Reviewing a behavioral health joint might be too revealing for a public forum. Good thing I have no…read moreshame.
I've been going to this clinic for PTSD and chronic severe insomnia since around 2014. All of my Portland-based experience with similar clinics = good campfire stories for people who need something to scream about, but not much help. Similarly, my experience with medication vacilates between Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell screaming, "I'm so excited!" and the Goodbye Horses scene from Silence of the Lambs. Again, not much help, decent enough stories.
That having been said: I love Deanna Barney Cain. She closely examines everything you're currently taking for every real or imagined ailment, and your individual bushel basket of symptoms, and then boils this all down to a formula for positive mental health. Instead of the late 90s mantra of, "Doesn't work? Prescribe MORE!" Deanna seems to really think about an individualized plan, and the importance of not feeling SOMA'd into submission. And friends, this NP put me to sleep; I don't even respond to sleeping pills. She put me to sleep, without compromising my ability to get up the next day, or sending me into some new sloth-informed state of depression. She's a wizard, to the point where anytime someone reports even passing discomfort, I race to state, "Well you should see my doctor..." No one ever listens to this recommendation, but that's because everyone else is wrong.
I also see Kathryn Hoover for EMDR. Here's my recent experience with therapists: making them cry, using my dreams for a Jungian conference (without permission), and displaying ridiculous facial reveals that map whatever I'm saying to the point they want to hear. Yawn. Thanks for nothing (except stories). EMDR work with Kathryn is miserable and challenging, but I'd rather be miserable for an hour a week and see progress every day that follows, than congratulate myself for manipulating a therapist once a week, for the lulz. She's open to my humor without letting me use it as an escape hatch, and keeps the sessions focused so that therapy has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This style probably isn't for everyone, but it's the only good option for me, and I can see the results in the things I do.
Thanks to this clinic I can focus more time and energy on fictional stories that pay me, instead of nonfiction horror stories that I pay for.