one year into this

It's been one year since I started seeing clients. That's... significant to me. When I decided that this is what I wanted to do, it was based in this vague but firm belief that I could give good advice. Of course that went out the window as soon as I learned the very basics of what therapy entails - aggressively not advice-giving. By the time this new learning was cemented it was too late to do anything else. Because I was (still am) convinced that I have no other skill or talent that I could put to good use. It was this or doing something radical like starting a jewellery business. So the fact that I'm still here one year later is, like I said, significant. And what's more, I'm looking forward to another one?!

The best thing I'm taking away from this last year is how being a therapist essentially forced me to be a hopeful person - emotionally, not just cognitively. At the intellectual, theoretical, whatever-you'd-like-to-call-it level, I've always been more of an optimist than a pessimist, yes. But that came from a place of finding pessimism useless and leading to unhappiness. It got tiring, I think. And it wasn't sustainable, in any case. So when I say emotionally hopeful, I mean that I don't see another way of existing in this world. When clients show up for themselves and their people, session after session, put in the work, you can't really go into a work day thinking everything is going to shit eventually. And it's been so liberating and empowering to be this way. I'm surer of myself, I go easier on people, and I'm more driven than ever before to bring about change, to fight for what I believe in. It's been good.