THE AVOERIA ARCHIVE

Why did I choose psychology?

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When I was working on the information section of this blog, two of the biggest questions I had to answer were: what will I write about? And who is this blog for? At the time, those were not difficult questions for me, the answers came to me almost instantly. In short, I said that I will write about anything I find meaning in and that this blog will be for anyone who would want to see the depth behind topics that might seem ordinary upon first glance.

I assumed that any topic I touch upon here will be one that I’ve already seen the depth and meaning of prior to writing the entry. I didn’t expect to try to see it now, while writing, or to prove to myself that it is there, that it does still exist. However, this appears to be the case with this particular topic. 

It is said that “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” – Friedrich Nietzsche. I am currently in need of my why. In order to motivate myself to continue with my studies, I must first remind myself of why I’m doing this, because I have forgotten. In light of recent events, it seems that I have lost my meaning behind why I chose psychology. 

This entry will be me talking about everything that has led me to choosing psychology, but also my struggles and reservations with it, and why I want to stay with it anyway. This entry is going to be a bit more of a personal one, but a necessary one. We will see if I have been given my meaning at the end of this post. I hope I will.

THE ORIGIN

Before psychology, I thought I was going to study IT. It may sound very random, because it is. I have no passion for IT, I still have no experience with anything in that field. I did not know what I wanted to do with my life, and others around me were projecting onto me what they thought I should want out of life, because that’s what they wanted. But, it was not what I wanted.

Unfortunately, in this part of the story I am clueless, unaware and insecure, nothing like the brave, courageous and self-assured women I am now. But because of this, we have to bear witness to some poor choices I made back then.

While I was still in high school, I decided that I’ll just go through with studying IT. I told myself that it doesn’t matter if I like it or not, it’s just something I’ll be doing for my job and it will only ever be a job to me that I can earn well from. I ended up applying to study IT at university and I received conditional acceptance. For the last stretch of high school and after, I hit lows in every way imaginable. I got rejected from university multiple times and my mental health declined in a way that it never really had before.

I still remember, very vividly, the first time I ever considered psychology. The details are incredibly personal, but back then I was considering different ways to receive health care for my mental wellbeing and a clinic was one of the options I wanted to try. Infuriatingly, that “want” of mine was used against me in disgusting ways that now, as I recall them, fills me with anger. Long story short, I was told no and it was played off in a way that wrongly insinuated that mental health clinics are unsafe and violent. Once again, I am still completely clueless, unaware and insecure here (I get better, I promise). 

Regardless, my first thought upon hearing this is: “If there is no safe one, I will build one.” And that, my fellow readers, was the first time I ever considered psychology. I will never forget that moment, because in some ways, it felt like that thought didn’t even belong to me. Like it came from elsewhere.

The series of events that transpired after this are all things that I believe, in some way, contributed to my choice to choose psychology. Firstly, my own psychologist asked me if I’ve ever considered psychology fairly early on into our sessions. Not only that, but I have improved my health a great deal through therapy. Secondly, I discovered that a lot of psychology has to do with depth and meaning, both concepts that I like to think about a lot. I believe it is the core of psychology. Thirdly, when I tried to apply to university again, this time for psychology, I was once again rejected. Multiple times. Over and over. Back to back. But I remained undaunted, if a little shaken up. I never stopped trying to get in, because I truly believed in me studying psychology. And lastly, I surrendered to my journey, so fully, that I truly did not care how long it would take for me to become a psychologist. Because it will take a long time.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN, TO ME, TO BE A PSYCHOLOGIST?

I think for me, the most important part of being a psychologist is knowing that I will always be a patient first, and a psychologist second. Perhaps this is easier for me to say now, because I’m not a psychologist yet. I am only a patient.

One of my favourite quotes by a well known psychiatrist, Carl Jung, is “know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.”

This is one of my favorite quotes, because I believe feeling is the most important part of psychology. Connection, empathy, understanding, meaning, morality and wisdom is what I consider to be the core. The theories and techniques are valuable, yes, but I believe it will only ever work if the core is already established. The core is what it means to be human, it is what makes us human beings, and it is how you nurture the soul. The only thing that makes the core tricky, is knowing that it will never be fully objective.

In my previous post, Life before death, I go into depth about the life meaning I found and the importance of the journey in one of my favourite book series, The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson. In that series, there were parts that I related back to psychologists as well, parts that I believe are important.

The Way of Kings is a book about leadership, but more than that, I think it is a book about having people rely on you. Those two things might seem like they’re one in the same, but ever since I started considering psychology as my chosen career, I have been seeing it differently. Specifically, I have been relating psychologists back to a passage in the book, a passage about a monarch and a spindly man.

“I once saw a spindly man carrying a stone larger than his head upon his back. He stumbled beneath the weight, shirtless under the sun, wearing only a loincloth. He tottered down a busy thoroughfare.

People made way for him. Not because they sympathized with him, but because they feared the momentum of his steps. You dare not impede one such as this.

