How We Survive, Why We Create
The nervous system doesn’t develop in isolation, it develops in relationship.
My name is Jon Murphy. I’m a psychiatric nurse practitioner and the clinical director of Focus Path.
I love working with my patients. I’ve been in psychiatry for almost 20 years. I started at 22 or 23 years old, opening doors on the psych unit — bathroom doors, that is. Getting towels, doing basic things like that.
When I first got into psychiatry at 23, I said,
“My family’s crazy — how hard could it be?”
That attempt at humor ended up being more true than I could have imagined.
I now consider myself a trauma survivor. I’m a product of a dysfunctional family system — multi-generational. My mother was a narcissist. The family system was shaped by narcissistic dysfunction, and I played the role of scapegoat.
That’s my story.
I also have ADHD — but that’s a longer story.
I began treating people directly after graduating with my master’s degree in 2017 from Boston College. I jumped right in. I went from opening bathroom doors to being the one behind the desk. I never saw myself as someone who would be given the responsibility to help people.
One of the first things I thought — when I was getting someone some towels, helping them in settle into the inpatient environment — I remember thinking:
“This is pretty cool, I like helping people”
I’d always been raised to be selfish — “do what you want” was the message. But it turned out the opposite was true. Helping others made me feel better.
Still, in my head, I’d hear a voice:
“You’re not helping people. You’re not a good person.”
That self-deprecating voice stuck with me for over 30 years.
I had to be in psychiatry for nearly two decades to understand the importance of boundaries. I’ve learned a lot. And that’s really what this is all about: survival.
This blog, my podcast, my work — it’s all about that.
We did it. We survived.
Now we need to line up our expectations with reality. We need to ask:
Where were be born?
What have we been through?
What are we going through now?
That’s how we begin to understand our survival story.
If you’re reading this — congratulations. You survived.
So how did you do it?
And what does survival mean?