Back from the Abyss: Psychiatry in Stories Craig Heacock MD

Dr. Russell Carr was a career Navy psychiatrist for 20 years and served in Iraq, where today’s story begins.  This is a story of a healer, then a terrible wounding, then the healer trying to find his way amidst the chaos of war. This story is about a rite of passage, one that not every psychiatrist faces, but most do at some point-- that of losing the first patient to suicide, then trying to find the strength to move forward.

Dr. Russell Carr
A Psychiatrist Returns from War-- on Substack
https://russellcarr.substack.com/

BFTA on IG @backfromtheabysspodcast
https://www.instagram.com/backfromtheabysspodcast/

BFTA/ Dr. H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/

A huge problem with current psychiatric diagnosis is that it often lumps completely unrelated things under the same vast and vague tent, such as with the diagnosis of "Major Depressive Disorder".   Here Craig sits down with his patient Rebecca to try to make sense of her complex early onset depression and how it played out via addiction, anorexia, and pathological caretaking and how she was finally able find the grace and compassion to prioritize care for herself.

Bringing Therapy into Med Management-- An intensive psychotherapy training in Colorado with Dr.  H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/training/

BFTA on IG @backfromtheabysspodcast
https://www.instagram.com/backfromtheabysspodcast/

BFTA/ Dr. H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/

Here Dr. H sites down with Jenny, a psychoanalyst who shares her moving, then horrifying, then eventually cathartic tale of plumbing the depths of her traumatized psyche, first with years of psychoanalysis, then with five MDMA-assisted therapy sessions. This is a story of numbing and forgetting, then re-opening and remembering...of finding a way to make sense of a life of protective dissociation.

Bringing Therapy into Med Management-- An intensive psychotherapy training in Colorado with Dr.  H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/training/

BFTA on IG @backfromtheabysspodcast
https://www.instagram.com/backfromtheabysspodcast/

BFTA/ Dr. H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/

In this solo episode Craig shares his current thoughts on MDMA medicalization, sleep meds, ADD, motivation vs self-discipline, benzos, how long to stay on psych meds, a change and a proposed addition to his top 10 med list, borderline vs bipolar, and marriage.

Bringing Therapy into Med Management-- An intensive training with Dr.  H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/training/

BFTA on IG @backfromtheabysspodcast
https://www.instagram.com/backfromtheabysspodcast/

BFTA/ Dr. H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/

Dr. H sits down with Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani, a nationally recognized expert on eating disorders to explore a wide range of topics including:

• etiology and the relative influence of temperament, culture, and concomitant psychiatric illness
•anorexia as a qualitatively different kind of treatment challenge
•treatment ambivalence, building the alliance, respecting protectors
•anosognosia and its relationship with severity of illness
•how to talk about weight, body image, and eating with mindful/respectful language
•thin privilege and fatphobia
•involuntary treatment
•orthorexia and food rules as a cultural disease
•GLP-1 agonists and bariatric surgery

Dr. G
https://www.gaudianiclinic.com/team

Sick Enough-- A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders
https://www.gaudianiclinic.com/sick-enough

Bringing Therapy into Med Management-- An intensive training with Dr.  H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/training/

BFTA/ Dr. H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/

The driving force of so many of our self-destructive tendencies is not conscious, it’s an unconscious drive called the repetition compulsion, where we try to reenact early child traumas or deficits, often consciously hoping for a different result but unconsciously walking directly and knowingly into the flames.  One of the central tasks of therapy is often helping people identify their repetition compulsions and doing the deeply uncomfortable work of making different choices. For the repetition compulsion feels right, at the deepest levels of being, because it was wired into us during early childhood. Self-destructive decisions smell like home cooking, they are the blue light that draws in the unsuspecting moths over and over and over, even when they see what’s about to happen.
Here Dr. H's patient  Katey describes how early emotional neglect and toxic parental modeling led her down a path of almost two decades of self-destruction, with an ongoing battle between her healthier and more resilient parts and her wounded repetition-seeking masochistic parts. Who would choose superficially “sweet” boys with good drugs and little emotional connection….why Katey would, and did, and this is her story of why she did that for so long and how she eventually broke free.

Bringing Therapy into Med Management-- An intensive training with Dr.  H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/training/

BFTA on IG @backfromtheabysspodcast
https://www.instagram.com/backfromtheabysspodcast/

BFTA/ Dr. H
https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/