The monarch is like this man, stumbling along, the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders. Many give way before him, but so few are willing to step in and help carry the stone. They do not wish to attach themselves to the work, lest they condemn themselves to a life full of extra burdens.

I left my carriage that day and took up the stone, lifting it for the man.

I believe my guards were embarrassed. One can ignore a poor shirtless wretch doing such labour, but none ignore a king sharing the load. Perhaps we should switch places more often. If a king is seen to assume the burden of the poorest of men, perhaps there will be those who will help him with his own load, so invisible, yet so daunting.”

– The Way of Kings

A psychologist is like a patient. A psychologist will step in and help carry the stone. In doing so, they attach themselves to the work and condemn themselves to a life full of extra burdens. But, can it really be considered a burden, if the reward is so fulfilling?

The other part I wanted to mention from The Stormlight Archive, are a set of oaths that get sworn. These oaths are important to me, because I believe these are similar oaths I will have as a psychologist.

“I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

“I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right.”

“I’ve got to protect people, you know? Even from myself.”

“I will protect myself, so that I may continue to protect others.”

“I accept that there will be those I cannot protect.”

I think these oaths represent the responsibility that comes with having people rely on you, and it represents the responsibility of being a psychologist. It is the responsibility that I will have, and one that I will not take lightly. 

WHY DO I WANT TO HELP PEOPLE?

I typically do not like working with people, at least in an academic setting. Perhaps this will change one day, but currently and for as long as I’ve known, I’ve preferred to work by myself. In one of my modules I have to do a workshop and a part of that was me having to take a questionnaire to see my skills and “problem areas.” Even though my scores weren’t low enough to be of concern, my lowest score was by interactive skills. Beyond that, I am an introvert. I do not do well in large groups of people, but surprisingly I can be very forthcoming one on one and in smaller groups. 

Based on what I’ve just shared, It does not seem like my people skills are very high, so that begs the question as to why I chose a very heavily people based career. 

To be completely honest, sometimes I don’t even really know why myself. But, I do know what I feel. I feel very deeply. I have a great deal of empathy within me and even though working with people has sometimes been challenging for me, understanding people has never been. 

I suppose in some ways I am blessed to have a deep level of depth, because that gives me the ability to meet others at the level they are at. I can’t help but feel that because I know what I know, and I’ve lived what I’ve lived, I have this responsibility to help others who might feel like how I have felt.

Wanting to help people makes me feel useful, like I’m contributing to society. I want to prove to myself that I can make a difference in someone’s life and it makes me feel better about myself: by healing the wounds in others, it will heal the wounds in me. I would not wish my experiences upon anyone and it is sometimes hard for me to hear of people who are going through what I have gone through. I care for humanity and I believe in improving it, we are the only real threat to mankind.

GUILT

The guilt of wanting to be a psychologist is something that I am struggling with a lot. It makes me feel somewhat dirty knowing that I’ll profit off of people who have lost their way. I have been wracking my mind, trying to think of some way that I could justify it, but I just can’t come up with a satisfying conclusion.

It seems that most psychologists justify it by saying that they deserve to be paid because of how long they’ve had to study. Then they bring up their research and say that the majority of the people who pay for therapy take it more seriously, because they are expecting to gain something out of it and therefore it is beneficial. 

Do they just conveniently leave out the research that shows that a lot of patients question their psychologists authenticity and that they think that they are just a pay check to them? Or do they just completely choose to not look in that direction at all, because it might hurt their feelings? Psychologists are also not the only people in this world that have to study long and nobody purposely chooses to get lost. 

And don’t even get me started on “the doctor justification.” The way that one goes is that doctors don’t feel guilty for what they do, that no one ever looks at a doctor and thinks that they should feel guilty, so psychologists shouldn’t either. Initially, that’s what I thought, and that’s how I tried to justify it to myself. But the guilt never went away and now I’m at a point where I could probably believe that doctors should feel guilty, if they don’t already. There have been times where I would feel so guilty that I would think about leaving psychology altogether.

However, I don’t think doctors should feel guilty. It looks really hard to become a doctor, I can only imagine the work load and the level of intelligence needed to become one. After they study, most of them end up working really long hours anyway. Psychologists only sit down and talk to you for an hour and that’s it. At least psychologists who choose to go the therapy route do.

When people ask me what type of psychologist I want to be, I tell them that I don’t know. But I’m lying. I do know, but this is a truth that I have not yet been able to admit, even to myself. I want to counsel. If I didn’t want to, then I wouldn’t keep on talking about how much it bothers me, hoping that someone could offer me a solution, and I wouldn’t keep on searching for a way to justify it to myself. To make it feel like I’m not doing something that I consider to be wrong.

All I’d be doing is giving someone the meaning that I’ve had to find throughout my life. Purpose and hope shouldn’t have to come with a price tag. 

There are plenty of other reasons as to why I don’t think I can counsel too, the first being that I think I would easily get attached to the people I’m helping. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to care enough to help, but not enough to get attached. The other reason is that I might find it too emotionally draining. I feel like at some point people’s negative experiences will start to affect me. Then there is the dilemma that haunts my thoughts, the quantity vs quality dilemma. 

