Welcome to my blog and thank you for stopping by. To introduce myself, I’m going to tell you about the Dr. Birdbrain case. Dr. Birdbrain is anything but bird-brained. She’s an accomplished 45-year-old woman who was a reporter in Latin America, professor of journalism at a prestigious university, and long time political and environmental activist.
Dr. B’s treatment has paralleled how therapy practice has changed in the twenty first century. She started treatment after being cut off by her fundamentalist parents because she was not married and living with her boyfriend. She wanted to see me after reading my book, Healing From Family Rifts, both because of my clinical experience and the fact that I shared my own painful personal experience with family estrangement. Dr. B talked about her fear, confusion, hurt and anger evoked by her family disowning her. Within a relatively short time, Dr. B felt she had done all the right things and everything possible to mend the rift with her family. She couldn’t achieve that, but did feel she had achieved inner reconciliation and thus successfully terminated her therapy.
Dr. B and I hadn’t spoken since she stopped treatment but she called me in the spring of 2005 with exciting news: she was offered a teaching job at a prestigious university in New Orleans! Dr. B, her partner, and their two dogs moved there August 1, 2005, enthusiastic and excited by this new opportunity. Twenty-eight days later Hurricane Katrina came, causing havoc and damage throughout the region. Dr. B and her partner and dogs fled the city and sadly found out a week later that their home and possessions had all been destroyed. This was the precipitating event prompting Dr. B’s second psychotherapy treatment.
Based on my experience as a therapist and as part of the survivor community in NYC after 9/11, I knew that traditional treatment techniques, as much as they were helpful in Dr. B’s first treatment, were of little, if any, use this round of therapy. We approached her recovery using what I call 21st century psychology. Treatment in this instance had nothing to do with psychopathology; her reaction was normal and expectable given the magnitude of the trauma. Rather than traditional rules of talking therapy, we worked on highlighting her resilience, strength, and capacity to persevere despite adversity. Dr B’s moral, ethical, and spiritual beliefs helped me do my job as her therapist. I supported a ritual she developed that involved a shrine to a Latin American Saint and her involvement with meditation and newfound belief in prayer. I knew from studies that prayer and positive thought had formidable healing power. When Dr. B discussed her ambivalence about returning to New Orleans for the second semester, we talked about how she could make the correct choice, consistent with a character built on virtue. I had been trained in the twentieth century to identify and help resolve neurotic conflict but this was clearly not a neurotic conflict, thus the deviation from “the old rules.”
Dr. Birdbrain ultimately made meaning out of her trauma by getting involved with sustainability and environmental science. She decided to pursue a second PhD in wildlife ecology. In this quest, she discovered a fascination with birds and has learned to recognize well over 100 species. This achievement and her daily birding give her a feeling of elevation and joy. She has an ever-increasing presence in the world and appreciation for the simple therapies of watching birds, breathing fresh air, planting a vegetable garden. She’s no longer in treatment with me, but we stay in touch and she keeps me updated on her new therapy, her birding, which is why she now signs her emails “Dr. Birdbrain.”
