The ability to understand another human is one that can never be gifted, only learnt. No child is ever born with an immediate knowledge of how to predict another's emotion, at least not like how they know to put food in their mouth. It is learnt over time from countless failures at understanding other people. There are certain situations where you react happy and certain situations where you react sad. Some people never fully learn how to understand others, they are born ignorant and die ignorant. Some, however, grasp the ability with both hands and make it entirely theirs.
I fit in the latter. Ever since I was little I have felt strongly what others were feeling. When my best friend's dog died I cried for hours, even though I had never met said dog in my life. Growing up with others who hadn't learnt to relate as rapidly as I had was extraordinarily difficult. You can be there for so many people but when the time comes for them to be there for you, there is no one. When I was 11 I wanted to be a Physiotherapist, everything that I did, I did with intention to lead me into working with muscular tissues. But then my life turned to absolute shit and my world completely broke down when my mind started becoming particularly ill. After a while of knowing that I wasn't going to graduate and knowing there was no way on earth I could ever get good enough grades to allow my entry into a Physiotherapy course at University, I started to look elsewhere. Eventually I came to the realisation that I was a deep feeler and I was naturally inclined to understand other people. This realisation led me to a decision that altered the rest of my schooling drastically; I wanted to be a Psychologist.
That epiphany came to me at the age of 15 and for the last 3 years I've been trying desperately to cling on to this dream.
Whenever I tell someone that my choice of career will be psychology they always smile and tell me they see me as a psychologist, for a while it was comforting to know that others agreed this job was perfect for me. But the more people said it to me the more I realised what I was signing myself up for. In approximately 5 years (if all goes to plan) there will be teenagers relying on me to save their lives. I know what it's like to sit in a chair and pour out your life story to a "trained" stranger and them to immediately say the wrong thing and fuck everything up more. It's catastrophic and it's horrible and it makes you want to leave the room, go home and tie a noose around your neck. That's what terrifies me, what if I say the wrong thing and that leads that person to commit suicide? What if I have a bad day and I need to take time off but on that day someone needed an emergency appointment and so I'm responsible?
There is a saying: "all psychologists see psychologists". It's an interesting concept because the idea is that a professionally trained psychologist will get so fucked up that they start seeing another professionally trained psychologist who gets fucked up and sees another who gets fucked up and sees another etc. The demand for someone to be a listener and a fixer of the mind is higher then it has ever been. Today the highest killer of young men in Australia is suicide, over cancer and over disease, the highest killer is men taking their own lives. I'm afraid that the role of a psychologist will never be not necessary, there will always be call and demand for humans who fix other broken humans. I cannot possibly begin to fathom how important this job is.
