Tuesday, January 30, 2007

My Three Shrinks Podcast 8: Positively Lost


[7] . . . [8] . . . [9] . . . [All]

This podcast is a continuation from our #7 podcast, in front of Dinah's fireside studio (complete with the sound of an actual fire popping). I decided to leave those sounds in, but I did edit out Click's occasional cough (she's all better now).


January 30, 2007:
Topics include:
Next week: Biochemical effects of chocolate on mood.
The musical snippet used in last week's podcast came from the Boomtown Rats' "House on Fire", from their 1994 album, Great Songs of Indifference.


Find show notes with links at:
http://psychiatrist-blog.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-three-shrinks-podcast-8-positively.html
This podcast is available on iTunes. You can also listen to or download the .mp3 or the MPEG-4 file from mythreeshrinks.com. Thank you for listening.

23 comments:

Sarebear said...
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Sarebear said...
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NeoNurseChic said...

I'm just listening to the part on optimism for now. I could check this theory out since I already go to Penn for my psychiatric needs! ;)

I have two kickass quotes on pessimism and optimism in my quote journal that I have printed many times in various things, but I'll look them up after I get home from my appt.

My theory, however, is that being an optimist has caused me a lot more emotional pain. I've always given people the benefit of the doubt. I give humanity the benefit of the doubt. I view everything positively first. And because then I'm constantly being let down and end up seeing the worst in people at times, I feel like I fall so much harder. I've always stated that I fell harder because I was an optimist. If I was a pessimist, then it's true that you're often pleasantly surprised...or at least you're never falling s o damn hard all the time. My best friend in high school, Ben, said to me one day how much he looked up to me because I always saw the best in people and then only disliked them when they gave me good reason to, whereas he was always brought up never to trust anybody until they proved themselves.

But know what I think now? He's emotionally better off than me. So anymore, I think it's better to be a pessimist!

Oh I remember one of the quotes offhand now...

"The best part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being proven right or pleasantly surprised." teehee...

Still gotta look up my optimism quote - I quote the pessimist one more often!

OK I gotta get ready to go to my appt.

I'll listen to the rest later!!

Oh and Sara? Very funny about my homicidal Tony... I have thought about having him locked up a number of times! But he's still my baaaby. :)

Carrie :)

Anonymous said...

Ohhh bad news...never made it to my appt...got into an accident instead. My fault. Bad intersection, and there was somebody in front of me, but we merge with another street and cross traffic can come through. The guy in front of me started to go, and I checked over my shoulder to make sure the road was clear. In the meantime, the guy had stopped and by the time I turned back around, it was too late and I slammed right into him. His car had absolutely no damage whatsoever....my car on the other hand....... The hood is all bashed up, the headlights are all bashed all across the front (I have a 1994 Mercury Sable...it has headlights the whole way across the front...), and it was leaking green stuff, which I presume is radiator fluid, underneath. I picked up most of the pieces and put them in my trunk. Fortunately, I had renewed my AAA...I called my dad and he was advising me what to do as well as AAA. I'd gotten my car off the road and into a parking lot - the other guy left after he examined his car and saw it was damage-free. Tow truck came and took my car off to my parents' hometown to be fixed and fortunate dropped me off at a Wawa about a block and a half from where I live. My fingers and toes are still thawing out, and I haven't told my mom yet. She's going to kill me.... I mean, she'll be glad that I'm not hurt...but with all the debt I'm in right now, this is an expense that I totally can't afford and they can't help me with it. I can't afford the insurance either if it goes up......

Man....when it rains, it pours. I had another accident just like this merging on a highway when I was in high school. After that, I was always very careful, but this intersection is so bad. I have thought before how dangerous it is.

So I called my psychiatrist and was in tears talking to him about what happened. (Dinah - I still called...I wasn't just a no show! Granted, it was 10 minutes into the appt time by the time I had a second to call him and tell him I wasn't going to make it due to the accident...) I have another appt tomorrow...

My dad wants me to call enterprise or hertz and find out how much it is to rent a car while mine is being repaired, but I think I'm just gonna rely on the train for the next few days or something. I do need to get out to my hometown on the weekend cuz I have choir rehearsal and all, but maybe somebody can get me there. I don't really want to pay to rent a car...

Earlier I was stressing about parking costs for all the times I drive into the city. Should have been stressing instead about the cost of what happens if I bash in the front end of my car. Oy....