Do I try to help as many people as I can and prioritize quantity, but then a natural consequence of that will be that I won’t be able to spend as much time on them and perhaps less time for myself as well. Or, do I see less people and prioritize the quality, then I’ll have more time to really work with them. Obviously, with quality there’s other things to consider, like money and the patients time. I like to think that I’ll find ways around the money aspect of it though, I’m not doing this for the money. Perhaps I could mostly rely on my future husbands salary, and then I wouldn’t have to charge much.

Am I really foolhardy enough to believe that I could really do it both? I’m not. I would choose quality.

I am struggling with my views on all of these things with my own psychologist too, and I find the thought of someone feeling about me the way I currently feel about him upsetting. Feeling how I feel as a patient, but also feeling empathy for him and how he feels as a psychologist is … a lot. He has recently hypothesised that there might be a deeper meaning behind the reason for my guilt, but that is something I must still explore.

I still have years to decide what type of psychologist I want to be, but I will never do anything that makes my heart restless, no matter how much I may want it.

Update: I made a follow up entry on this matter called feeling guilty is good.

MY RESERVATIONS WITH PSYCHOLOGY

I have only just entered the world of psychology and there is still much for me to explore. There is a lot that I like about psychology, but there are things that I do not like as well. I will not go into depth about every little thing that I don’t like and don’t agree with in this entry, but I want it to be clear that I do question psychology and that I don’t just blindly believe in it.

I feel the need to mention some of  my reservations with psychology, specifically because of an interaction I had with a psychologist who was a lecturer at a university. 

This person insinuated that just because they are a psychologist, they are above criticism and they abused the use of an ethical rule to try to “support” that belief. They said that they will “always question the intentions of people criticising psychology” and the final unpleasantry they spewed was that my personal experiences are not “conductive” to me wanting to study psychology.

Everything this person said that I just mentioned is absolutely unacceptable and not okay. Nobody is above criticism, especially health care providers. Psychologists are people too, and they will have faults just like anyone else, this individual is proof of that. Psychology will never be able to improve if there aren’t people out there who are questioning and criticising it, and my personal experiences are invaluable and definitely do support my choice to study psychology. I will forever be able to understand these people in a way that someone who hasn’t battled with their mental health, will never be able to. The best way to learn and understand will always be through lived experience.

Thankfully this individual has since retired, but that interaction disturbed me in a very alarming way. It was very off putting. It definitely did make me question the field I’m going into and it did get me wondering if there were other psychologists out there who are also detrimentally arrogant, and who are ethically and morally corrupt like that. Some psychologists have sometimes seemed very clicky to me, and I do not plan on being a part of that click.

Beyond that, psychology has oftentimes seemed very analytical to me, like I’m just constantly being dissected or I’m made to feel like a statistic or a mechanism. Sometimes I’ve felt that I’m being treated like a scenario out of a textbook or that I’m just another one out of the batch.

I prefer psychology when it feels more individual, when it feels genuine and like you’re wholeheartedly trying to connect with someone. It’s an astonishing type of curiosity that comes across incredibly sincere, of someone simply trying to understand a soul. No numbers, no hidden tests, no textbook scenarios or data or research. Just pure genuine connection with a soul, and seeing it as a reflection of your own.

The first step of healing is to be seen. 

I have only just started my journey with psychology. There is still much for me to learn and I’m sure my feelings regarding this will be ever changing. The first big obstacle I had to overcome in my career was choosing a career. I’m incredibly lucky to be doing something that I feel passionate about, whether that be for better or for worse.

Now, my next obstacle in my career is figuring out what type of psychologist I want to be, and I don’t just mean choosing a field in psychology. I need to figure out who I will be, how I will do things and what example I will set for those younger than me. 

Writing this entry, I have come to realize that I still have my meaning for choosing psychology, and maybe it was never really gone to begin with. Do I feel more motivated to study? Barley. But that is just simply another obstacle I must overcome in my journey. I am afraid to study, performance anxiety is something I must overcome. I need to be courageous, but one cannot be courageous if there is no fear. 

It has become clear to me that my own personal ethics, morality and meaning is the most important thing to me and something that I hold to an incredibly high standard. Besides being passionate about what I’m doing, I need to make sure that it stays in line with my morality, because my morality and depth might just be the most defining characteristic of me. 

I talk a bit negatively about psychologists in this post, but please rest assured that there are what I would consider to be good ones out there too. My psychologist is one of them, and I have to believe that the good outweighs the bad.

To end off, I hope you have enjoyed reading this entry. This one was a lot more personal, and mainly just introspective for my sake. I felt whole in some parts and bittersweet at others. I cannot promise that I will write many more of these specific entries in the future, but this one was needed. I can promise that I will continue to write more about life and meaning, and those will not always feel bittersweet. 

Follow up entry: feeling guilty is good.

Do not miss future entries from me!

Until next time, Avoeria.