Shadow Me Next!

Beyond Traditional Psychiatry: Faith, Storytelling, and Human Connection | Dr. Michael Broukhim

• Ashley Love • Season 1 • Episode 32

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Dr. Michael Broukhim shatters psychiatric norms with remarkable results, proudly owning his identity as the "anti-psychiatrist psychiatrist." Our conversation reveals why this integrative practitioner achieves what many consider impossible: helping patients recover completely from conditions typically labeled as chronic.

The heart of Dr. Broukhim's revolutionary approach lies in his expansive understanding of faith not as religious doctrine, but as "a belief that there is value in connecting with other beings." This inclusive definition becomes a powerful prognostic factor for recovery. Patients recognizing the importance of connection with humans, animals, or plants demonstrate dramatically improved outcomes compared to those remaining isolated.

We explore the fascinating science behind storytelling as medicine. Did you know 80–90% of your brain cells are actually immune cells? Dr. Broukkim explains how negative thoughts trigger inflammatory responses that can lead to autoimmune conditions, while positive narratives promote healing—the biology behind placebo and "nocebo" effects. This understanding transforms mental healthcare from symptom management to genuine healing.

Originally destined for internal medicine, Dr. Broukhim found his calling in psychiatry through the profound human connection it offered. "I've never had a boring day of psychiatry," he shares. "If a patient's being open and authentic, every person is very interesting." This passion for authentic human connection has expanded beyond his clinical practice to iexperiencelife.com, his consulting company, and soon into rabbinical studies, all pathways to help people navigate crises of meaning before clinical conditions develop.

The most powerful medicine might be reconnecting with others and transforming the stories we tell ourselves. Whether you're struggling with mental health challenges, supporting someone who is, or simply curious about innovative approaches to wellbeing, this conversation offers genuine hope and practical wisdom for true healing.

Learn more at iexperience.life!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. At Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and secure your place in medicine.

Check out our pre-health resources. Great for pre-med, pre-PA, pre-nursing, pre-therapy students or anyone else with an upcoming interview!
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Ashley:

Hello and welcome to Shadow Me Next, a podcast where I take you into and behind the scenes of the medical world to provide you with a deeper understanding of the human side of medicine. I'm Ashley, a physician assistant, medical editor, clinical preceptor and the creator of Shadow Me Next. It is my pleasure to introduce you to incredible members of the healthcare field and uncover their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face and what drives them in their careers. It's access you want and stories you need, whether you're a pre-health student or simply curious about the healthcare field. I invite you to join me as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in medicine. I don't want you to miss a single one of these conversations, so make sure that you subscribe to this podcast, which will automatically notify you when new episodes are dropped, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Shadow Me Next, where we will review highlights from this conversation and where I'll give you sneak previews of our upcoming guests.

Ashley:

Today's guest challenges everything you think you know about psychiatry. Dr Michael Brakeem is an integrative psychiatrist and medical director of Hope Integrative Psychiatry, a practice that blends conventional treatment with holistic healing and storytelling. His journey into medicine was sparked by his father's cancer diagnosis, kept hidden from him for nearly a decade, and shaped by a mission to heal beyond the limits of traditional care. After falling in love with psychiatry, just two days into his rotation, dr Brakeem redefined what healing could look like. He's built a thriving clinic, developed innovative training programs and launched I Experience Life, a consulting company that brings psychological and spiritual insights into industries, organizations and creative projects. Now he's even preparing to enter rabbinical school.

Ashley:

In today's episode, we talk about why most mental health conditions are not chronic. We discuss a more encompassing definition of faith and how faith and connection are central to recovery, and the ways storytelling and the stories we tell ourselves can truly transform our lives. Please keep in mind that the content of this podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. This is Shadow Me Next with Dr Michael Bracheem. Hey, michael, thank you so much for joining me on Shadow Me Next. I am so interested to hear what you have to say about your whole journey and how you treat patients I'm excited to talk about a variety of topics.

