pose I had liked on the initial picture was still there. The sparkle of enjoyment in the eyes was still there. The smile of general happiness with life was still there. It was me. Old – yes, but still ‘me’.

It made me feel better. The woman on the picture wasn’t smaller or lesser. Just different.

I don’t have a choice in getting older. But as a colleague and friend likes to point out frequently, the alternative is far worse. So, I can choose how I get older. I can choose to be the “me” I like even when old. I can choose to be strong even when sick.

I can choose to put on the lipstick.

 

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Portrait of an Old Woman, by Guido Reno

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My Inner Demons and I are on the Same Side – Living in the Now

“I stop fighting my inner demons. We’re on the same side now. T-shirt”

― Darynda Jones, Second Grave on the Left

 

Monday came. I was not ready to tackle the day. I lay in bed a few minutes longer while I started to dread and plan for the day’s appointments, calculating drive times, meals, and accommodate everyone else’s schedules before I had even thought to blink open my eyes.

It dawned on me at some point that I was living out a day that hadn’t even begun yet.

The anxiety of the impending tasks, or the overwhelm that comes with trying to handle everything before it arrives, you know this too? The exhaustion that eventually overtakes us makes us ridiculously absolutely not excited about our lives.

Living in the future instead of now is like sprinting ahead of our own feet, if only we could! The only task we have to do is to actually wake up.

Continue reading →

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Stigma from Religion

I’m just leaning on God.

Which was her reasoning for stopping her Lexapro.

Nora’s family lashed out angrily at her. “Why are you so horrible!”

Her husband had left her for another woman from their church, a “friend” of Nora’s who used to come to their house for movie nights. He said, “You’re like poison, Nora. I’m not happy any more with you.”

Nora had now lost her job. She couldn’t focus and cried too much at work. Her supervisor told her, “You are not the same.”

Nora decided she wasn’t going to take her medications any longer because what she needed was more faith to be well and to get her life back. Her plan for recovery from debilitating depression and paralyzing anxiety was to be more dependent on God by way of certain practices, mainly not taking her medication. Although she didn’t see her plan for recovery quite so transparently. She thought it was through prayer and sincere intention to be God’s rehabilitation appurtenant.

Nora did say she was still taking her anticholesterol medication. And so we spoke about the important related perspectives between what Nora saw to be “medical” verses “spiritual” illness.

  • First to lead into the matters, “What are you taking your Crestor for?”
  • Where does cholesterol come from in our bodies?
  • Where do emotions and behaviors come from?
  • Is there a spiritual element that has a relationship to high cholesterol?  How about to emotions and behaviors?
  • Is there a medical change that causes the disease of hypercholesterolemia? How about emotions and behaviors?
  • Why be willing to take medication for a spiritual illness of hypercholesterolemia? Wink.

Nora, it turned out, loved where this conversation took her thoughts. It was hard to encounter inconsistencies in her religious beliefs and practices. But she did because she is a woman of courage!

It got me thinking about what role our cultures, related to religion, play into our emotional health. Is there a source of stigma against getting life saving medical treatment for mental illness that we are missing simply from the religious culture we are quietly woven into through life?  Randy Travis’s song lyrics, “I hear tell the road to hell is paved with good intentions…” implies that we in religion justify the collateral damage, such as death and ruined lives by mental illness, by the belief in the greater good. I’m sure I do this too in my own unconscious way. And isn’t that what this post is all about? I want to take a big stick to this glass and shatter it! (Aggressive much? Smile.)

When I think of Nora, sometimes I can’t believe she actually is taking medication and doing so well now in her life journey. It’s a miracle.

Self-Care Tip: Explore the role religion is in your opinion toward medical treatment.

Questions: How does religion interweave into your stigmas? Or those you’ve broken through? 

Or maybe it’s the opposite. Religion has contributed to your self care and medical choices?

Please speak! We need to hear you!

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“The devil is talking to me.”Briefly on God and Psychiatry

“The devil is talking to me.”

Her lips shaped words but her voice was like a robot. 

My gorgeous tall black thin framed model-bodied patient looked at me with a face that barely moved. Almost flat. Her eyes rarely blinked, with orbs that seemed to jump out at me when she spoke. 

