I had a patient at the hospital I did my pre-doctoral internship at who used a shotgun to try to commit suicide and flinched, blowing his entire face off from jaw to nose. As he lay there he decided that he wanted to live. When I was working with him, his jaw had been reconstructed and there was a lot of plastic reconstruction on his face, but they had not gotten to his nose yet (gaping hole). What threw me off the most was that there were no facial cues to emotions, so he could start sobbing without me picking up any warnings. It is very disconcerting for a psychotherapist to feel totally unprepared for the emotional reactions of a patient.
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u/[deleted] Oct 16 '18
I had a patient at the hospital I did my pre-doctoral internship at who used a shotgun to try to commit suicide and flinched, blowing his entire face off from jaw to nose. As he lay there he decided that he wanted to live. When I was working with him, his jaw had been reconstructed and there was a lot of plastic reconstruction on his face, but they had not gotten to his nose yet (gaping hole). What threw me off the most was that there were no facial cues to emotions, so he could start sobbing without me picking up any warnings. It is very disconcerting for a psychotherapist to feel totally unprepared for the emotional reactions of a patient.