Ashley:

Excellent Good. So, first and foremost, I would love for you to explain one of the ways you describe yourself as the anti-psychiatrist psychiatrist. So tell us a little bit about that term and how it came to be.

Dr. Broukhim:

Yeah, there's a lot of paradoxes behind it, because I say this often. I can't imagine a psychiatrist enjoying the job more than I do, because my experience in psychiatry is that I see people come to me at sometimes their lowest moment in their life and then I get to see them at their highest sense of self-satisfaction and fulfillment and to be able to see that feels like one of the best jobs ever. So I really enjoy it. At the same time, when I look at the field like the history of the field I look at the general outcomes. They history of the field. I look at the general outcomes. They just seem like they're getting worse. And so I say I'm the anti-psychiatrist psychiatrist because I feel like I have great results in clinical practice but a lot of the general guidelines are just not helpful and so I don't do what a lot of other psychiatrists do.

Ashley:

And you get good results from that. It sounds like.

Dr. Broukhim:

Yeah, the good result is people don't see me anymore because they're feeling a lot better or they see me a lot less and there are cases where they've worked towards not being on medications anymore. They might see their therapist, potentially, or coach, every week or every other week, but yeah, it's not years of seeing me. It's either therapist potentially, or coach every week or every other week, but yeah, it's not years of seeing me every month or three months.

Ashley:

Which I'm sure is such an interesting position to be in in medicine, right? Is that ideally, as clinicians, most of the time, well checks are fabulous and we enjoy doing well checks, but especially in psychiatry, I would imagine you don't see many patients coming in saying, hey, I feel super good, I just wanted to check in, make sure you think I sound and look super good and we move on. You know, I would imagine that most of your patients come in, like you said, in distress and oftentimes on their worst day, and then your goal is to not see those people anymore, which is an interesting thing, a unique position, I think, in medicine.

Dr. Broukhim:

Yeah and I said this in another meeting that we have the best medical care ever for acute conditions across the board. I feel like that for psychiatry. I feel like that for psychiatry when people are having severe episodes of psychosis, mania or depression, anxiety, whatever it is. We have amazing tools to make these conditions not chronic. Unfortunately, the US is in a position where, per capita, we have the highest rate of mental and physical health conditions in the world. But I think with AI technology, we have such quick access to train professionals and information and like online tools, whatever it is to reach a state of long-term health.

Ashley:

And we're kind of talking a little bit about psychiatry specifically, but I'd imagine that this relates to other elements of medicine in a way which you kind of understand, because I think correct me if I'm wrong but you plan to specialize in internal medicine originally and then, after the first two days on your psychiatry rotation it kind of shifted. Tell me about that. What interested you in that shift?

Dr. Broukhim:

The reason why I liked internal medicine originally. It was eventually going to become an oncologist or gastroenterologist potentially, but I liked how as an internal medicine doctor you can work with like so many different systems. I can do a little bit of neurology, you know. I can look at the kidney system, cardiac system, I can really look at the whole body and it can be like detective work in that way. But what happened was that on my rotations it felt very algorithmic and not much room for really connecting with patients and hearing their story. And then when it came to psychiatry, it's very bizarre.

Dr. Broukhim:

My first psychiatry rotation was in an emergency psych unit and about a third of the cases I saw were meth-induced psychosis when a lot of these cases the way that some of these patients came in it looked like a World War Z zombie who was going to rip your head off. Wow, it would be like two to three police officers would bring them in Super intense and I would eventually sit in with a lot of these patients. So I saw them go from that to a very calm person and I hear their story and I just just the stories were definitely sad. They were fascinating in the sense of how can someone who grew up as an innocent child, go to this and then also now be like calm and present with me.

Dr. Broukhim:

I've never had a boring day of psychiatry.