This is Talia, a 3.8 GPA college grad last year who just started her first job in marketing. She has been a Jehovas Witness for about ten years and is passionate about her God and religion. She has been attending church related meetings lately about 6-7 days a week and loves to read her Bible for hours. However, over the past six months when she reads the devil and his minions cuss loudly in a cacoffany of foul persecutory language. She is afraid all the time and has high inner tension. 

Talia cannot sleep any longer for more than a few hours at a time. She has been losing weight. She has lost her job, and is panicking, terrified to read her Bible or go to church. 

Her family says she is talking to herself, and has “crazy eyes”.  They do not know what to think. Maybe she is possessed as well as crazy. Maybe both. 

Is Talia possessed by the devil? Is Talia crazy?

I was in Los Angeles this summer with my kids, walking on Hollywood Blvd. We passed several people who were responding to internal stimuli. One extremely saddening lady was slumped against a shadowed corner sitting in her own piss leaking down the street, her shirt half open, as she spoke to various targets. My kids were afraid. We were all, frankly, sad. My kids did wonder, too, were these people possessed by the devil?

Have you ever wondered if the devil was talking to you? Or working on you? 

The question is, if you want to ask this, rather ask, “What does this say about the character of God?” Included in all the biology explanations and psychosocial intersections, we bring the magical and spiritual. If you ask about the devil, ask rather about God. What does this say about God?

Talia had been adhering to her treatments and now celebrates that she is able to read her Bible again, go to her religions meetings, and has even driven around a parking lot once with a family member in the seat beside her. She is sleeping through the night, able to enjoy life, the simple and large things like the touch of shower water or taking a walk. 

When Talia hears voices, she no longer believes the voices come from the devil but rather demonstrate that she has missed something bad inside of herself that she hasn’t yet surrendered. I asked her, “What does that tell you about God? The character of God.”

We are so quick to assign nonbiological causality to emotions, thoughts and behaviors. It turns out that when the brain gets sick, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors generally go the direction of bad, rather than “good.” Naturally we ascribe moral value to what we are culturally primed to believe has moral value – emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. The question becomes, “What does it say about who God is when we do this?”

I like to think about the character of God. It is a picker upper. When I get enmeshed in some line of thought that demonstrates a poor reflection on Gods character, I figure at some point that I’m not seeing things clearly. It’s always a relief. I don’t know it all. If it says horrible things about God’s character, than I must have some misinformation or misinterpretation. 

Others may say rather, I am misreading Gods character as good. That’s not a perspective that is friendly to me in the end. One of the reasons I reject it. 

Self care tip: Ask yourself, “What does this say about God’s character?”

Questions: Have you ever wondered if the devil was talking to you? Or working on you? 

Do you ascribe moral value to emotions, thoughts, and behaviors?

What does it say about who God is?

This one chance
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This one chance

My morning clinic had been hectic but not very interesting. I felt bad for the student who had been assigned to me – we had not seen any unusual cardiac pathology. Instead, we had heard a long litany by a patient with a recent heart attack who for the life of him could not stop smoking, and been forced to listen to a tirade by an anxious wife who was unhappy with her husband’s nursing home and wanted to take him home for end-of-life care. A large part of that visit had consisted of calming the wife, and hunting down a new oxygen canister to replace the empty one that the nursing home had forgotten to check on when they sent the patient on his way to my appointment.

I sure hoped the next case would offer something more exciting for the student. It was a new consult, an elderly man, wheeled into the office by his wife. When I asked him if he could get out of the wheelchair, he easily acquiesced though I could tell his wife was uneasy. She didn’t say anything, though – it seemed that this was the custom, defer to the husband. He tried to flop onto the exam table, steadying himself with the cane – and almost fell. The student jumped to catch him, eagerly – he was a freshman, in the beginning of his first year, and had not seen a real patient until that day, so to him, catching a patient from a fall was new. The patient grumbled that he was ok, and the wife rolled her eyes.

As we talked further, I couldn’t quite figure out why this patient had been sent to a cardiologist – he had some nonspecific complaints that I could not entirely make sense of, either because he was a bad historian by nature, or had become one after his stroke. His wife tried to supplement the history but due to her language barrier and her general reluctance to take the center stage in the storytelling she was not much help either. In the end, I decided that an objective cardiac test would help alleviate everyone’s concerns, and ordered it. I then spent another half of the visit going over heart-healthy lifestyle, and addressing other, not-heart-related safety and preventive issues that I thought were important for him, such as walking safely, getting physical therapy and doing regular exercises to prevent falling.

