The time my psychiatrist sent me on retreat
He leaned back and sighed. “I think what you need is a spiritual experience.”
My psychiatrist is a soft-spoken Syrian man who travels back to his homeland every few months to work on developing treatments for children traumatized by war. Sometimes I use this as a weapon against myself. Their suffering is significant and real and worthy of care. Mine is first-world bellyaching, more midlife crisis than dark night of the soul. I have no right to be miserable.
My psychiatrist doesn’t see it this way. His well of empathy for me seems endless. Lately, though, I’ve felt frustration crop up around the edges of his kindness. He is not frustrated with me so much as with our inability to find a way to lift me out of my depression. During my last appointment I was on a tear, convinced it was time to evict the antidepressants from my cabinet and bloodstream. We’d doubled my dose last summer after a particularly bad week, but the pills weren’t working. I was still drenched in sorrow.
To my surprise, my psychiatrist shrugged and agreed: the pills were not working for me. He admitted, rather sadly, that drugs are the only tool he has. Sometimes they work miracles. Sometimes they don’t.