What a tale... Hope everybody else is having a better day than me! I still plan to put up those quotes at some point. *sigh*

Carrie (posting as anon just because I don't feel like having anything else bad connected to my other name right now.)

SEAMONKEY said...

Maybe you guys should start the Institute of Relentless Realism. You could practice that anti-cognitive-behavioural-therapy you mentioned. Pushing something downhill requires a lot less energy that pushing it up, and y'all could have chocolate for every meal on the grounds that we're all going to get fat and die eventually. And I'll come and campaign for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. http://www.vhemt.org/

SEAMONKEY said...

P.S. Please let Roy talk about receptors.

That reminds me of a question that's been on my mind: How can citalopram and quetiapine be synergetic when quetiapine is a serotonin antagonist?

Sarebear said...

Carrie, I'm glad/hope you are ok!!! That there are no discoveries of injured neck or muscles or anything . . . that you are ok is the best thing.

Then the big thing after health is the huge $$$ on the car or insurance hikes, UGH. I'm sorry that happened to you!

Hope your shrink understood (plus I'd be all shaky and talking thru it on the phone w/him if it had just happened to me, I get really frightened and shaky)

word verify: snoxt (sounds like a Dr. Seuss-type creature!)

Anonymous said...

Sara,

Thanks... I ended up deciding not to rent a car for now because it's too expensive. I think it did actually help to talk to my psychiatrist yesterday immediately after the accident - not sure I would have called him if I hadn't otherwise been on the way to my appt. I get weird about calling and usually don't do it unless it's something major - and it's not that the car accident wasn't major, but I don't know - I just get weird about calling.

I'm fine. No injuries or neck pain or anything like that. It's more the emotional toll. I keep picturing it - but I'm not beating myself up over it because there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it. Just have to learn from it (ie. don't drive on that shortcut again and always stay stopped as I look over my shoulder because you never know what the person in front of you might do!), but I also just have to move on and deal with whatever happens next.

The guy at the autobody shop apparently told my dad that they can bang the hood back down and they're going to look for junkyard parts to replace the headlight bar. As of last night, though, he hadn't opened the hood - and that's what I'm worried about. If there is a lot of damage under the hood, then the car is probably totaled. I talked to my dad multiple times yesterday, and I asked him if the repairs was over a certain cost if he would put it on the insurance. (As of right now, I will be paying out of pocket...) He said he doesn't want to because in lieu of an accident I had 4 or 5 years ago, plus at least one my brother had, and one my dad JUST had rearending someone in the snow up in Syracuse, if we put this to the insurance, it'll go through the roof. And they're likely to total the car since it is old and has quite a few miles on it. I'm still waiting to hear from my dad sometime today about what happened when they opened the hood.

My mom took the news well when I told her shortly after I posted yesterday. I had left a message for her right when I got home, but was waiting for her to call back. But then last night she was suggesting that I return the couch I just bought the day before and was really stressing about the financial stuff. I bought the couch solely with money given to me for a gift with the intention that I would use it to buy a couch. I don't think we would consider returning it if those who gave me money had given me an actual couch instead of the money to buy it. It probably sounds really juvenile, but I do not want to cancel the sale of the couch because of this. That is my first real piece of furniture besides my piano and my bed, and I hardly ever do things that are just for me - the couch is a really special thing for me. When I told my dad that she suggested that, he said not to worry about that for now, and he didn't think that would be necessary.

But in the end, I was glad I talked to my psychiatrist about it on the phone yesterday, even though it was pretty brief. That made it easier today for me to go in and just start talking about what happened, which ended up leading into talk about financial things and how stressed and anxious I am over this stuff. He said this is the first time I've mentioned being this stressed out over money, etc and he is surprised that I've never discussed it until now. He's right - it is a huge deal and probably the biggest stressor in my life aside from health care, and I don't know why I never really brought it up. I've discussed it in bits and pieces, but never to this extent.