After the visit, I helped to wheel the patient back to the waiting room, and saw a little girl jump up from the chair and run over to take the wheelchair away from me. “Our grand-daughter”, the wife said. Oh.

I turned toward the girl: “How old are you?” She proudly extended all the fingers on one hand: “Five!” Somewhat surprised that the little girl had been left all alone in the waiting room, I nevertheless tried to make some conversation.

“So,” I offered somewhat lamely and predictably, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A cop!” came a self-assured and unhesitating response.

The girl then looked at me, pondering, her brunette curly mop shaking, gold earrings glittering, and then offered somewhat less confidently, “And a doctor.” After a moment, the curls bounced again. “Yes, a cop, AND a doctor”.

I smiled. The student laughed. We said our good-byes to the patient and his wife and returned to the exam room to finish the paperwork.

As I stood at the desk, however, I found my attention wandering. I saw other little girls in my mind – myself at age five, uncertain and shy, my little niece at the same age, more confident in what she wants but not sure yet of her place in life. My feet took me back to the waiting room.

“Here,” I offered the ears of my stethoscope to the little girl who was still guiding her grandfather’s wheelchair, “Do you want to hear what your heart sounds like?”

“YESSS!” the enthusiastic reply came quickly.

“Ok, here is your heart – ‘tick-tock, tick-tock’ … and here are your lungs, ‘whoosh-whoosh’ – can you hear it?”

The curls bobbed up and down again as the girl turned to her grandmother, spell-bound: “That was my heart! Gramma, I could hear my heart!”

After I had retrieved my stethoscope from the small hands, the student and I parted the second time and went back to the exam room. While I was trying to make some teaching points about the case, the excited squeals were still very audible from the waiting room, “The doctor! My heart! It went tock-tock! I could hear it!”

The student laughed again. “And just like that, you changed this girl’s career trajectory for life,” he offered, jokingly.

Well. Probably not. But who knows? One chance is all it takes sometimes.

Maybe the little girl will become a doctor. Maybe the man with a heart attack will stop smoking. Maybe the wife of the seriously ill patient will be less distraught, knowing she can call on my help. Maybe the elderly man will not fall at home.

Maybe.

***********

I never got the name of the little girl. I don’t remember the name of her grandfather. By next week, I will not remember the name of the first-year student who spent the day observing my clinic. They will likely not remember my name. I got this one chance with all of them.

One chance. Every day, filled with one-time chances.

That is a lot of maybes.

***********

Self-care tip: Watch for one-time chances in your everyday life. It may make a change – albeit small – in your life or in someone else’s.

Question: Do you recall a time when you took a one-time chance, or missed one? Tell us your story.

 

It’s not my fault
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It’s not my fault

The new on-call resident – Jonathan, I think was his name? – was trying to present another admission to me. He was visibly annoyed.

“…so, the ER calls me and says, you have a patient with chest pain, and I say, what kind of chest pain, and they say, oh, we don’t know, but the patient needs to be admitted, and then I go down and try to talk to this guy, and he is just the worst historian in the world and just stares at me, and says I don’t understand him, and…”

I cut through the never-ending sentence. “Let’s just go down and see him together, hm?”

The light was on in the ER urgent room but I couldn’t really see the patient. The gurney had its rails pulled up, and I could make out a small lump breathing heavily under the blanket. We stepped closer and I called out,“Mr Jones? We came to see you, can you come out from under the blanket?”

The top of a knitted cap made an appearance, with two dark eyes peering out from under it. “Mr Jones?” I tried again. “I hear you were having some chest pain? Are you still having any now?”

The eyes got suspicious. “Ahah,” came a noncommittal reply.

“Well, can you tell me more about it?” I persisted.

“I waited until the morning”, was a cryptic response.

“What do you mean, you waited until the morning?”

The resident interrupted. “He was actually here last night and was sent home, and he came back today morning saying he has chest pain.”

