I’m a psychiatrist.
Every so often, whether I’m walking along the stream in our neighborhood, drinking freshly poured-over coffee, or watching sports, this fact enters my awareness. Even now, six years after committing to become a shrink, it still makes me chuckle. I don’t laugh because of the stereotype or because of any residual disdain toward the profession; I laugh because of how preposterously necessary that twist of fate was for me. It’s as if my actions before residency were designed intentionally to become a psychiatrist, as if psychiatry was the not-so-hidden teacher I always sought.
A woman and her son knocked on Gandhi’s door. Gandhi opened the door and asked, “How the hell are ya?” or something early-1900s-in-India equivalent.
“Gandhi, my son eats too much sugar. Please tell him to stop eating so much sugar.”
Gandhi paused, mulling over his next move, then said, “Come back in two weeks.”
The woman left confused, but nevertheless, this was Mahatma Gandhi. She trusted in the sublime wisdom.
Two weeks later, the woman returned to Gandhi’s house, knocking once more. When the door swung open, Gandhi stepped forth, peered down to lock eyes with her son and said, “Stop eating sugar.”
Even more perplexed, the woman asked Gandhi, “Why did that advice have to wait two weeks?”
Gandhi smiled, saying, “I had to stop eating sugar.”
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If a patient presented to clinic with co-dependent tendencies, and my prescribed path forward was strengthened self-esteem, was I not fraudulent if those prescriptions went unmanifested in my own life? If it were critical that a patient find their assertive voice, but I passively engaged with the conflicts of my own relationships, how could I ever truly help them? I couldn’t. Sure, I could sit there, listen supportively, be empathic, and hold their hand, but could I really help a person transform through a difficult chapter of their life? No shot. Because I didn’t possess that experiential wisdom.
Besides, where had all the empathy, supportive listening, and hand holding gotten me? Into medical school. Into psychiatry residency. Into a life I never wanted but felt obligated to continue. That was not the outcome I sought for my patients. That was not the outcome I wanted to live anymore.
The evidence in support of a different way was in my own history of becoming a physician and inside the stories of my patients. On a daily basis, I could no longer avoid the truth of my existence. Seeing the truth of how my patients had arrived at their own predicaments was an enlightening sword that cut both ways. Until they changed, there were no assurances of happiness and fulfillment. No magical overnight improvements in my patient’s lives were coming, just as I never turned the next corner in medicine and suddenly stumbled into a joyful existence.
Surviving, not just to help my patients, required I acknowledge internal conflicts I’d ran from for almost a decade. If I didn’t open my eyes, I’d risk living within delusion forever. Psychiatry, as brutal as the day-to-day grind was for periods, forced me to change. It was a mandatory personal accounting. And that was my salvation; it gave me the chance to learn from, and not repeat, my medical school decision in the next chapter of my life.
One of my attending’s, a man every bit the stereotype—witty, disturbingly insightful, bearded—would often tell patients, “Nobody has to go to therapy. Life will teach you what it will. But if you go to therapy, you’ll learn from the lessons faster.”
So it went for me and psychiatry. Regardless, the lessons I needed to learn—co-dependency, emotional attunement, conflict engagement—would have been bestowed, but perhaps not as urgently, nor as succinctly. If anything, the whole psychiatry experience reminds me that whatever’s before me is usually before me for a reason. Whatever I did before this got me here, and this thing in front of me is trying to teach me something, and if I ignore its lessons, that lesson will be waiting perpetually, no matter where I go or what I do, next.
Across my medicine journey, it demanded I reconcile many lessons. 32 of them in fact. For a limited time, that book of lessons is available on Amazon for 99 cents. Here’s a link to purchase.
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