I also had to tell him that I took a sleeping pill twice last night. He wasn't mad or anything. I think we more needed to talk about why I did that. And in spite of taking it at midnight and then again at 4am, I still hardly slept. But I did feel a lot less anxious after I took it. I think I'm ready to start discussing taking something for anxiety prn or regularly...I know he doesn't want me to take meds for anything and would rather we work through and discuss why I'm anxious instead of just taking a med for it. I'm all for talking through it and working on it, but for the past several months, anxiety is ruling my life in a way that it hasn't since high school. I mean - even what I did with my blog - anxiety driven. I think the anxiety attacks make my headaches worse, too. I would like to work through the anxiety issues, but I just think that I need to try a med. He might disagree - every time I've talked about trying meds for depression or whatever, he's not wanted to do it but rather look at why I'm depressed...and even when I wanted to take something for sleep at night, he said something about finding out what's keeping me up instead of just medicating it. I can understand that if his fear is that I will take the pill and then say, "Oh...I'm good now...so it's fixed and I don't need to look at what was keeping me up before since t his obviously cured the problem," but that's not how I am - even if I took a med to help me with the severity of symptoms and the symptoms resolved, I would still want to look at why I felt that way and then work to come off the med maybe at some point. I won't see him for a week and a half now or so because he's away for the beginning of next week, and I work 7-7 the 2 days at the end of the week, so it'll be a bit. But I think this is something I want to bring up next time.

Ahhhh sorry to hijack your thread, guys. Just had to share the insanity that is my life! I'd blog about it, but....that just ain't happening right now! I will listen to the rest of the podcast today so that way I can comment on that instead of what happened in my accident and at my psychiatry appts! Just another day in the life of.... ;)

Take care,
Carrie :)

Anonymous said...

Wow! I just read about the shrink stalker. You didn't mention in the podcast that she not only accused her shrink of rape, but she obtained a used condom from one of his trashcans!! That goes beyond the pale. That's horrid.

It took 18 months for Shrink to be exonerated when they found his girlfriends DNA on the condom along with his. Gross. How reprehensible.

And to think, I felt guilty about Googling my shrink's name.....

BTW, I am going to be a total snitch/bitch.

There is a post on one of the more entertaining med-student blogs about the warped children of psychiatrists. I know he is young and trying to be funny, but still...

The blog: Ah Yes, Medical School.

Anonymous said...

Here, for the sake of convenience is the offending bit;

A Reader Asks Him; "Classic. I've never met a psychiatrist (or neurologist for that matter) who was balanced (insert Three Stooges noises here). Neither should be permitted to reproduce. Have you ever interacted with their offspring? One word - oy."
-P.J.

He Responds: "P.J. brings up a fascinating point about psychiatrists. I was fortunate enough to attend elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools with a fair amount of doctors’ offspring, and after interacting with many of these kids I have come to a similar conclusion: it is virtually certain that all children of psychiatrists are fucked up in the head. This is a remarkably reproducible phenomenon. I have no idea why this is the way it is, but I would imagine that these children are predisposed to being weird simply by virtue of their having the genes of their freak parents. If anyone has any bright ideas about this I’m sure someone has a Nobel Prize waiting for you."

My Personal Comment:

Trashing psychiatrists is only one degree off from trashing their patients.

Anonymous said...

That bit about psychiatrists and their children is ridiculous. A person can't generalize any more than they can generalize about any other group of people, and the fact that someone in medical school would view it that way is rather depressing and disheartening. One would hope that a person in med school would have a bit more perspective and maturity and would know better than to take a few anecdotal experiences and lump them all together.

One of my very good friends is a psychiatrist, and she is not "fucked up" or "weird" in any way that is different than any other person who is really into science and learning. Just because someone is a psychiatrist does not mean they are messed up themselves. Some people just genuinely find the field interesting and truly want to help people in a field that is obviously still very stigmatized.

I read that post a long time ago, and I thought it was ridiculous then, as I do now. And I'm not sure why it is relevent to this discussion.

Carrie

word verif: lnytc (lunatic? anybody? lol)

Anonymous said...

I left a comment on his blog leaving a criticism of his post.

I encourage faithful readers of this blog to think about commenting on his blog especially because MANY DOCTORS INCLUDING FAT DOCTOR HERSELF, link to his blog.

I know that the blogs one links to due not mean an endorsement of every post the linked to blogger makes, but links from popular blogs increase traffic and that causes the proliferation of the stereotype.

Patient Anonymous said...

I need to start listening to these podcasts. I'm missing out.

Note to Carrie, sorry about all the craziness. Yikes. I hope you feel better soon.

Um. I'm rather offended by that excerpt and I probably shouldn't draw more attention to it because it doesn't deserve ANY, however in my, albeit, brief time in the blogosphere I have seen a lot of trashing of "professionals" (and perhaps even non-professionals) and it is utterly reprehensible.

There's being a goofball and trying to be humourous (me?) and then there's being a real arse. If I have ever been perceived as being offensive I immediately apologize for it was never intended!

And no, it may not be relevant to this post but since its coda is "Postively Lost" and there are psych patients commenting...?

