I’m Owen. This week of posts is different from the usual…it’s a bit of an origin story for this newsletter, The Frontier Psychiatrists. It’s a daily health-themed newsletter by Imperfectionist physician Owen Scott Muir, M.D. There is a podcast (this), videos, a therapy training book, chapters in other therapy manuals, some poetry books, a live event in January, and even a brain-stimulation first clinic in NYC where your depression can be treated in an open-label clinical trial—to remission in 79% of people—without drugs or talk therapy.
How did all this come to be? That is what this week’s series of podcasts are the slow-roll story of!
It all started with a podcast about the pandemic. For those listening closely, the last episode was from March 22, 2020. This podcast was recorded the NEXT DAY, on March 23rd. Michelle Bernabe, RN believed in me, and we all need that. Michelle and I were working together at a practice at the time, and the pandemic hit. She is the person who taught me about the hero’s journey and narrative structure. She encouraged me to keep telling a story. The story was about the pandemic at the time. This episode is based on an interview with a nurse struggling to endure the horrors of the early pandemic in New York. As it relates to this newsletter and your author, the story is about the dates. Episode 3 ended, and I was recording Episode 4 the next night. I was dropping perfectionism in the heat of the moment and striving to tell stories that didn’t have to be perfect.
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I am, by necessity, becoming an imperfectionist. There is no perfect in a pandemic. It’s chaos, and perfection stopped being an option.
This week’s articles tell the story of how I got to write a daily imperfectionist manifesto by showing you how I started telling imperfect stories.
Your feedback, dear readers, is welcome! Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for the next thrilling episode, where I get a bit more ambitious and fall off the wagon a little. It’s not a linear journey!
Plug 1: I work at a practice in NYC for those interested in neuromodulation-first approaches to mental health problems. That means not drugs. It’s called Fermata. We are even enrolling for the SAINT OLO Study!
Plug 2: Tickets are available for the Frontier Psychiatrists live event: Rapid Acting Mental Health Treatment 2024, Jan 7th, in San Fransisco!