I looked at Mr Jones again. It is not uncommon for patients who have no place to be, to complain about chest pain as they know it is a sure way to get admitted. This guy really did look sick, however. After some grumbling, he sat up for an exam. Clearly, he was in decompensated heart failure, and had been for a while. I motioned to Jonathan to step outside the room. “Is there anything about heart failure in the chart?” I asked him. “Yes, he has had heart failure for a while now – methamphetamines,” he added quietly under his breath, “EF, ten percent, but noncompliant with treatment, still meth positive last month though he denies using”. EF stands for ejection fraction – the normal being 60 percent – the lower it is, the weaker the heart muscle. I glanced at the monitor – heart rate at hundred and ten, blood pressure 80 systolic – he really should have been admitted last night. The ER attending had completely missed the heart failure part. I suppose Mr Jones didn’t make it easy.

I tried to get a little more information. “Mr Jones, when you say you waited until the morning, where exactly were you waiting? Did you go home?” The patient was evasive. From the bits and pieces of his broken sentences, it became obvious that he had somehow hid himself on the hospital grounds all night and come back to the emergency room when he thought the shift had changed and he would get a chance with a new physician. I decided not to press him further until he had gotten a little better.

As the day progressed, more wrinkles appeared in Mr Jones’s case. It turned out he had been diagnosed with a lung mass two years earlier and biopsies and surgical follow-up appointments had been scheduled that Mr Jones had not kept. He had not seen a health care provider other than the emergency room for at least couple of years. His heart disease was thought to be related to his drug use – initially, he had admitted heavy methamphetamine and alcohol use that he now denied. Unsurprisingly, his urine drug screen still came back positive.

****

The next day, Jonathan and I went to see our patient again. He was breathing a little better but had an expressionless look that was speaking louder than any words. I decided to press for words.

“Mr Jones, what do you know about your cancer?”

Blank eyes turned toward the wall.

“Well, they said I had one but then that’s the last I heard about it, couple of years ago.”

“Why didn’t you keep your appointments then?”

The eyes blinked rapidly. “Well, I didn’t know I was supposed to keep them, did I? They didn’t tell me what I was supposed to do…” The tail-end of the sentence ebbed away as Mr Jones was feebly trying to come up with a justification. The defense was half-hearted, as if he knew there was really nothing to say, and nothing he said changed anything anyway.

Jonathan at my side was struggling to remain silent. As a young physician, he was taught to help people, and it was frustrating to him that the help had not been accepted. Mr Jones was a veteran – all the healthcare for his cancer would have been free. Now it was too late. For Jonathan, it seemed like a failure, and what young physician likes that?

****

In the end, we were able to stabilize Mr Jones’s heart failure but his cancer was already spread to most of his body and could not be treated. He was no longer able to take care of himself, and was packed off to the nursing home for the rest of his short days.

It had been a good learning case for the residents – not because Mr Jones had presented a medical challenge – but because he had taught the limitations in our communication skills. We had never been able to engage Mr Jones in any meaningful way, and he remained as absent on the day of discharge as he had been on admission.

As an attending physician, I struggled to make sense of it to myself, so I could explain it to my residents. Was it supposed to make sense? Had we failed somehow, or was the outcome already determined before we got involved?

I tried to put myself in Mr Jones’s shoes, knowing for years that he had cancer but putting it out of his mind. Was he sorry now? Or was the current indifferent attitude merely an acceptance of his fate, knowing deep down that he would rather have chosen those carefree years again, living alone in his trailer, drinking, smoking cigarettes and weed, and allowing himself a hit of meth whenever he could spare the money? He had missed countless procedures and surgeries, doctor visits, blood draws, and lectures by the likes of me about his drug habit. Now in the end of these years, the choice was no longer his.

Remembering the vacant stare, I suspect Mr Jones may not have known himself.

****

I told Jonathan that he had done well, and that he should not give up on people. I suspect there will be time for more cynical life lessons later.

 

Self-care tip: Good intentions do not always result in good outcomes. Recognize when your help is not accepted – it is not your fault.

Question: Have you felt helpless in a face of suffering or personal struggle, and found yourself unable to help? Tell us your story.

Doctor, no offense but I don’t want to see you
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Doctor, no offense but I don’t want to see you

It was already close to the end of the workday in my clinic but there was still a new consult to see. It was the usual – a recent heart attack with diabetes, metabolic syndrome and hypertension. Pardon me, I meant to say – there was a new patient named Mr Lowry with the above-mentioned medical conditions.