Feeling Postively Lost Herself,
PA

Anonymous said...

Carrie,

It is his *latest post* which I commented on here because it is *the* latest post on this blog.

My apologies if you find it inappropriate. I would have to disagree.

Sorry about your accident, BTW.

NeoNurseChic said...

That's his latest post? No I don't find it inappropriate - for here - I find what he said inappropriate! I didn't word that right because I was rushing.

I read those comments a long time ago - what's the date on that post? I need to re-check his site...I don't have the link to it on mine, but that post and those comments were up a long time ago - and I'm talking months.

I shouldn't have asked why it was relevant - or rather, said it that way. What I meant was....why put it here now? Cuz I'd seen that post and those comments a long time ago, so I was curious as to why it just went into the comments here now.

Note to self: work on explaining thoughts better. I suck.

Take care,
Carrie :)

Anonymous said...

Not sure if this will post right, but for those interested, the following is the link to my car. My mom took this pic when they went to the shop to pick up my dad's car. I don't know if his was there because of his recent accident or some other reason. But anyway - in the pic, things actually look better because they've cleaned up a lot of the broken pieces. I think the banged the hood down at least a little...but they did have to cut that square hole into the hood in order to get it open because the front was all bashed up. They removed all of what was left of the light bar, which had definitely been the messiest. Part of the bumper is off, too. Sounds like they're going to try to find junkyard parts for all of it. What I was lucky with was that nothing under the hood was damaged. They think the radiator fluid puddle was just from impact of the accident alone. I was lucky - even though it was a really sucky experience. So here's the pic:

my car

Carrie

NeoNurseChic said...

Now I see the post new today on "Ah Yes, Medical School" - going to delete my comment. There was an entire post about this topic months ago, and I was confused...wondering why this was just getting picked up now for some reason. Then I thought, maybe I missed something in the podcast. And it was genuinely bothering me. But I just went to the site and skimmed the post until I found that bit in his post. There was definitely a post on this on the same blog awhile back, but I don't really feel like searching for it right now. At any rate - sorry 'bout that. It wasn't that I thought it was ridiculous, inappropriate, or irrelevent...but I was curious as to "why now"? Now I know - cuz it was brought up AGAIN over there. Now I got it... thanks. ;)

Admin said...

Dear people who comment on this blog,

Yes, I did make a joke about psychiatrists and their children. And yes, I may perhaps be the first person to ever make jokes about psychiatrists in the history of the world. (And yes, I have even been known to make fun of myself - woah - from time to time on my own blog. You may have noticed the references to my small penis and inability to score with women in the past.) But perhaps you all didn't get to read the part of my post closer to the end, the part where I address the concerns you and other people like you (who have been joked about in the post on my blog) have...I understand, because it was a very subtle point. It went like this:

"T’S A FUCKING JOKE, PEOPLE."

I hope we are OK.

Love,

The Fake Doctor

SEAMONKEY said...

It's easy enough to be clever and funny without being nasty.

Patient Anonymous said...

The problem with "making jokes" like that is it perpetuates stereotypes and thus further leads to oppression of marginalized groups--the REAL people that are part of the populations that are affected: be it those with a mental illness or who are gay--whatever. I saw that you did, in fact, speak out about the offensive usage of the term "fag" vs. "schizophrenic patient."

Yes, it's fine to make jokes about yourself, super. I think it's very healthy to be able to do that. I do it as well!

But when you start making jokes about other people who may be perceived as "minorities" they WILL take offence. The people within these groups may make jokes about themselves (known as an "in-group exclusions") but this is generally done as a form of empowerment and socially acceptable.

Eg. I call myself "nutbar, whackjob, lunatic etc..." but might I take offence if some stranger did it in response to something I said or did? Might someone else?

Alright, end of Psychology/Sociology 101.

And not trying to "get into it" here...just respectfully expressing an opinion.

Thank you.

Dinah said...

Notice from Dinah:
Dear readers, We are three undisguished or thinly disguised psychiatrists...we're having a blast with our blog, glad to stir up some controversy &opinions on the provocative issues we deal with. Please, though, No Obscenities. We're interested in thought-provoking discussion. It loses its charm as it degenerates.
Thank you,
The Management

Steve & Barb said...

Also -- now, I won't name names, but -- please aim to keep your comments on-topic and more, umm, succinct.
Thank you.

NeoNurseChic said...

Delete them if you don't want them there. I can't delete what I wrote anonymously. But it won't bother me - just take them down.

Carrie