Susan Payrovi, MD, a doctor who has multiple sclerosis, explains how counseling helped her cope after diagnosis and why she wishes she had sought emotional and lifestyle support sooner.
Transcript
I wish I had gotten counseling sooner. I was really having a hard time moving beyond the news of the diagnosis to actually jump into action and make my life work for me.
I remember waking up every morning, just crying. I just couldn’t believe that this had happened. Even though I was a physician and I understood what MS is, it still felt quite bad.
And there was a point where my husband said, “You’re going to go to counseling because I don’t know how to help you anymore. You need someone who can reframe this for you so that you don’t have the same thoughts over and over again.”
And so I did go and see a psychologist. It was the best thing I did. It actually accelerated my ability to cope. It helped me feel empowered that I could rebuild a different life for myself.
I stopped feeling sad and helpless and started just feeling more empowered to move beyond and figure out what this next chapter of my life could look like. So it was either like about five sessions of counseling that I did, and it made a powerful difference.
And I remember thinking to myself, “I should have done this 20 years ago. Why did I wait so long?”
And it also took me a long time to start building up all my lifestyle habits. You know, it took me a couple of years because I had to do a lot of research. I had to figure out what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. There’s a lot of trial and error in that.
So I wish I had sought out the help of, you know, a holistic practitioner, like a functional medicine or integrative medicine doctor, or even a naturopathic physician or a health coach even, sooner, because even as a physician, it was not that easy to figure out what are all the right things that I want to invite into my life, from nutrition to sleep to exercise, et cetera.
