Welcome to Brain Blossom! After years of procrastinating, it’s finally time to launch a blog for patients, families, therapists, clinicians, and anyone else who wants to learn more about how a psychiatrist thinks, why I do what I do, and how amazing (and sometimes terrifying) our brains can be.
Why the title? Well, I’m a psychiatrist, and I originally trained in neuroscience. I weave back and forth between the brain, the mind, the heart, and the soul. I believe that one of my spiritual gifts is the capacity to see patients as they could be, as they will be someday. Patients often come to see me for the first time when they are despondent, anxious, overwhelmed, burned out, guilty, or paranoid. My job is to create a safe space for them to be honest about how bad they feel right now.
Then my job is to express hope, often for patients and families who feel hopeless. And if I do my job well, I can give them a glimpse of what we’re shooting for: remission. Restoration. A new sense of purpose. Clarity. An understanding of their true self, separate from anxiety or depression or paranoia or repetitive behaviors that are killing them. To me, this process is like a flower blossoming. The flower was there, sometimes just a bud, but needed a safe place, the right soil, nutrients, sun, rain, nurturing care, sometimes other parts of the garden like bees or shade from other plants or some cross-pollination. As we put those other factors in place, over time, the flower is able to blossom and grow into the beautiful potential that was always there.
As a psychiatrist for adults, many of my patients have already worked with other doctors or psychotherapists. Sometimes I’m the first mental health specialist they have seen. Either way, part of my job is to help them understand different conditions they experience. I need to teach the language of the brain, the vocabulary of the mind, the variety of different psychiatric conditions and treatments and symptoms. I also need to make sure I listen very carefully to my patients. Are we speaking the same language? When they describe how they feel, or what they think, am I correctly understanding them? Can I accurately connect their descriptions to my clinical understanding, to make sure we are in agreement about what’s going on inside them?
You can see why so much of psychiatry involves language. But words alone aren’t enough. There is something powerful about being in the presence of someone who trusts you enough to be honest about their most private thoughts, feelings, and experiences. So I must also be extremely careful to maintain my patients’ privacy. I must be gentle and respectful of their beliefs and values, particularly if they differ from my own. I can encourage patients towards healthier behaviors, but I can’t force anyone to do anything. Most of what I do involves collaboration: working together to figure out the first step, the next step, and the next. Blossoming, growing, changing.
This blog will tackle some challenging topics. Bipolar disorder. Panic attacks. Psychiatric treatment during pregnancy and postpartum. New treatments for major depression, like ketamine and transcranial magnetic stimulation. And that’s just the first four weeks! But I hope you will find this a useful source of information not just for details about conditions and treatments, but for learning how one particular psychiatrist – me!- thinks and feels as she works to help a variety of patients. Any patients described will be composites of true patients with all identifying details changed, so that privacy is protected. But I’m so excited to share with you the fascinating, never boring world of adult psychiatry. Please share the blog with others, and feel free to follow me on Twitter @LeslieWalkerMD.