Misty Embrey, MD

10/12/2024

Being born at dawn has its perks. You get a cool middle name. Your camera roll has an endless supply of sunrise photos. And whether you like it or not, you eventually learn that throughout your life, each event that carried any emotional salience was designed to awaken you from your slumber.

You start to see how each experience, each loss, each uncertainty, and each unattainable thing was placed in your life, specifically to wake you up. Just like the night is said to be darkest before the dawn.

As a psychiatrist, I’m trained to help alleviate mental and emotional suffering. But in my own life, being awake to some of my own challenges rather than trying to run from or palliate them has catalyzed the biggest transformations in my life. Hence, in my practice, I encourage my clients to ask “What is wanting to be catalyzed?” rather than “How can I fix this?”

While awakening is not a path for the faint of heart, I believe it is the path we are all on. Awakening to who we are. And why we are here. Or at least sitting with those questions every day.

So as the sun ushers in the dawn of another birthday, I renew my efforts to pay attention to life as closely and as deeply as possible and resist every urge to go back to sleep. And I invite you all to join me.

☀️🌙 ✨🤍☯️ 🌅

09/22/2024

Happy Fall Equinox!! 🍁🍂

06/05/2024

Happy World Environment Day! How are you appreciating or supporting the environment today? I’m admiring the lovely magnolias blooming outside my office. Been waiting all year for this!! 🌸

05/06/2024

04/30/2024

When you get a new office toy for the kids but it ends up being your toy. 🖤 Thanks for the idea .mcmillan_

04/22/2024

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Messenger
By Mary Oliver

04/08/2024

Carl Jung advocated for making the unconscious conscious. But the way to do that, he found, is often uncomfortable, and that’s why we avoid it. No one likes to see in themselves that which they run from in the world. But that’s generally the way of it.

The good news is, you don’t need to go digging for it to find it. Your unconscious material is always with you. In you, in the world, in your experience. There will be moments when it’s more intense. And those are the moments when you suffer and ask: “why this again?”

But there’s a message for you in that feeling. Pay attention. It wants to be understood. It wants to be felt and connected to and befriended. And when that happens, it will no longer burden you. And instead will lighten your path.

04/01/2024

03/26/2024

01/21/2024

We invite everybody to join us to our next Free Virtual Open House on Trauma and Mental Health. It is a free education event offered to community by GWCIM medical team. Our leading specialists Dr. Mikhail Kogan, MD (GWCIM medical director), Dr. Misty Embrey, MD (psychiatry), Dr. Sally Novak (psychotherapy, Chinese Medicine), Angela Gabriel (Somatic Experiencing), Jennifer Rioux (Ayurveda), Nina Paul (MBSR) and Cynthia Powell (MBSR) will present Integrative Medicine approaches to Trauma and Mental Health. There will be time for live Q&A. Help us spread the word!

Topic: GWCIM Mental Health and Trauma Virtual Open House
Time: Feb 2, 2024 03:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://gwu-edu.zoom.us/j/8812960654?omn=91400532210
Meeting ID: 881 296 0654

01/18/2024

Healing takes many forms. But remember that palliation and healing are different things. Healing happens when the body adapts in a positive way to a stressor, whether it be mental, emotional, or physical. The body is fully capable of this type of healing when provided with the right tools to do so. Palliation is also very helpful but in a different way. It can help you cope with the stressor but it doesn’t heal. It can allow you to pause the progression of your distress so you can find the healing tools you need. But ultimately, palliation and coping are just detours that help you find the path of healing.

01/16/2024

PRACTICING
By Julia Fehrenbacher

Today, I will practice noticing. Pretty patch of pink parting winter sky, moss peeking through cracks in the old sidewalk, how sadness calls me closer to the unseeable, closer to my own tired heart. And yours.

Today I will practice meeting my own longing until the quietest voice becomes the only one I hear. Rest, it whispers-unwind, unfold, unfurl, unravel a lifetime of tired tangles. Strike a match, light a candle, let the hard melt

into a slow stream of softness. Soft like petal, like promise, like slow-drifting cloud. Notice how the quietest voice holds you, how it throws its sunshine arms around you and whispers:

Hello Beloved, welcome. Welcome here. Welcome home.