I bet you are asking yourselves: Doorknob bombshells? Doorknob bombshells in therapy? What is that?

A doorknob bombshell, also known as a doorknob moment, is a clinical phenomenon that occurs in a wide variety of settings. That’s when a patient drops distressing personal information critical to the treatment on their way out the door, hand on the doorknob, and then breaks down.                                 

What should a caring clinician do when a patient does that? It’s a near universal dilemma for clinicians.

Yes! Not only that—I met my deadline. I am amazed.

You know what’s weird? I can’t remember writing it. Wait, that’s not accurate. I do remember the experience of writing it.

I was invited—out of the blue— to write an academic book by W. W. Norton, a publisher of books essential to the practice of psychiatry and neurology.  I’ve been writing and practicing psychiatry for decades in obscurity and felt like a long-time actor might feel who gets “discovered overnight”— Disbelieving. Thrilled. Validated.

Thinking through how it happened makes me believe that you, too, can write an article that leads to a book deal.

I have a book deal! With W.W. Norton! For an academic book!

That’s amazing all by itself given I’m a rural shrink toiling in the back forty of upstate New York untethered from academia. But here’s what totally blows my mind.