Dr. Broukhim:

The only days where I get bored is when a patient is not being open with me. If a patient's being open and authentic, every person is very interesting. I think that's why podcasts are becoming more and more popular. Even if we have reels on Instagram where you're watching 30 30 seconds one minute, the fact that the most popular forms of media is multi-hour long conversations between two people or more, it shows you like we really do want to connect on a deeper level with other humans, like that's even the age of technology, where there's all these shows. The number one podcast, which is, you know, joe's podcast, these are two hour, three hour conversations. So it's kind of like that for me as a psychiatrist, and that desire to connect with human beings and be of service in that way has led me to also want to start rabbinical school in two months to have the opportunity to help people before they have that depressive or anxiety episode, before they become psychotic, and meet them when they're having a crisis of meaning and not knowing why am I here, what am I doing?

Ashley:

I think that's fabulous. In rabbinical school, that would be to become a rabbi. Is that correct? Yes, so, and oh my gosh, there's so many different ways we could go with this right now, and I am so glad you brought up storytelling. That's something that I really wanted to talk about in a little bit, and just the authenticity and really almost the dying art of the conversation. Yeah, you know, in the text message world, I think it's where storytelling is so interesting and it's what makes people so curious in it. So we'll come back to that because that's so good. But I do want to talk on the importance of faith in your practice. Is that something that would help this inner mix of faith and science, faith in medicine? Are they one in the same? Do you keep them separate? Does it depend on the patient? Patient?

Dr. Broukhim:

it is a universal thing that's needed love that so if I have a patient who doesn't believe in god or doesn't subscribe to any religion, I still need to cultivate a sense of what is something that they can go beyond themselves Any human being that doesn't see the value of connection with other human beings, or at least life. You might not like human beings, but you like animals, you like plants, you can recover. If you don't want to be connected to any living being or see the importance of it, you very likely need something like psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to remind yourself of how important it is to be connected to living things.

Ashley:

It's almost like a prognostic factor for recovery, right? Thank you for sharing that. What an interesting idea. So you start rabbinical school in two months. You said, yep, fabulous. I don't know how you're making time to do all of these things, because I also want to talk about this new consulting, coaching, advising company that you started too. Let's actually dive into that right now. Why don't we wwwiexperiencelife, which I love that title? That is fantastic, very cool. Tell us a little bit about this as well, because I'm very interested.

Dr. Broukhim:

So I see all types of patients, different backgrounds, they work in different industries and sometimes they'll bring in their industry like what's happening in their job, what's happening in the industry as a whole.

Dr. Broukhim:

And I've noticed that I've and this is why I like psychiatry also is that I get to be creative as a psychiatrist. The questions I ask how I want to respond, what experiences do I want to like bring for patients, whether it's a men's group, improv class or retreat and I've noticed that I'm kind of co-creating at times with a patient in terms of like reorganizing their whole life in like multiple domains. My experience of working in different settings, that when I work with a team of clinicians, we can create like a really amazing organizational structure of healing. But also when I've worked with patients about their industries, I will give suggestions to kind of bring to their work and then, like it works, I want to work with executives or teams of people and companies, nonprofits, artists to really cultivate their work further if they feel stuck, because I do think from a psychological and spiritual perspective, if we can address those things, it can really optimize whatever they're doing in a variety of settings.

Ashley:

I love the organizational structure of healing. It helps us remember that we do not become healed. Afflictions are not cured just by going to the doctor and getting our meds. It has to be ingrained into every aspect of our lives if we want to be lasting right.

Dr. Broukhim:

Yeah, and there's a lot of talk about psychedelic medicine being an up-and-coming, major treatment in mental health. The part that's still, I feel like the part of the conversation that's missing, is we need to change the structure, the container in which healing is being done. Even psychedelics, where you would want to make sure that, relationally, at home, at work, the other doctors that you're working with are all aligned with the intention that you have in working with. You know, ketamine is psychotherapy, psilocybin is psychotherapy, whatever medallion it is even just psychotherapy. A lot of people do great one-on-one work and then we try to integrate in their lives. Well, if their family system, friend system, romantic partner system, kids work, whatever it is is not, if they're not aligned, you're not really going to improve.