I went through the chart quickly – some of the medications could be further optimized, blood pressure could be better controlled, the weight would have to come down. I asked the patient the usual questions – no, no recent chest pain; yes, he can walk for couple of blocks until his knees start hurting; yes, he quit smoking; no, he has not been able to lose weight. Mr Lowry answered the questions readily enough though he did not offer additional information or ask questions.

I asked him to take off his jacket and get on the exam table for a quick physical. As I leaned closer to help him push the T shirt up to listen to his heart, I could see there was writing on the shirt. I could only make out the word “today” as the shirt was riding up on Mr Lowry’s generously sized belly. “What’s written on the shirt?” I asked, curious. I received the first smile of the visit, and Mr Lowry pulled the shirt down so I could see. I DIDN’T WANT TO BE HERE TODAY, the shirt read. As I puzzled, my patient burst out laughing. “This is my hospital shirt”, he explained. “I wear this to all my doctor visits. My wife knows that it needs to be washed every time I have an appointment”.

The smug joke masked a deeper truth – my patient was trying to set his own narrative for his medical appointments. He didn’t want to be “recent non-ST-elevation MI, diabetes, obesity”. He was “Mr Lowry who doesn’t want to be sick”.

There is something freeing in naming the negative emotion. It is now out there and identified. In regards to Mr Lowry, it made it easier for me to find the motivation for lifestyle change – “you need to take your medications, lose weight, etc – so that you don’t have to see me anymore”.

Over the next day, I kept going back to the shirt. Is it somehow more powerful to elicit a negative emotion rather than positive one? Politicians certainly know that fear moves people to vote more than a desire for a positive change. The generic “you should exercise to be healthy” is less motivating than “you should exercise so that you wouldn’t get a heart attack”. It is especially motivating if the heart attack has already happened once – now the fear has teeth. When I ask my patients what is the most important thing I can do to help them, the answer often comes in negatives: “I don’t want to be short of breath”, “I don’t want to be tired after walking 10 steps”, “I don’t want to be in the hospital”, “I don’t like the hospital food”.

Few weeks ago, Mr Herkel was admitted to my hospital service. He was an epitome of a healthy 53-year old – slim, fit, didn’t smoke, exercised regularly. Part of the reason he had kept himself healthy was his bad genetic lottery – most of the men on his father’s side of the family had already had heart attacks or died by his age. And now, when he had developed chest pain that refused to go away, he anxiously checked himself into the emergency room. The type of chest pain he had was not especially worrisome – but due to the significant family history, we did a thorough workup nevertheless. His careful lifestyle had counteracted his genetics – the tests showed no heart disease. Mr Herkel’s relief was palpable. “No offense, doctor,” were his parting words, “but I sure hope I will never have to see you again!”

As for Mr Lowry, I am waiting for him to come back one day with a different T-shirt. The one that says, I DIDN’T NEED TO BE HERE TODAY.

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Self-care tip: Sometimes, a powerful negative emotion may be a motivation for positive changes in your life. But you have to name the emotion first and evaluate it. Be smart.

Question: Have you had a negative emotion change your life for the better?  Tell us your story.

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Blue Corvette and Cowboy Boots

Some people love their cars and some people don’t.

I drive a Honda Civic – a perfectly serviceable car. It hasn’t been washed for half a year – after all, there is water restriction in California, or so I tell myself. There is a dent in the back bumper from that time when I tried to parallel park and a post magically appeared behind my car. I haven’t bothered to fix that dent nor the scratches that the car got when I fearlessly drove through a felled tree on the road. It’s not that I don’t love my car. I just love its functionality more than its appearance.

Several years ago, as I was walking to my job at the hospital, I saw a colleague getting out of an electric blue Corvette. The car was beautiful – compact, sleek, sparkling in the sunlight. My colleague happens to be not only a very tall but also a somewhat heavy man, so he had some difficulty getting out of the car – the Corvette was not made for his body habitus. Nevertheless, he looked positively radiant. I asked him later, “Why did you spend so much money on an expensive car that is too small for you and does not have that much functionality?” (perhaps I haven’t mentioned that I am not a very polite person). His answer surprised me. “It makes me happy”, he said. “When I get up in the morning and think about facing the day in front of me, I know there is always a bright spot in the beginning – I get to drive my Corvette to work. And that makes me happy.”

