This is my life.

Really, this is my life.
I have been on the journey to becoming a psychologist for more than 10 years now. I went to four years of college first, then I headed straight into grad school. That adventure was 4 more years of year round classroom and clinical work. The 5th and final year was an internship out in the real world (AKA: work really hard for less than minimum wage) which was made more exciting by the gestating and arrival of our twins. I took more than one whole year off from the biz to be at home with my babies, all while painfully finishing my dissertation over the course of 6 months.

If you have ever thought about becoming a psychologist, click HERE for a hilarious and accurate description of the oh-so-fun process.

My job is really interesting. I get the privilege of being let into people's private struggles. I hear about hopes and dreams, heartbreak and shame. I listen to unbelievable stories of courage and terrible stories of abuse. I measure people's emotion and brain functioning and help clients solve lots of types of problems.

The therapy room is sacred ground. I don't take it lightly. In fact, this job I have is hard, and burdensome sometimes. But it is my calling. It's what I was created to do. I know this because it feels so natural (FYI- natural does not equal easy...) My brain is wired to to listen and process, helping to detect the areas where a person might have emotional hang-ups or wounds. Sometimes, I get tired and I often struggle to turn "it" off (ask my husband about how he feels about that topic!).

What I truly know at this point is that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. I know that even though I've been doing this for some time now, and that I have thousands of hours of experience,  I sometimes have days where I feel like a novice.  Will I always feel like that?  This blog is equally about how I am personally walking through this journey as much as it will be about interesting and fun psychology topics.

Being a psychotherapist is not magic or mysterious. It is me and my clients unpacking and processing life, 50 minutes at a time.

I hope that as I share my thoughts with you, you will find more empathy for others, more understanding of pain and more tolerance for the human condition that we all share equally.