As Brooklyn Minds grows, each new teammate strengthens our ability to best serve our community. Our staff spotlight series highlights the unique expertise and lived experience of our newest team members. Today, we welcome Michael Rodriguez, PsyD to our team as a postdoctoral fellow.
Michael Rodriguez, PsyD is a self-professed “huge nerd” from the Philadelphia suburbs with Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. His nerdiness comes out when discussing D&D, podcasts, video game development and (of course) psychology. He has been seeing individual clients as well as running several groups with us since he came onboard in May of this year. He has also taken on a leadership role with our group programming, and we are excited to explore all that his relentless curiosity and varied interests bring to the Brooklyn Minds community.
We asked him a few questions in order to get to know him a bit better. The interview below has been lightly edited for clarity.
How did you get into psychology?
When I was in college, the psychology classes I took were the most interesting to me. I was undeclared for a while and then realized that three quarters of my classes were psychology and cognitive sciences, and I was like “oh I guess I’m a psychology major now.” But when I think about it, it’s because it’s in my blood.
Both of my parents are school psychologists, which was great, being the only child of two school psychologists. It was actually wonderful, because they knew how to address my emotional needs.
My grandmother was also an analyst. She was a Jewish-German refugee during WWII and came to the States, and got her graduate degree as an adult and became a psychoanalyst. She actually gave me her Rorschach cards when I graduated. My dad recently found reviews for her on Yelp. And she’s in her 90s at this point, and there were a couple reviews on Yelp like “I saw her for 10 years 30 years ago, five stars.” It was really wonderful to see.
So psychology was a natural thing. What about Brooklyn Minds, what led you to working here?
A lot of the clinical work that I did through school was with pretty severe populations in large hospital systems. When you work in hospitals, you see people for a couple of weeks and then they leave; it’s a very short relationship. I felt like the work I did there was helpful, but then I imagine my patients leaving and still having all of these complicated difficulties, and I couldn’t help but wonder about their long-term mental health. And when I started looking at outpatient work, the aspect of the kind of complex problems that people come to Brooklyn Minds for is really appealing to me for that reason.
The other thing was that when I came into the office, it was one of the only places that actually looked cool. That start-up feeling, and the attention paid to the aesthetics of the literal place. The community aspect of the practice was also appealing. As I’ve come to work here, I think my initial impressions were correct: that the people at Brooklyn Minds are all very passionate and care about one another’s work. Coming from the hospital system, where team-based practice is the norm, that community of clinicians is not necessarily the norm in outpatient practices. I think the dedication to helping one another with complicated casework is really important. Having a team that is dedicated to supporting one another, that’s something that Brooklyn Minds does well. I think that is part of this really cool start-up, where everyone is working together and that team-based atmosphere is really important.
How long were you working in the hospital system?
Through grad school mostly. I started working in and around hospitals pretty early on, in my second year. So it was three or four years of increasing complexity and severity, according to the APA mandates for how you do your practicas.
So I went straight up the ladder: outpatient, intensive outpatient/partial hospitalization, inpatient psychiatry, state hospital. And then my internship was at Elmhurst Medical Center. Because it’s a public hospital, that was a whole range of community and hospital work.
Of all those diverse experiences you’ve had, what would you say is the most meaningful work that you have done?
I think the group programs that I’ve worked for throughout my career have been the most impactful for me. I ran some long-term process groups and working with the same group of people for four or five years, seeing the group change and grow. Watching people connect to one another is different from what we do normally, where it’s one person sitting with one person and connecting. And that’s great too, and I really love doing individual therapy, but there is something particularly powerful about seeing two people that are not you connecting with one another and helping each other. Watching someone help another person and providing the space for that to happen is particularly powerful.
We appreciate the time Dr. Rodriguez took to speak with us, and are glad to have him on our team. If you are interested in working with Dr. Rodriguez in individual or group therapy, reach out to intake@brooklynminds.com.