I pondered this. There was no way any blue Corvette was going to make me happy. Even a bright orange Aston Martin couldn’t make me happy. And I like orange. But I had to admit that I could not judge my colleague or somehow downplay his joy over something I didn’t understand. People are different. Happiness is relative, and in the eyes of the perceiver.

Over the years, I have had many conversations with my patients about what makes them happy. I have started looking at it as part of the treatment for their heart disease. People who can name sources of their happiness are usually more motivated to take their medications and to follow the lifestyle advice. Additionally, there is a small secret that the physicians may not tell their patients – and I just exposed it in case any of my patients happen to read this blog – tying the lifestyle advice to the sources of happiness makes it more likely to work. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – more often than not happiness comes in small packages. It can be a father, now less short of breath, able to play catch with his son. It can be a chronically ill patient now able to take an airline trip to see a new grandbaby. It can be singing a solo in church, making a trip to the grocery store, walking around the block.

Just recently, a patient I had not seen for few months, literally skipped into the room for his clinic appointment. “Are you seeing this?” he asked triumphantly, a big smile on his face. Well. Sometimes patients forget that I see dozens of them every day, and expect me to remember everything that was said at their last visit. I searched my brain as I was looking at him. Ah. The cowboy boots. Mr Golnach was wearing beautiful patent-leather ornately decorated boots that might as well have walked down from an expensive store window display. This had been his dream – to get his leg swelling down so he can finally put his beloved cowboy boots on. Clearly now, between better diet and regular medications, his heart failure was compensated well enough where the boots had become a possibility. “Isn’t this great,” he sighed happily. “Now I can die”.

Self-care tip: Find sources of happiness in your life, small and big. Naming them will add quality to your life, and keep you motivated to live better.

Question: Tell us your story about an unexpected source of happiness. 

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Sparks of Joy

The emerald green color had faded. The hem was somewhat frayed. The sleeves were a little tight. The old shirt stared at me as I was working my way through the closet and picking out things to give away. I knew there was no point in trying the thing on for the hundredth time – it hadn’t gotten less tight or old with the years. I had really liked the shirt at one time and worn it a lot but it really should have gone to the ‘give-away’ pile years ago.

I tried to figure out why the shirt was still in my closet. I had read about home organization guru Marie Kondo and her approach to cleaning and tidying – so I thought I would try. Kondo maintains that foundationally, we have relationships with our belongings, and we should spend some time figuring out which ones elicit strong feelings in us and which ones do not, so our lives don’t become cluttered. She calls it “sparks of joy”. I closed my eyes and held the old green shirt in my hand. I envisioned myself wearing it. No sparks of joy. Ok then, easy – throw-away pile it is. My hands were strangely reluctant and nudged the shirt back toward the closet. Interesting. I closed my eyes again and ran my fingers over the shirt. Ragged edge, stitching…slightly different stitching. I opened my eyes. There it was. My Mom had mended the shirt when she was visiting me, perhaps 10 years ago.

It’s not like I never see my Mom – I talk to her on Skype all the time, and I see her when I visit my home country every couple of years. We have a good relationship. She sends me things, so there is no need for the old shirt to remind me of her.

When I thought about it further, I realized there was more to it. My Mom, while still in relatively good health, no longer likes long travels. She has told me on more than one occasion that she doesn’t expect to undertake another trans-Atlantic journey from Europe. It has made me strangely sad. I don’t think it will change the frequency of me seeing her. But she will never again go through my closet and give her opinion on the clothes I wear. Or pick oranges from my tree. Or mend another shirt that I like but has loose stitching. Or plant new flowers in my garden.

I miss the thought of my Mom in my house. So, I compensate. I take my iPad to the garden when we Skype so I can show her how my avocado tree has recovered from the frost and how big the rose bush has gotten this year. I call her from the store to ask if I should buy a particular piece of clothing. I hold up the phone if she happens to call me when I am out with my friends so she can say hi (she really hates when I do that).

At the end of the day, I put the green shirt in a different pile in my closet. This is the pile that I keep for my nieces – in case they want to wear anything from there in the future. And I am keeping my own stitching skills alive – so I can offer to mend their clothes when I visit them.

