Weekends at Bellevue Quotes

“Also, mania usually feels better than being medicated, at least for a while. It’s a bit like surfing, knowing it has to end with the inevitable wipeout, but loving the balancing act required to keep it going.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Help me learn to accept that I cannot alter the machine, and I will try my hardest to make sure that the machine does not alter me.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“There is not much difference between any one of us here today and the patients at Bellevue. We just know enough to put away our imaginary friends if someone knocks on our door.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“reality is this: All of us, to some degree, are mentally ill. We get paranoid, anxious, depressed, and insomniac. We alternate between delusions of grandeur and crippling self-doubt, we suffer from paralyzing fears and embarrassing neuroses. We all have compulsions to do things we know we shouldn’t, and there are millions of us with addictions, whether to gambling, drinking, dieting, or playing Second Life. Every one of us has psychiatric symptoms, many of them”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“And right there, in the birthing center of Saint Luke’s Hospital, I have a medium-sized epiphany that has nothing to do with labor and delivery. She didn’t believe me when I called her. My clinician has failed me, and it hurt. Finally I realize, like never before, that I absolutely need to listen to my patients better, to be more open to believing their side of the story, trust that they need my care, and not always assume that I know more than they do. Just because I’m in a position of power does not mean I have to wield it, creating an impenetrable fortress.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Rudy Giuliani is always good about making an appearance wherever the action is. He shakes hands, smiles, offers comforting words to the patients and their loved ones. He vows to make the city safer. One thing I’ll say about Rudy, he may be a loose cannon, but he’s always great in a crisis. He can pull it together better than anyone, looking calm, concerned, and strong. He’s got the kind of personality that thrives when surrounded by chaos, naturally making people feel safer.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“All of us have chosen this line of work because we want to help others, but we learn over time that we have to set some limits. Most of us cauterize our bleeding hearts by using humor as a shield, so there is plenty of laughter erupting behind the scenes.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“I’ve always been enthralled by insanity. When I was a kid and my parents would take me into Boston, I’d immediately notice the homeless schizophrenics, how they would walk around pelvis-first, talking to themselves. I was fascinated by the idea of hearing voices, of paranoia and disorganized speech.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“We’re part of this huge experiment. All of us are under one microscope, being observed and studied. You know where the eyepiece of the microscope is?” he asked me, his pupils dilated with enlightenment. He pointed to the ceiling, “It’s what you call the sun.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“He lives in a dream, but his hallucinations and delusions are as real to him as the movies we star in while we sleep.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“In March and April, our ER becomes crowded with manic patients. For many bipolars, there is a seasonality to their symptoms. Just as more people get depressed in the winter months, increased exposure to bright sunlight can elevate moods.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Being preoccupied with religion is a classic manic symptom, and mania is the better-known half of manic depression, now called bipolar disorder.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Making healthy choices is an awkward behavior that takes years to master. Not beating yourself up when you slow down is a good first step. Most of my patients are unmercifully hard on themselves. Happy and relaxed feels unearned and undeserved, foreign and frightening. What is more comfortable and familiar is shame, humiliation, and guilt. These are ingrained by family and society. We binge and purge on cycles of indulgence and regret. Gratify yourself, punish yourself.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Desmond is the poster child for Karuna, the Buddhist concept of infinite compassion.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“You have a genuine desire to make things better for other people.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“respond immediately to people who need something—anything—impulsively. I want to plug the hole. Like, I have to stifle this impulse to help people carry their grocery bags in my apartment building, or if I’m in line at the store and someone is short some money, I’ll always think about volunteering to pay. Even on the street, I’ll hear someone complain about how they can’t get somewhere, I’ll think, I have a car you can borrow. I don’t say it, thank God, but I find myself thinking it. If I see someone shivering on the street, I have an impulse to give them the coat off my back. It’s pathological, right? I have a neurotic impulse to help people?”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“It’s tougher than you think to end it all, take my word. And after a failed attempt? You thought your life sucked before, just wait.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“The ultimate goal of psychotherapy is self-love and self-acceptance. It is elusive, but I try to model the desired behavior”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Every July first is New Year's Day for medical students -- the first day of the new academic year. Recently graduated medical students become "doctors", and second-year medical students become the most anticipated "third years", when the clinical rotation begins.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“She calls everyone “babe,” in a casual, yet demeaning tone. It’s her way of equalizing the power structure, I figure. She is naked and immobilized in the blue canvas restraint, amid a room full of people in uniforms. I’d be calling everybody “babe,” too.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“One of my earliest patients at Bellevue was a man who asked me, “Do you think I’m nuts, or just bananas, because my brother is a total meatball!” I told him, with a wink, “I doubt your diagnosis is nuts; I think it’s overused, actually. However, I can’t rule out bananas, or even partial meatball, but I haven’t yet seen a case of total meatball. I’d like to meet your brother sometime.” The patient smiled at my response, which I took to be a good sign, but later he asked me to marry him. I didn’t hold that against him, but I did admit him.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Treating everything as a joke will only get me so far. The problem is, I have a hair-trigger empathy switch, and because I am emotionally incontinent, my tear ducts leak with little provocation”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“It’s not until I start working at Bellevue that I finally appreciate what sets psychiatry apart from the rest of medicine. Medical illness has an endpoint: death. Psychosis is boundless; the degree to which someone can lose their mind is infinite.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“So now I am the doctor in charge of Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room, also known as CPEP (pronounced “See-Pep,” the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program). I run two fifteen-hour overnight shifts on Saturday and Sunday nights. They call me “the weekend attending.” It feels just like rock-and-roll psychiatry to me. This is my Saturday night gig.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“childish and irrational, triggered by all of my resentments toward Daniel,”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“emblazoned with the name of a new antipsychotic”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Another man reported he was taking “peanut butter balls” for his seizures. The ER docs had a good laugh over this, translating “phenobarbital” for me.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“Nearly every shift, I’m asking myself, What do I do with this patient now that he has shown up here in my ER? What does he need from us right now? Unfortunately, the most common answer is: He needs a childhood transplant, he needs to start over—with loving parents this time, in a caring, nurturing environment.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

“I was enraptured by the brain and how it could misfire, but it wasn’t just the hardware that intrigued me, it was the software with the bugs.”
― Julie Holland, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.