Posted by pej on January 22, 1999, at 20:09:46
In reply to Re: Whew!, posted by Toby on January 22, 1999, at 11:23:04
Thanks Toby. Your info is a helluva lot more important to me than your gender. I know I can be quick to judge and, coming from my background,
trust is always difficult for me personally. My apologies...Phil
> I just today came back to this post and didn't realize what has been transpiring here. My original answer was intended to run along the lines of what Dr. Bob said about being a "blank slate," especially considering that I had noticed that different people made different pronoun references to me. I figured that meant something to them, but was not ever going to address it since their questions were about medications, not about therapy issues. I noticed that men tend to think I'm a man and women tend to think I'm woman, though not exclusively, obviously. I never corrected anybody so that we wouldn't have to get in a discussion about men not understanding women's issues or women not being as smart as men or any other misunderstanding. In "real life" patients often want to know about their therapist's marital status, drug use, and all sorts of other pesonal information. They don't mean to be nosy, they just want to be able to relate better, to not feel alone. But this only "helps" in the short term; in the long run, any perceived similarities fall apart because no similar experiences are ever identical and no differences truly mean that the patient cannot be understood by the therapist. Before Racer asked the question (and I'm not offended that she did) no one questioned their own assumptions about me (or anyone else online). Now that their curiosity hasn't been immediately gratified, I'm suddenly an uncaring, dissimulating quack. I wonder if this attitude has anything to do with difficulties they experience with their own "real life" doctors and therapists. Those who were able to take a second look at their immediate reaction and be open to other opinions as well as relate that reaction to other real life experiences where things were withheld from them resulting in real harm, are probably on the way to real recovery. I'm not saying that because they turned around and embraced me, but because they are open to changes and that's a good thing. As for me, I'm a board certified psychiatrist and certified in addiction medicine. I practice in a mental health center in emergency and inpatient psychiatry. I'm certified in EMDR and use it 3-4 times per week. I'm an associate professor of psychiatry at a psychiatry residency program where I live (which basically means I can lecture students and residents and supervise psychotherapy for residents in psychiatry). I try to give "advice" here where I feel qualified to do so and always recommend that that advice is discussed with your real life doctor. Whether I'm male or female or a vegetarian doesn't have anything to do with those qualifications (and that's about as miffed as I can get about this). Peace, folks.
poster:pej
thread:2364
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990101/msgs/2595.html