Spec. Clinic. Psyc. Duygu Basak Gurtekin

As a 72-year-old retired history professor struggling with profound loneliness after my wife's passing, I was skeptical about 'talking therapy.' Dr. Gurtekin didn't just listen, she created a bridge. During our third session, she noticed my collection of antique maps and suggested we 'chart' my emotions as territories. We turned grief into an archipelago, memories into mountain ranges. She helped me organize a weekly tea with other widowers at the library. It wasn't treatment; it was cartography of the soul. At Liv Hospital Bahçeşehir, she transformed my silent apartment back into a home.

Our 8-year-old daughter Elif developed severe school refusal after a classroom incident. She'd shake and hide when we mentioned school. Dr. Gurtekin's approach was extraordinary, she never saw Elif in a traditional office. Instead, they met in the hospital's garden courtyard. She used a family of resident sparrows as metaphors, having Elif name them and describe their 'worries.' Through puppet shows with bird puppets, Elif revealed her fears. Dr. Gurtekin then coordinated with the school to create a 'nesting' re-entry plan. Within a month, Elif was leading a bird-watching club. This wasn't child psychology; it was ecological healing.

I was brought to the emergency department at 3 AM during a severe dissociative episode, I'd 'lost' six hours and found myself at the Bosphorus bridge. The psychiatric resident stabilized me, but Dr. Gurtekin took over at dawn. Instead of medication adjustment alone, she conducted what she called 'temporal archaeology.' We reconstructed the lost hours through sensory clues: the smell of diesel, a tram ticket in my pocket. She discovered the episode was triggered by an anniversary I'd consciously forgotten. Her emergency follow-up involved creating a 'time capsule' of safe memories. Most doctors contain crises; she deciphers them.

As a software engineer with OCD, my rituals had become algorithmic, exact 47-minute work sprints, specific keyboard wiping sequences. Traditional CBT made me feel like a bug to be fixed. Dr. Gurtekin took a radical approach: she had me teach her basic coding. We then 'debugged' my thought patterns together, writing pseudocode for anxiety triggers. She reframed my rituals as 'legacy code' that once served purpose. At İstinye University Liv Hospital, she created a secure server where I could log intrusive thoughts in real-time, which we'd review as 'system logs.' She didn't eliminate my patterns; she helped me refactor them. Now I've open-sourced a mental health app for developers.