Ashley:

Very thought provoking too, and I would imagine that would be. There's a lot of really good interview questions that I could think of for pre-health students. Based on that, which actually I do want to pause, there is a segment on the show called quality questions, and it actually is where we talk about an interview question. So do you have an interview question that you'd like to ask Before we hear what Dr Brokeem's quality question is? And he doesn't just give us one, he gives us two. Keep in mind that there's more interview prep, such as mock interviews and personal statement review over on shadowmenextcom. There you'll find amazing resources to help you as you prepare to answer your own quality questions.

Dr. Broukhim:

There's multiple segues into this. Pre-health student is. I think it's what is the type of life that you want to lead, not just the type of doctor you want to be or the type of practitioner you want to be, because what you want to do as someone that works in the healthcare field, it's not a siloed experience. It leads into the idea of partnership having kids, where you want to live, how many hours you want to work, traveling. I would like to ask that question. There's two more things I want to share.

Dr. Broukhim:

When I was asking doctors about should I become a doctor, most of them said no, and even one doctor who was treating my father when he was slowly passing away from cancer. It was a nephrologist. He saw me volunteering in a hospital and he went up to me with a cane saying what are you doing here? You should leave the hospital right now. Look at me. I can't barely walk. I don't see my family. I'm working long hours. He was kind of yelling at me and when he left I didn't listen to family. I'm working long hours. He was kind of yelling at me and when he left I didn't listen to him.

Dr. Broukhim:

I told myself I was 19 years old. I told myself. I'm going to make sure I'm going to be a doctor that finds a way to enjoy his life while he practices, and I've been able to do that. So this is the last thing I want to say. Related to this question is the most memorable answer that I've ever gotten from anyone before was I was in South Korea at a Buddhist monk temple and there was a monk who's in his 70s and he became a monk in his mid 20s and I asked him at this stage of your life, what are you working on? And he said what I'm working on is the exact same thing I've been working on for the past 50 years To choose to primarily focus on mindfulness while I'm praying, cooking and cleaning every single day. The struggle is the same struggle I've been doing for 50 years, and it just reminded me of the idea of commitment, that the struggle of committing to what you're passionate to despite all the stressors may come. I think about that answer a lot with what I do in my life.

Ashley:

Commitment and discipline. Those are two really good examples, because one is a motivator because you don't want to be like him, like the cranky old doctor house guy with the cane that was yelling at you, and then the other is a motivator among the positive Somebody you do, I mean I would love to say that that's what I was working on every day. How simple but at the same time how incredibly difficult. Yeah, oh, very cool. Let's talk about a day in your life. What does the day look like for you?

Dr. Broukhim:

I wake up and I really try to focus on this thing of like what type of adventure am I going to have today? And really trying to have no expectations for what's going to happen. Have some decaf coffee, because when I have caffeine I overestimate how much I can do. And, you know, exercise for at least seven minutes intensely and I might be doing a lot of things that morning. I could either be meeting someone for networking, working on a collaborative project or going straight to see patients. My days are very varied between clinical care, teaching, collaborating with other projects. Today I'm going to be working with a artist and other volunteers for five hours on an art project. That's what I'm doing today, so it's very varied. I might have a men's group on Tuesdays. I'm in leadership training. Right now. I do a lot of group experiential things like men's group to stay connected in a deep way to other human beings and just making sure that any blind spots that I have in life are being addressed.

Dr. Broukhim:

I think that's one reason why someone may want to continue in therapy or coaching is because we're day to day. There's so much messaging about how horrible our world is. When you go on Instagram, the algorithms are kind of showing you we're in crisis mode and any day there's, you know, the world's gonna be blown up by nuclear explosions or climate change or whatever it is. Many of us may be surrounded by people that have self-limiting stories about humanity. It can get really dark these days, so it's a major battle to maintain the story, the narrative of we're actually becoming more humane. I think homicides are going to be at their lowest point in the United States this year. There's so many stories of things are actually getting a lot better, but it seems like 90% of the content is how much worse everything's getting so day to day. I try to not allow that to enter my consciousness.

