Committed by Adam Stern

Author:Adam Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358435488
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

19

Tell Me What Brings You into the Office

While our class was beginning to find its footing in settings such as 4 South and the medical wards, we still felt like psychiatric impostors in part because we had no idea how to do talk therapy. Learning to do psychotherapy with patients is a little bit like ice skating. You can’t really do it without putting yourself out there and falling on your ass a few times. Early in our second year, we had the benefit of being introduced to a woman in the department named Meg Mook. Dr. Mook actually had a PsyD degree, which meant that while she was not a psychiatrist, she had much more training and experience in doing talk therapy than many MDs. She had risen to a high position within the department of psychiatry despite not being a psychiatrist, which indicated to me that this lady must have been a real guru of psychology. As I got to know her over the course of the year, though, it became evident that even beyond her obvious competence, Meg had a powerful ability to connect with people, which probably enabled her to thrive in the challenging interpersonal laboratory of a prestigious department at Harvard. She was a tall woman with fiery red hair. She also simply exuded kindness and empathy that melted away the insecurities and neuroses that we each carried around with us. I’ve learned that when my technique and methods fail, reminding myself to begin with a foundation of Mook-inspired kindness and empathy usually succeeds.

Our first seminar with Dr. Mook focused on both broad strokes and fine points. We discussed theory and the fundamentals of different approaches in therapy—​some therapies, such as psychodynamic and psychoanalytic work, were centered on uncovering unconscious conflicts. Others, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, were focused on more tangible concepts, such as changing behavior and thought patterns and eventually having a better relationship with one’s own emotions. Some focused on interpersonal relationships, while others were largely concerned with the mind-body connection.

We also covered basic, practice-level questions we all had. What do you say to a patient as you walk back from the waiting room? How do you sit? How do you begin? What do you do if you run out of questions? The answers to most of these questions and many others were not singular but defined by a set of principles and applied on a case-by-case basis dependent upon what therapy is meant to be and what function it is meant to serve. If it is a path for patients to better understand their inner lives and, in turn, experience improved quality of life and less psychological distress, then it must be distinct from the common misconceptions many people have of it. It is not coaching, renting a friend, or no-matter-what-the-problem-is-it-started-with-your-mother.

It may be perfectly reasonable to chat with one patient in the hallway on the way to the office, while for another it could be taken as a betrayal of their privacy.

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