Suffering Is Collective, and So Is Healing: Belonging, Ritual, and Meaning in Uncertain Times - An Interview with Suzan Song, MD

But before we jump into the conversation, I want to ask you the question we ask all of our guests, which is, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?

Yeah, I am someone who has thought about suffering for a very long time, ever since I was a child, I think, and about why we suffer, about how it shows in all of us, and what healing actually looks like and actually means.

And so I've put those thoughts into a framework.

That's my book, Why We Suffer and How We Heal.

And currently that's what I'm putting out into the world, which is really thinking about ways in which people not just survive.

As a psychiatrist, I've worked with people across the spectrum of despair.

So survivors of torture, trafficking, and hostage to the other extreme of CEOs, founders, and leaders.

And finding that the people who are able to find a sense of grounding during all the instabilities and uncertainties are those who have some form of using narrative ritual and purpose.

So you're a psychiatrist and also have background as a medical anthropologist.

Can you explain to us and to our audience how that might change how you sit with people as compared to maybe a traditional psychiatrist?

Yeah, I think when people think about anthropology, or my work is in global mental health, so I work in the humanitarian settings most of the time, so areas of armed conflict, war, post-conflict.

People tend to think of anthropology as seeing the other, a culture of the other.

And I think if we're honest, people are thinking normally about the other being a person of color or from the global south.

But I think of anthropology as being most useful when we turn the lens on ourselves.

So we see that American mental health professionals systems, structures, interventions, the whole approach of American mental health is a culture in and of itself.

The way that we view suffering and the way that we view healing is in itself a culture-bound framework.

So psychiatry and the American mental health care looks at culture as being on top of biology.

It's like a layer on top of biology.

and that the self is this bounded self.

Like we think that our minds are internal, that our thoughts and our emotions are also internal, that distress is psychological, and that healing, therefore, is an examination of our thoughts, our feelings, and our own behaviors, right? That's kind of our model.

Anthropology shows, though, that culture is not just a layer on top of biology, but culture shapes our suffering, like it changes our own experience of suffering.

And so in many cultures, the self is porous.

So we can have spiritual or ancestors kind of affecting us, or our suffering is relational.

And our healing is within communities and within the sense of belonging.

And so while anthropology helped me kind of realize that global mental health is not about other people, but like I really do look at what we're doing as psychotherapists, as psychiatrists, as American mental health system.

But before we jump into the conversation, I want to ask you the question we ask all of our guests, which is, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?

Yeah, I am someone who has thought about suffering for a very long time, ever since I was a child, I think, and about why we suffer, about how it shows in all of us, and what healing actually looks like and actually means.

And so I've put those thoughts into a framework.

That's my book, Why We Suffer and How We Heal.

And currently that's what I'm putting out into the world, which is really thinking about ways in which people not just survive.

As a psychiatrist, I've worked with people across the spectrum of despair.

So survivors of torture, trafficking, and hostage to the other extreme of CEOs, founders, and leaders.

And finding that the people who are able to find a sense of grounding during all the instabilities and uncertainties are those who have some form of using narrative ritual and purpose.

So you're a psychiatrist and also have background as a medical anthropologist.

Can you explain to us and to our audience how that might change how you sit with people as compared to maybe a traditional psychiatrist?

Yeah, I think when people think about anthropology, or my work is in global mental health, so I work in the humanitarian settings most of the time, so areas of armed conflict, war, post-conflict.

People tend to think of anthropology as seeing the other, a culture of the other.

And I think if we're honest, people are thinking normally about the other being a person of color or from the global south.

But I think of anthropology as being most useful when we turn the lens on ourselves.

So we see that American mental health professionals systems, structures, interventions, the whole approach of American mental health is a culture in and of itself.

The way that we view suffering and the way that we view healing is in itself a culture-bound framework.

So psychiatry and the American mental health care looks at culture as being on top of biology.

It's like a layer on top of biology.

and that the self is this bounded self.

Like we think that our minds are internal, that our thoughts and our emotions are also internal, that distress is psychological, and that healing, therefore, is an examination of our thoughts, our feelings, and our own behaviors, right? That's kind of our model.

Anthropology shows, though, that culture is not just a layer on top of biology, but culture shapes our suffering, like it changes our own experience of suffering.

And so in many cultures, the self is porous.

So we can have spiritual or ancestors kind of affecting us, or our suffering is relational.

And our healing is within communities and within the sense of belonging.

And so while anthropology helped me kind of realize that global mental health is not about other people, but like I really do look at what we're doing as psychotherapists, as psychiatrists, as American mental health system.