Ashley:

We have to protect ourselves against that sort of thing. You know we wake up every day and you just kind of have to put on that armor.

Dr. Broukhim:

I want to address put on the armor because that's a lot of work. It's very heavy to wear a lot of armor. So you might put on armor because your consciousness feels like I'm going to go into war Versus. I might not want to wear any armor because I have a belief that we're actually building towards a greater sense of humanity. So I really believe that the story that you're telling yourself about how the world is it will be reflected in terms of what's brought to you. It feels like it's a science. It works like science, but I think there's evidence that quantum mechanics is really pointing towards that idea that the way we perceive reality will dictate what's in front of us.

Ashley:

I think that is incredible.

Dr. Broukhim:

I have to give you an experiment that kind of backs that up. There was a study. In one room they had a man by himself, and in one room they had a man by himself and in another room they had a plant by itself. They told the man in the experiment to imagine burning a plant in his mind. When he was told to imagine burning the plant in his mind, the plant next door was they were able to measure that was sending off distress signals. Wow, when the man was consciously visualizing burning a plant. So you can imagine what you visualize, what you're creating in your mind. It has actual physiological effects on your environment, just like it did with the plants.

Ashley:

And I think we've always understood that. We just haven't really understood it perhaps to the depth that we do now. Yeah, this is a great segue. You mentioned using transformative power of storytelling. What does that look like for you? And specifically, let's talk about specifically in the clinical setting what does that look like for you?

Dr. Broukhim:

I have different stories for different types of situations. Oh, here's a great one.

Ashley:

I'll tell the story of how important your thoughts are, and a great clinical example of this is I'll ask people to initiate the story. So I'm gonna ask you right now Do you know what percentage of the cells in your brain are immune cells.

Dr. Broukhim:

Oh, I would have to guess. My guess would be 15%. It's 80 to 90%. Okay, what that means is that your thoughts can dictate how your immune cells are going to behave. So, the immune cells in your brain so microglia is the way they're categorized is that they can be pro-inflammatory. If you're having a lot of thoughts related to anxiety or negative self-worth, it's gonna make those immune cells pro-inflammatory. They can start cleaving away at your own brain or they might communicate with the rest of your body to attack itself. Wow, which will lead to autoimmune conditions Versus anti-inflammatory.

Dr. Broukhim:

When you're thinking more positive thoughts, thoughts that relate to self-empowerment, compassion and empowerment, compassion and acceptance, and you can say that's what the placebo versus nocebo effect is. Placebo effect is that if you tell yourself you're going to feel better, that you're going to get better, that you're going to get better, you end up being better. Actually, like physiologically, you show improvement versus nocebo is that you're telling. If you're gonna tell yourself you're gonna get worse, I mean you will. Actually there's measurements that'll show like you're actually getting worse. So when you hear that story, it makes you want to be even more mindful about what story you're telling yourself or what you're telling about the world.

Ashley:

That's perfect. It's evidence, right. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing all of these things. Gosh, I could never. I don't even think I could pick my favorite moment. I think I don't know. I think faith in medicine. I think how firmly you believe that those two things require each other, I think is great.

Dr. Broukhim:

Yeah, I think the best way to describe faith is a belief that there is value in connecting with other beings. That's the belief Great, your prognosis for improving is going to be significantly improved.

Ashley:

And what an inclusive definition of that too, Because I would imagine the vast majority of healthy people perhaps all would say yes, there is an innate good in that, so I love that. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. On Shadow Me Next, I appreciate your insight and what you're doing with iExperiencelife, the fact that you're going to rabbinical school. Best of luck with that. Thanks again for joining us.

Dr. Broukhim:

Thank you so much, Robyn.

Ashley:

Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Shadow Me Next. If you liked this episode or if you think it could be useful for a friend, please subscribe and invite them to join us next Monday, as always. If you have any questions, let me know on Facebook or Instagram Access. You want stories you need? You're always invited to shadow me next.

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Ashley Love

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