I Think I Heart You, Job

I've been a naughty blogger. Due to the apparent fact that Facebook is planning to take over the world, any small musings I've made over the last couple of years I seem to have kept reserved to the notes section of my Facebook page. Which isn't all that insane considering I'm pretty convinced far more people view my Facebook page than this blog.

I'm also faced with the decision of what really do I want to my blog to be about. What is my "message" or "perspective" here? What goes into that confusion is my profession. As a clinical psychologist I have another set of concerns to be worried about which adds a thick layer of uncertainty about anything I post online. I'm always having to consider the ramification of a client somehow happening upon my blog and how what they read may impact them, their perception of me, as their therapist, and how it will impact their work in therapy. The whole thing often makes me want to just not write at all or write annonymously. Not that I'm that much of an opinionated or "controversial" person in anything that I have to say for myself. Quite to the contrary I would say (though others may not agree). But it is still far and away more than any of my clients get to hear me say about myself. Which leads me to thinking about all the ways that this profession is so different than many others. This fact is often a point of misunderstanding between myself and others outside the field.

Some friends or acquaintances will ask me, "How is work? Any interesting cases?!" And I'm sure that some of them are met with confusion when the response they get out of me is vague and often lacking in detail. That part of me that wants to be approved of will toy with the idea of telling them all about an interesting case (disguising the person identity of course) so that I can really show them how interesting, fascinating, and rewarding my job actually is! But I don't. The thought that comes to mind is what impression that will leave them with to hear a psychologist so freely share about their clients (besides the fact that this would be a huge breach of confidentiality and something I'd be doing at the risk of losing my license). For those outside my profession the idea of losing my license over something as silly as telling a little story may not really hit home the way it does for me (our Law & Ethics courses make sure that fear is burned into us eternally). For them I wonder more how it will be, one day in their life, if they need the help of a psychologist. Will they wonder as they reach out to that person in a moment of vulnerability if this psychologist, just as their friend did, will go to a dinner party that night and tell his/her friends all about them? How will it make them view all psychologists and the profession? That makes me sad. This makes me sad because I've sat with so many people in my office who need help and their inability to trust the person sitting in the room with them keeps them from reaching out and getting that help for themselves.

And part of it is cultural. Many of my friends are Iranian. Despite the fact that some of us grew up here in the U.S. most of our lives, there is a very different understanding and relationship we have culturally with mental health and psychology. There are some people in my orbit who, I'm pretty convinced, still have no grasp of what it is I do exactly. I'm still asked if I can make a prescription (no, I can't) and how work at the hospital is going (I don't work at a hospital). Or, when I say I work at a university, the assumption being made that I teach psychology, but I don't practice it.

I guess it comes with the territory of doing this work. It almost feels like some of the most rewarding and joyous parts of it have to be kept so private (with the exception of processing my cases with my colleagues). I will say this though: this job is amazing! Not this job, like literally the job I'm at, but this profession as a whole. Yes, it's filled with self-doubt and frustration almost daily. But it's wonderful. It's a self-doubt that you grow from almost every single time. Yes, it's filled with listening to people's pain and sorrow on a daily basis. But it's such an honor that people allow you to be witness to their pain, the most ugly parts of themselves, their most vulnerable scared moments. They trust you and they give this you as a gift with the hope that you in return will give it back to them in a way that feels better managed, more contained, and digestible. Yes, there are people who sit in my office and I know from the first second that they are not going to give me even an ounce of a chance to be helpful to them because they have already made up their minds that they are "unhelpable" and damaged to the core. It's frustrating. But everytime this happens it comes with a feeling of hope. The thought that just maybe I can touch them in some way and this time can be different for them.

So there are some of my mushy feelings about this job & my (apparent) love affair with this kind of work.