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There was the woman who came in with an anxiety-related tremor but insisted that, no, these shakes weren’t psychological. “You have to convince them, yes, you really are sick, I understand that, or they’ll never trust you,” Flaherty said. “And they are really sick, they’re disabled, totally.” Then, with a careful tweaking of language, she was able to prescribe the Valium that the patient had been refusing from other doctors, and the tremor faded.
To some, she might sound like a shrink tucked away inside a movement disorder clinic, and that isn’t entirely wrong. Historically, psychiatrists and neurologists often kept to their own floors, as if the feeling-thinking brain and the physical brain were two different organs. Flaherty was merging both long before it became a trend.
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Above all — whether the symptoms are psychological, physical, or some combination of the two — she wants them to feel heard.
Read full, original post: It’s not ‘all in your head’: When other doctors give up on patients, a boundary-breaking neurologist treats them