No Case is Hopeless

He is one of my favorite patients.
Comes in cheerful and has a different hat on each time.
I hadn’t seen him in a while.

This visit was different though.
He was having depressive thoughts and struggling with self-esteem issues that centered around his childhood.

We talked about words that were said to him growing up… how recent happenings took him to a place that he’d apparently been suppressing and hadn’t dealt with.

He felt like a failure.
He was depressed.

We talked medications, we talked therapy.
Then we talked thoughts!

We tried a little exercise…

I asked him to write down words that threaten his peace.

Then…

I asked him to write down positive things he had heard about himself now and in the past

“Isn’t it ironic that words that hurt and wound we allow to play over and over again in our mind. “

“We season it, marinate it and let it stew in the sea of our mind” I said to him.

“We then use it to inform our perspectives on life” I continued.

But the positive ones, we brush it off and “oh chucks” it and relegate it to perhaps just flattery or just not really true.

So true! He said.

We agreed that’d we’d reflect more and hold on to the positive words packed in the day.

I shared some of mine…

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made”

“ all things work together for my good”

“ I can do all things through Him who strengthens me”

I told him that life would throw him complements and that he should take time to marinate on them.

I also reminded him that sometimes he may need to go find them in a book, a podcast or an in an ally.

We hi-fived!
He left with a plan and a follow up appointment in 2weeks.

So what are you marinating on?


In health,
Dr. O

Author

Dr. Tolulope Olabintan MD, AAHIVS, FAAFP, dipABLM Dr. Tolulope Olabintan is the Co-Founder and Medical Director of Livingspring Family Medical Center. She is a Christian, Family Physician, writer, mentor, mother and wife. She takes joy in empowering her patients and readers to live their fullest lives possible. She helps patients live long and well as she believes that the quality of life is just as important as the quantity of life. She is also a foodie and loves the colors teal and orange. Dr. Olabintan completed her medical degree at UMDNJ Rutgers Medical School in 2007. Dr. O went on to finish her Family Medicine Residency from Albert Einstein College of Medicine Family Medicine residency where she also served as a Chief Resident. She then went on to complete a women’s health/surgical obstetrics fellowship at St Francis hospital in 2011. She is a board-certified Family Physician, Lifestyle Medicine, a HIV specialist and a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.