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Self-care tip: Allow for things in your life to have a relationship with you. They don’t replace people but may paint richer shades to your life.

Question: Have you noticed that some things you own have more meaning besides their functionality? Any objects that attach to a special person in your mind? Tell us your story.

Links:

Identity that refused to fade
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Identity that refused to fade

“Who is changing this TV channel to cooking shows?” a nurse was asking, exasperation evident in her voice. “Every time I turn around, someone changes it, and I am sick of it.”

The voices from the ICU patient room were audible in the hallway. I stopped to listen before I entered the room.

“But the patient…” – the nursing student couldn’t quite get the word in. “What about the patient?”, the nurse interrupted. “I am sure the patient doesn’t want to watch some boring cooking show; here, I am changing it back to the news.”

I’m a hospital based cardiologist who does a lot of consultations. Today, 88-year old African American Mr Jaafir, very sick all over, including lungs and heart. A ventilator had been breathing for him for about a week and it didn’t look like he would be able to get off any time soon. Still, he was mostly awake; when people asked him questions, he was able to write the answers on the paper – the ventilator kept him from talking. During one of my earlier visits, I had run into his large family at the bedside – a younger stylish wife and several verbose sisters, all of them clearly attached to the patient, and eager to pass on his life stories.

The family had told me what the current nurse Marcy did not know – Mr Jaafir had been a chef, and a famous one at that! I had listened as they told me of his famous dishes – the ones that people traveled distances to sample, and were featured in local newspapers and TV shows. Not only was he well known for his restaurant cooking but his home was a central location for the whole neighborhood. I had also learned that being the center of attention had resulted in an interesting life with several marriages and numerous children and grandchildren.

I told all of that to Marcy.  She knit her eyebrows for a second to think and then chuckled, “So, Mr Jaafir, this is why you have been banging on the bedrails when the channel was changed?” The patient glared. Having been an authority figure to numerous family members and friends all his life, he did not take kindly to the loss of control. The cooking channel stayed on for the rest of the day. And for Marcy, Mr Jaafir now had an identity apart from being a random patient on the ventilator.

Over the next couple of weeks, the family and friends came and went. Mr. Jaafir stayed opinionated – the bedside table was littered with sheets of paper,  his directives with exclamation marks and triple underlines readily visible. However, his strong opinions could not sway his weakened body, and it finally gave up. He knew it before it happened, and his writing changed from “I want to go home” to “let me go”.

I stood at attention with the rest of the staff and his family when his body, covered by the American flag to honor his service to our country, was taken away to the morgue. I had admired the way this man had lived – with a strong sense of self, touching multiple lives on his way, taking care of his family, commanding strong respect in his career. Even more, I admired the way he had died. The formidable sense of self had accomplished a rare feat – retaining his identity while helpless in the ICU. He died as he had lived – strong, surrounded by family, firm in his insistence to choose his own path.

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Self-care tip: You are you. Don’t let people change that. Keep your identity.

Question: Have you felt your identity fading in difficult life situations, such as depression, sickness, and/or stress? Tell us your story.

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Dead kids and Mother’s Day 


To all the surviving mothers who celebrated this recent Mother’s Day without their children, lost to mental illness, we dedicate this post.  To the mom’s who have outlived their babies. To the mothers who have watched their boys and girls deteriorate slowly with piece meal pincing bites that brain illness has taken from them until they were gone. To the mommy’s of those who left them fast, at the end of a rope, under a car, at the point of a needle, or in the many bits of brain that a gun blows apart. 

I’m dedicating this post to the mothers who continue to live. Who remember more than the moment of their child’s death. Who celebrated on Mother’s Day the individual of her child that was more than his or her behaviors and emotions. 

This post is for the mothers who remain for us, we who need them still. We need you. Thank you for telling us your story and living with us, among us. For fighting for brain health, for freedom, we thank you. 

To the mothers who survive(d) the death of their children to mental illness, happy belated Mother’s Day. You are amazing to us. 

Today’s question is more of a request: Tell us your story please. 

Or, those of you who know these courageous women, and want to share, please do. We are listening. 

Self care tip: You tell me. How do you (they) do it?

Keep on.