I long ago stopped telling Chris’s psychiatrists what Chris and I were up to outside of Chris’s appointments, the only exception being the holistic psychiatrist, who seemed to sense what we were up to, anyway. Her muscle testing freaked me out it was so accurate. I became afraid to take any unilateral action because somehow I thought she would “know”. Do I vote Republican or Democrat? It seemed like she would “know.” If I substituted an inferior quality vitamin to what she recommended, I thought she would “know.” I grew dependent on her and that’s not a wise thing to do with a psychiatrist.
The few times I let Chris’s psychiatrists in on what I was doing, I wished I hadn’t. Invariably, they would tense up, lean forward, and want to know exactly what kind of esoteric thing I was up to now. None of the extracurricular stuff Chris did involved medications, and they already knew about the vitamins, so what was the problem? In some ways, I am a quick learner. After the whole hassle we originally went through trying to bring in a second psychiatrist to recommend vitamins, I decided that nothing I did afterwards merited confiding in them.
The point of a being a physician, I would have thought, is to empower healing in patients (family is included here), by encouraging them to think for themselves, to inform themselves, and try different things that do no harm while hopefully doing some good. A good physician is also willing to learn from patients. We have been fortunate to have been able to hand pick two of Chris’s psychiatrists, who are both quite willing to learn from us.
I recently needed a medical professional to write a prescription for Chris for the Tomatis Method so that the insurance company would cover it. Our family doctor, who I long ago decided is totally unimaginative, flatly refused to issue a prescription. “I don’t believe in the Tomatis Method,” he said. Perhaps he wonders why I haven’t sent Chris to him for regular check-ups in recent years. So, next I tried Dr. Stern, who wanted to have more information about Tomatis before she issued a prescription. Fair enough, I suppose, except that she already knew that the therapy is about music, and is not a competitive threat to her. So we did this little dance, and eventually I got the prescription.