Healing Myself While Helping Others: My Path to Psychiatry and Murror

I’m a psychiatrist who is also in therapy. As a child, I was selectively mute and wouldn’t speak at school nor anywhere outside of my home. Finding my voice has been an ongoing struggle for me, which I didn’t start to find until I started seeing a therapist when I was already a physician training to be a psychiatrist. I was 30 years old at the time.  My psychiatry residency program director urged me to get mental health treatment because he knew that I was struggling not only from anxiety, but also from depression. Being in therapy has been the best investment I ever made in myself because it helped me overcome depression, learn to better cope with anxiety, and feel more confident in myself. 

More recently in therapy I have been processing my past of being bullied as a child just for being Asian. I am Filipino-American. During elementary school, I was one of the few Asians at my school. Kids spew phrases at me such as  “go back to China!” which I know many other Asian-Americans have experienced growing up in the U.S. as well, and had hurt me to the point that I suppressed my identity and hated who I was. How I wish that someone would’ve stood up for me back then and said that it’s not okay to judge people for their race or how they looked. I was able to connect that experience to the reason it had been so hard to find my voice for so many years – if I was made fun of mainly for how I looked, what more if I said something embarrassing or stupid and gave the bullies even more reason to make fun of me?

Flash forward about twenty years later to being a medical student learning at a hospital and I can connect my childhood experiences to the reason I went into the field of Psychiatry. When I was a medical student, I truly wanted to get to know my patients beyond their physical symptoms and would ask about their home life, relationships, current stressors, etc. Even if I was seeing surgery patients (where the focus was more on the specific body part/problem requiring surgery), I spent a lot of time getting to know them rather than solely examining them. I spent more time with patients than what was considered the norm, even if it meant staying later than everyone else.  I observed how talking to patients and getting to know them instead of just asking about their physical symptoms, made an impact on their experience while at the hospital. I viewed them as people, unique individuals with their own story, and not just their ailment or disease because that’s how I’d want to be treated.

I decided to specialize in Psychiatry because I believed in my heart that I can provide the biggest impact in this field and stand up for my patients in a way that I wished people would stand up for me as a child. So much stigma exists towards people struggling with mental health issues and the public may view depression, anxiety, etc, as a weakness.  In my eleven year career as a psychiatrist, I’ve attempted to convey to others how much getting help for a mental health issue is a strength rather than a weakness. Facing our personal struggles, our past, our fears, takes so much courage. I found that the times I’d get really passionate and use my voice to stand up for others was when people said negative comments about people in marginalized communities (people of color, LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, etc), especially those with mental illness.

I joined the team at Murror because so many problems exist within the mental health system, especially the lack of access to treatment, cost, insurance limitations, shortages of clinicians, huge waitlists to see a psychiatrist or therapist, lack of resources, and the list goes on. I do my best to help my patients, but it’s hard not to think of those struggling in this world who aren’t able to get help. I receive several messages daily from people all over the world asking if I can help them because there are limited mental health professionals in the country they reside. In the US alone, there are millions of people who don’t feel ready nor comfortable getting help from a mental health professional. I believe Murror can fill some of that gap and I want to be part of the solution. Struggling with mental health can feel so lonely and isolating and I’m grateful to be part of a team aiming to support people in their mental health journey and help them feel less alone.