Dr. Caroline Fleck
speaker
364 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Caroline Fleck’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I felt pathologized. I felt like I was treated like a patient, not a person. And not even like a medical patient, right? With like a broken arm or something, but like this broken person, right? And I wanted to be the type of therapist I didn't have. That was my motivation.
That and low key, I wanted to see if I could figure out how to treat depression and maybe come up with a treatment that would help me. So that was my true kind of motivation there. And again, when I look at it back through this lens, I realized that what I was experiencing was just pervasive invalidation. and I was hoping to provide experiences that were more validating.
And so I open with that a lot. I use that information in session. I share with people that there was a time in my life when I was suicidal. I know exactly what that feels like. I don't know what it is that got you here, but I know that level of desperation and it fucking sucks. And I'm so goddamn sorry. And it's this is the hardest thing. I've had breast cancer. I have MS.
Depression trumps those hands down. OK, that's a pretty big statement about how just profound that suffering is. And if I can communicate that, if I can connect with people in that way. There is a high level of validation that's communicated. I get it. I see you. I don't blame you. I don't think, you know, you're broken. You're just like me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think health care, big picture, including medical health, has operated under this just horrible model of hierarchy with the doctor above the patient. And I put patient in quotation marks because my training was to refer to folks as the client. More equality in this. There's not like, I'm the doctor, you're the patient. I'm up here, you're down there. That is a disaster.
I don't care if it's in treating cancer. which was often my experience. Again, there were all these kind of experts telling me what I should feel and, you know, oh, that doesn't make sense. And then certainly within mental health care, we need to be seen as equals because we are.
And if someone doesn't feel that sense of, again, acceptance and equality, it's just not going to be healthy for the relationship. And so one, of course, I advocate for that. Two, as a therapist, I actually do believe in the power of self-disclosure, using that as a tool. It is a validation skill. Now, of course, you don't want your clients taking care of you.
I mean, it's like you have to be very skillful about how you do this. But using self-disclosure to validate, I think is incredibly powerful. In fact, when I was first diagnosed with MS, I was working with this doctor. I just arrived in Seattle after like five years of horrible symptoms, and now it's like, oh, you have MS. And I am just like totally gutted, totally devastated.
And I was in the middle of an episode, so there was this question of like, oh, should we hospitalize you and do these steroids? I'm crying. And the doctor was in a wheelchair, which I didn't know anything about MS. It was like totally over my head to even consider that he might be in the wheelchair because of MS. And he was. And he reached out his hand. He put his hand on my hand.
He said, hey, I have MS. I know what this feels like. I know what you're thinking. This is absolutely terrifying. If I were in your shoes, I would do the steroids. I think we should. I would go to the hospital if I were you. Okay. But you don't have to listen to me. You listen to your own body and you do what you need and I'll support that.
And it just cut through everything, all the other noise, all the other doubt. It just was such a lightning moment of like, boom, I trust this person, they get it. And that's what I'm talking about. Being human should be part of the medical model. We shouldn't be so sterile as though that's helping people. That's not how we heal. We heal through connection.
Yeah, man.
Yes.
They do.
How old, if you don't mind me asking, how old was she when that happened?
Oh, Minding Your Mitochondria. Yeah, yeah. I think I actually saw that way back.
She has MS and she was like then she went into remission based on the health, the diet changes she made, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know, man. And that's the line in the sand. Like, oh, it's so hard for me.
Showing 321–340 of 364 · page 17 of 19
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