Sometimes it’s hard to be yourself when you are surrounded by people you care about who are different to you. I’ve talked about the importance of understanding who you really are and your purpose in life. These two pieces of information are so important and can help you to find your own direction and to create the kind of life that you really want. But even when you know who you are and why you are here, life isn’t always straightforward.
One of the biggest difficulties is being yourself when people who matter to you are different and may not understand you. When I trained as a clinical psychologist from 2002-2005 in London, I loved being identified with the profession. Some of my psychologist friends would lie at parties and tell new acquaintances that they were university lecturers or researchers just to avoid being identified as a clinical psychologist. For me, I was always so proud to announce “I’m a clinical psychologist”1. I loved the profession, it’s scientific origins and its purpose to help others. I would feel a little rush of warmth that I could identify as a clinical psychologist.
As I have grown and developed I find that I identify less with the profession than I used to. I still love the job and find it privilege to listen to people’s stories and to work to help them feel better. My work is still informed by the years of training and different psychological methods that I have internalised. Yet as I have become more attuned to the spiritual and grown in my ability to use intuition with myself and others, I have moved further away from many in the profession.
As my work with clients has got vastly more effective by using spiritual and intuitive information, so my ability to connect to my colleagues has waned. There is a large scientific strand to clinical psychology and a need for the profession to carve itself out as science-based (as opposed to those wishy-washy other caring professions like counsellors and psychotherapists, I suppose!2). With that, there comes an occasional intellectual arrogance and the tendency to dismiss more intuitive practitioners or complementary methods as “bunkum”. This happens even when more complementary methods are proven to be effective psychological therapies (for example, the energy psychology method the Emotional Freedom Technique[EFT] is often dismissed by psychologists despite having a very good evidence base). It is hard for people to accept ideas that don’t fit into their current understanding of the world, and this applies to psychologists just as much as it applies to other people. 3
I understand and know this position well. Hey, I even used to be like that myself! I can hardly judge others for being skeptical and unsure about methods that inherently encompass the spiritual and esoteric. These psychologists are almost always good people, coming from a place of trying to protect others from unhelpful therapies. They are usually also atheists themselves, and their belief system means that they cannot open up to the spiritual realm and see the beauty and wonder that lies within. Does that make them worse therapists? Not at all, they just work on a much more cognitive and rational level. For some patients, that methodology is just what they need in that moment.
So I can see that there’s room for all sorts of people, all sorts of therapists and all sorts of clinical psychologists. For me, I need to let go of some of my strong need to identify with the profession. I understand that my move into more spiritual methodology has enhanced my practice and it has also meant that I am less closely connected to some of my colleagues. Some of my fellow psychologists will find my approach confusing, worrying or strange, and that can be okay. I know that there is great value to what I do and I trust that I am very helpful to my clients. I may not be the same person that qualified all those years ago with a nicely bound thesis and a thrill of being a scientist-practitioner. Yet I still share the same values that underpin most psychologists’ work: that we are compassionate, caring and try our upmost to help our clients. In that way, I can still feel connected to my clinical psychology colleagues.
For a more in-depth discussion of my spiritual journey, please see this interview below with Lindsay Banks.
- I once told a woman giving me a bikini wax that I was a clinical psychologist. She proceeded to give me an in-depth outline of her and her family’s history of mental health problems while putting hot wax on my most delicate areas. I do not recommend this approach.
- Obviously I do not share this view.
- For a fascinating account of this phenomenon, check out this article.