I love history.
If my mother had been a history teacher and not a nurse, or if I had been exposed to more arts and less science as a kid, or any number of other variables had been in place, I would more than likely have gravitated towards the study of history as I moved through my college and postgraduate years. As it turned out, I majored in chemistry, minored in biology, applied and was accepted to medical school, did a four year psychiatric residency, and became a shrink.
Now I talk to people and take histories. Lots of them. Hundreds. Thousands even. Stories about the past. What makes people tick. What makes them make the decisions they make and repeat the mistakes that get them into trouble. What motivates them. Sometimes it drives me to distraction, but I love it. Seriously. The problem with all this history taking is that all of us, the patients, the doctors, the therapists and me, all of us get so wrapped up in what has been and what might have been and what should have been that we forget to look forward. We don’t look towards making things better and different because we are wallowing in the things in the past that made us feel so terrible and disenfranchised and sick. We repeat the stories. We repeat the actions. We repeat the mistakes. We repeat the patterns. We. Are. Stuck.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
I am making a promise to myself in 2012.
Notice that I did not say a resolution, because I dislike resolutions. I am going to keep on taking histories and delving into the past with patients because that is what I am trained to do professionally. However, my time here with you is going to take a different tack.
Here, I’m going to write the future.
I’m going to think ahead. I’m going to think big. I’m going to think outlandish. I’m going to have a lot of “why not?” thoughts. I’m going to dream.
I hope you will come with me. I hope you will dream and scheme and think big. We may come up with some good ideas here.
Happy 2012. Let’s write the future shall we?
DEAR GREG…LET ME SNEAK UP ON YOU ..THIS IS A VOICE FROM THE PAST YOUR OLD ART TEACHER THAT DIDNT GET YOU ON THE FIRST SHOT…..YOU CLAIM NOT TO BE AN ARTIST BUT I TELL YOU GOOD PHOTOGRAPHT AND STORY TELLING ARE ARTS…..I WAS YOUNG IN THE BUSINESS WHEN I TAUGHT YOU BUT LATER AS I MATURED I EXPANDED MY SHARING OF ART TO INCLUDE ANYTHING YOU DO TO EXPRESS YOURSELF IS ART…I WILL FOLLOW YOUR TRACK THIS YEAR AND SEE WHERE YOU GO..I INVITE TO READ MY DAILY NOTES AS I RAMBLE THROUGH MY “GOLDEN YEARS” MY SOMETIMES THEME FOR THIS YEAR WILL “DO SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF TODAY” NICE TO CATCH YOU BILL AMOS
Hi Bill
Happy New Year!
I really appreciate your reading and taking a gander at photos and anything else you choose to do. Welcome!
I do like reading your observations on life. Keep them coming.
Great to hear from you.
Greg
You might have been a different PROFESSION but you would have always been a healer doing what you loved. Because you are a healer who writes the future and creates.
Thank you! (You have created more joy and more peace and more joy in my life than you will ever know !)
Melissa
Very kind of you.
I like to think that I can lend some small something to the blogosphere and the world.
Greg
Love this. What a great idea-I’m in!!
Jackie
Good deal!
I’ll be watching!
Greg
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Greg,
As a patient, and as someone very interested in health (just got accepted into international public health and am starting to apply for med school…… fingers crossed!)
I often wonder; is it just me or is there an inherent level of judging and inequality in the relationship between the psychiatrist and the patient.
I know enough about myself and from other people that I have spoken to that there is in no sense ‘fault’ or ‘blame’ in many psychiatric and psychological problems and that these ‘problems’ or the manifestation thereof are the result of bad luck/ bad genes, or often a combination of bad genes, crappy early environments or the result of stressors that no one should have to bear.
And in my experience I have encountered a few psychiatrists who seem to treat patients as if they were the scum of the earth, as if they had massive problems and they are unable to cope with life. As if it was their fault, and that if only they knew this and changed then they wouldn’t be ‘sick’ anymore. Now, while I personally think these doctors are ‘dicks’ and the poor things probably hate their lives and certainly hate their jobs.
The profession (and in a sense your post) still has this sense that the patients life, actions and choices need to be examined to find the faults and the errors. And due to this nature that many iatrists seem to have of this whole distant, blank slate thing, which, I understand has its reasons. They give is this impression that the doctor has never made any faults in their life, and that the patient needs to be examined for their own mistakes.
Remembering, that as opposed to many other diseases which are a result of a cellular pathology, this pathology is a part of the persons identity, behaviour and, in a sense their ‘life’, who they are and who they perceive themselves to be.
And I do know, and have experienced that treatment entails giving back the patient their life and making it full and whole again, or at least shutting up those voices for a while……..
How does a physician act to treat a patient with dignity and compassion while carrying out the therapeutic process? While ill I have only once encountered a doctor who empathised that my experience was scary and horrible, and only once has a doctor ever given me the hope that I would get better again, as much as I doubted it at the time. And most of my recovery processes have involved drug titration until I’ve returned to some level of sanity, as opposed to any forms of therapy. (The only therapy I have had relates to ptsd, and that was carried out while I was ‘well’ and despite flashbacks at no stage was I vulnerable to low self esteem, feelings of persecution or as if my self was being faulted and the errors being pointed out.)
From my impressions of the practice of medicine, much focuses on the cellular and pathologic processes, but a significant portion of what makes a ‘good’ physician is in the care provided to patients.
So my question:
How does a psychiatrist do their job, provide therapy and yet maintain what seems essential in other areas of medicine. In which you show the patient empathy, and give them hope and don’t make them feel like a specimen or enhance those horrible feelings that a patient would be subject to while unwell? (and avoid the sticky transference, personal disclosure…. etc.)
Why does the profession seem so against providing these simple human emotions?
Am I the only one that thinks that this manner of patient interaction strange?
Do patients react with more distress because the interaction is so one sided and…. ‘empty’?
I suppose it just seems strange to me, and I don’t understand why a little bit of empathy or hope would be such a bad thing and why it is missing in such an inherently distressing field?
Thank you!
B,
In my first three years of blogging, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to respond to a comment by writing an entirely new post. There is a always a first time for everything. Your comment was superb, and I want to give it the attention it is due.
For that reason, I will be working on a point by point response that I will put up as a new post soon. Watch for it.
Thank you for your self disclosure, passionate concerns and probing questions. What a great way to start this new year of looking forward and Writing the Future.
Greg
I have enjoyed your writing for quite some time now and no matter the direction you choose I will be tagging along. Looking forward to 2012!
Sandy
You’re one of my posse.
I love it.
Keep reading.
Greg
I don’t like resolutions either. I do like history. I do like thinking about the future. I do like writing. So count me “in” too!
Nancy
Consider yourself in!
Greg