What My Doctor Said

I spent one hour outside clinic day, today, with my patient who is suffering severe anxiety and depression. I learnt a lot from him today. Yes, the patient is a He. I never perceived him to be severely depressed until in the last clinic session, when I got an extra DASS-21 questionnaire with me and casually asked him to rate his psychological symptoms. Most of his responses were circled as 3.

I was tricked into underestimating his depression and anxiety, because he always looked smart and smiling when he met me in the clinic sessions. Now, retrospectively, I remembered he had cried tears on two previous visits.

In psychiatry, we are always reminded to take suicidal attempt by males as serious. I guess, similarly, we shouldn’t take lightly male patients who keep coming for complaint of depression. My mistake and that I’ve to admit. I hope the special one hour therapy to him today will make up for my previous negligence and over reliance on psychiatric medications.

I thought him NLP and gave him a Time Line Therapy. I figured out that Time Line is so easy to conjure, but today I have to figure out its significance in a person who is so depressed and carrying loads of emotional baggages. He can’t come up with any form of Time Line, even after a lot of explanation and example. He shared the same spot with all the traumas from his past. Oh dear, then only I could feel the real proportion of his suffering. In today’s therapy, I showed the patient a way to figure out my own Time Line and encourage him to borrow mine and use it with the exercises I thought him to do.

After the session, he was smiling at me and with all the courage he had, he reflected to me that we “manusia” never want to model our Creator. He said that God never take significance of all those negative and undesired things that human conducted or experience once at a certain point in human's life, he or she repented. Now, how come people like him keep loads of bad memories and emotions on his shoulder. He felt and was feeling the strain in his neck and shoulders. Before I could say anything....... his smile became broader and livelier, and he added, ”Yes Doc, I know how to talk but didn’t know how to get out of my problem.”

My dear patient, “Knowing is not enough! Do the exercises I thought you and do it repeatedly.” You have to work for your freedom and it is so easy once you know how to do it.