First Day on the Psych Ward

So it's been a long time since I last blogged and I blame that on Boards. I don't have much to say about the boards process except that my most recent memory before boards was palm sunday apparently and that my life after that is a big blank because things that will remain unspoken happened in the time between then and my vacation to the uk/egypt.

Anyways, on to important matters--like our subconscious. My attending, an eclectic psychiatrist, asked me on the first day of my first rotation as a 3rd year med student if I believed I had a subconscious. Actually, I had no idea what one was--I thought maybe it's kind of like Freud's superego if that was really Freud and if the term really is superego. You see--a student studying for Boards learns to recognize words, associations and patterns. Deep psychological theory is not on the Exam. But anyways, I answered in the affirmative because it seemed like the right answer and feared he would ask me to defend my answer. He didn't and just responded, "Good."

This article talks about a few studies done to understand the role of the subconscious and going by my first day with psych patients today, I do believe I gave the right answer. The subconscious uses subliminal messages in the environment to guide our minds to think in a certain way. Today, I was walking from a lecture to the acute care psych ward I work at. I have a two really "scary" patients. They are criminals. They beat their wives. They are addicted to the strongest of drugs. They rob drug dealers (and all that comes with that task). They're on probation in multiple areas. Additionally, they are covered in tattoos, have needle marks up their arms bilaterally and are branded. I'm the type of person that walks into CVS and makes sure I look everyone up and down as they pass me to make sure they are not "suspicious" looking or get enough information about them so that if something were to happen, I'd have something to offer the cops. I am also super anxious when I'm around people that don't fit my well-kempt, polite and high-class standards. But today, this was different. I felt fine, even safe, being in a room with these people. Maybe it was because I was wearing a white coat and they were wearing hospital uniforms. Maybe it was because they were the ones who were a bit scared. I went to two patients to get them to do a mental exercise for me and they were relieved when I told them they were done after a couple minutes (all they had to do was draw a clockface with the time I told them)---they thought it was some "trick" on them or something that would "catch" them and require them to face consequences. Maybe it was because on paper, people that look really terrible, are simply very broken people. And when you realize that you don't have to be afraid. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I really love my patients. My first patients on my first day as a third year have already proved to be great teachers.