Who Am I As A Psychologist?

Reasons for Becoming a Psychologist 

Psychologists are essential individuals as they help many people with their daily problems and struggles. Psychologists are scientists known to study the behavior and minds of human beings. Since my childhood, I wanted to become a psychologist in my future career. Fascination with the scientific mind and how the human brain reacts and responds in multiple situations made me pursue psychology. Pursuing psychology will help me earn a living and help me analyze the minds of people and their thoughts and help individuals who are struggling with life challenges. 

Also, I decided to pursue psychology because I enjoy addressing various life problems and explore how people think and how society behaves. This will help me find out issues influencing behavior of people in the society. I chose psychology as my career because it is a diverse career which involves researching on various life issues, doing therapy evaluations, and teaching people how to solve their life problems. Psychology involves research of different aspects of human behavior and mind, and this knowledge will help me assist people, especially teens, in handling their life problems. I chose to become a psychologist because this would give me an opportunity of helping other people and creating positive changes in other people’s lives. 

My Professional Goals 

I am aiming at acquiring more knowledge about psychology and complete various training so that I can become one of the best psychologists. This would enable me to handle people from diverse cultures and backgrounds to manage their life challenges. In my psychology career, I aiming at creating and maintaining a healthy and positive work with my clients and myself. This would help me in creating a good relationship during my counseling sessions. In my career, I am aiming at developing my business, a psychological center for counseling teenagers and young adults about life challenges and how to overcome these challenges. This would help me enhance my profession and knowledge and would earn a living from the business. I would continuously develop and sharpen my professional skills to maintain my career ability. The primary skills which I would focus on include analytical, communication, observational, and problem-solving skills. 

Type of Clients I Would Work With and Clients I Prefer Not To Work With 

I prefer working with teenagers and middle-aged adults as my clients. This is because it will be easy for me to teach these groups essential life skills which would help them achieve their objectives. Also, being in the same age group as my clients will enable me to help them identify and understand their strengths. This would assist teenagers, and young adults pursue and focus on their talents and dreams. I do not prefer working or dealing with children under the age of 10 years or adults aged 65 years and above as my clients. This is because clients from these groups would have a significant emotional effect on me. I would be emotionally affected by the life situations explained by these people, and this could affect my profession as a psychologist. I prefer not to work with a company because, in a corporation, I would not be able to work freely because of the company stipulations. 

Counter-Transference Issues and How to Handle Them 

In my career as a psychologist, I may experience various issues either with my clients or with my personal life. Being a psychologist, my primary role is to help people overcome life challenges, and this could make me desperate for my clients to like me. When interacting with clients, especially teenagers and middle-aged adults, a psychologist is required to interact with the clients to create trust and a good working relationship with them. This requires the psychologist to ensure that clients are open with their issues, and this would make the psychologist desperate to build trust. Also, as a psychologist, I am required to raise my life issues and experiences to clients during sessions to help in developing. This can make me lose perspective of the problems of the clients and focus on my issues, making my individual opinion hinder me from being objective and consider my emotions and needs over those of the client. In case counter-transference issues arise, I would address them by developing and maintaining boundaries with my clients to avoid sharing much personal information and life issues with them. Also, I would identify and handle feelings that can prevent clients from sharing their life issues and which are unhealthy for the session. 

Qualities for a Psychologist 

For me to become a competent psychologist, I should have a passion for learning, as this would encourage me to carry out more research to increases my psychological knowledge. Also, to become a competent psychologist, I should be committed to lifelong learning to increase my knowledge and experience in my profession. I should have empathy for my clients and have the ability to solve problems. I should be trustworthy to encourage openness of the clients and should be patient and maintain my boundaries with the clients. I should have a robust ethical core to ensure the confidentiality of clients is ensured and be sensitive to cross-culture to handle clients from diverse cultures. I should also be a good listener and communicator. 

How to Handle Stress to Reduce and Prevent Burnout 

I should develop and maintain a balance between my personal and professional life to avoid experiencing stress, which would result to burn out. This would help me in focusing on my topic during sessions and interact well with my clients. In case I encounter stress in my profession, I would manage them through exercising and meditation. I would also practice self-care to reduce stress.