Break Out Of The Parental Scenario And Become Yourself. How I Found My Dream Profession

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

When I remember my 17 years old, I see the gray wall of an old house. The damp woolen sweater bites the skin, and my "want" - my "dream" drips down my cheeks in cloudy drops from the hair.

It was 1993. The time of "good" businessmen in crimson jackets with white socks and "bad" in leather jackets with darkened eights. Cooperative slippers with a curved Montana sticker and water charged through the TV. I was finishing school. The perestroika crisis has knocked the solid ground out from under the feet of our family. Along with stability and confidence in the future, my father's research institute, as well as the ability to buy clothes and food, disappeared.

I remember the bags of mushrooms and potatoes that we first picked and then ate for several years, twice a day.

I painted small pictures in oil to sell them and contribute to my meager food. But my true curiosity looked towards everything that was associated with the human psyche, character, thinking and behavior.

Mom was sick.

- Study to be a psychologist ?! You are crazy! - she was irritated. - Where will you go to work with this “psychologist” of yours? Look what's going on around. Now hands are needed to survive, ruuu-ki! - she shook her fingers near my nose, then covered her face with them and sighed, - oh, I will not survive … I will not survive!

The father was silent. And I asked, swallowing bitterness, from which I was already choking: “Please, please, Mom, I dreamed of being a psychologist so much, I wonder if I can do it, I promise. Mom, well, it will not always be like this around … . Been asking for months. Been asking for weeks. I asked in the morning on the day of the first entrance exam to some industrial technical school that I did not understand.

Then, at the age of seventeen, I did not have enough feathers to wave a wing at the parental ban and take off. Halfway to the exam, I frantically searched for the strength to disobey: to do it my way, to resist, to show my horns!

But mom dropped:

- If you so want, then next year you will submit documents anywhere. Promise. But just go now!

And she walked to the technical school, which she hated with the thought that my nightmare was only for a year. It's just that mom needs him for some reason.

I pushed off the gray wall of the old house and wandered off to learn the lessons of life, which eventually led me to where I needed to.

Last wish

A year has passed. I threw a handful of calendar sheets with crossed out numbers into the trash can and rushed to the admissions office. On the gray wall of the old house, the rays of the sun were dancing lezginka.

- Mom, where is my passport? - I fluttered into the apartment out of breath, throwing off my shoes on the go. - The admission committee needs an application, and you know, the first exam …

“You’re not going anywhere,” my mother grabbed my hand, “put this nonsense out of your head! You have to graduate from college and get your diploma.

I was nailed to the wardrobe.

- But you promised … you … - croaked from the larynx, - I'm so …

- Listen, you know that I am sick and that it is not long left … - Mom did not let me finish. - And I will die in peace if I know that you are in your specialty. You have to promise me. This is my last wish! Last thing.

I promised.

How I lived without a purpose. The right to make mistakes

While I was torturing a blue diploma for my mother, she was gone. She didn't wait. I did it.

The diploma banged indifferently on the kitchen table. I never saw him again. Father, probably, removed it somewhere. But we never talked about it.

I got a job as a waitress in a decent restaurant near the house. With money it became easier, but we still survived: only now together with our father.

“You should go to university as you wanted. Don't wait, said dad.

I didn't answer. I have worked out the "must". Just live. And we'll see. I already had enough strength in the wings to say yes - and do it my own way. Cut off "no" - and do it your own way too.

Two years passed in thought, in listening to oneself, in observing life from different points of experience. There were also wrong steps. I changed several jobs, in pursuit of a prestigious one and, having found it, I left it. She went to the place where white collars from the stage promised millions if you urgently believe in yourself and sell an expensive pack of powder with an oven cleaner to your friends who make ends meet. And they are to their friends. And those to other friends. And soon, you are a newly made millionaire, you will be called a "diamond"!

A beautiful lie. Having plopped a couple of times into hungry faints, the would-be millionaire made a decision - I return to myself, to my goal. I go to university to study psychology, and I will become one. Professional, experienced, in demand, in love with their work.

Second wind. Come to yourself

Isolated from the world for two months, I prepared for exams. It was necessary to immerse myself in the school curriculum again. The morning began early, with a march to the other end of the city, to Vovka, a student of Fizmat. For a couple of beers, he agreed to tutor in mathematics. After Vovka - for a few hours to the library. There I pored over language and literature.

My friends tiptoed along the carpet through the silence to my usual place to whisper a couple of phrases and treat me to a bun or a sandwich. The library was the only place they could see me. I asked not to call me at home, so as not to be tempted to carefree fun. From lunch to evening - I'm at work. I spent evenings alone with biology, and fell asleep with her.

I passed my exams without fear or hesitation. I approached the lists of applicants not with the question - "Am I there?" And here is my last name. And here I am - a student of the University of the Department of Psychology!

This place waited for me. I got there.

I do not want to write that the years not given to psychology have enriched me. On the contrary, the feeling that everything that is in my life now should have happened five years earlier does not leave me.

For 13 years now I have been a professional psychologist-psychotherapist, a member of the current professional community of the Guild of Psychotherapy and Training.

And my training is an ongoing process that is necessary in order to be an effective specialist. After the university there were 4 more years of the institute of psychotherapy. Specializations in family counseling, leading psychotherapy groups and many training workshops that never end for me.

Every day I advise people who are in pain, incomprehensible and unbearable, but they want to cope. My job will not become routine. My interest in people is inexhaustible, and my desire to help professionally is bottomless. Moreover, we have been apart from my profession for five years, and this helps to appreciate it in every moment.

People come to me with neurosis, stress, anxiety, phobic disorders - and we remove fears layer by layer in therapy. I help overcome uncertainty and get out of the crisis with a solution. I use my professional knowledge and support to help the client cope with grief and loss. With deep respect for conflict in a couple, I find ways to keep my family together.

I offer an individual, careful approach to each client. To date, on my account there are thousands of resolved problems of people who have applied. And this is my happiness.

For me, being a psychologist is a way of thinking built into a way of life. It contains professionalism, inspiration and freedom.

It is priceless to be in your place, no matter how difficult the path leads there.

Prohibitions, disbelief in me, someone's unwillingness, mistakes and stoppages for several years are powerless in front of my truly dream.

If I were asked to share the lessons this story taught me, I would name 4:

one. If you are captured, organize the time for yourself productively and the space is comfortable

You can learn to accept a situation in which it is bad. Namely, from there, as it turned out, the movement towards the exit begins.

When I was forced to attend school I hated, I organized convenience and productivity for myself in two ways:

Firstly, she enrolled in the city regional library, which was next to the "mother's" educational institution, and settled there. On this saving island, books on psychology were waiting for me. Nobody could take them away from me. There I skipped couples, carefully and secretly from the whole world cultivating my identity as a psychologist.

Secondly, with a group of fellow students, we agreed on mutual assistance. Some were better given technical subjects, others practical work. And I knew how to draw, and it came in handy in two disciplines. This way of being present where you don't think well supported me a lot.

I learned to concentrate on the little things that gave me pleasure.

2. If you are too gullible, you will be deceived. But if you are not gullible at all, life will be painful

I learned balance and correct math - to divide by two the promises that others give. No, I have not forgotten how to trust people. That experience gave me the understanding that different things can interfere with the promise: all the ingredients of the “human factor”, nature, crisis, higher forces, lower reason. And it would be good to insure yourself by allowing spare options into your picture of the world.

3. Do not be afraid of other people's fears

I learned to say out loud "I want", "I need", "I will." I got a piggy bank for other people's opinions and fears, into which I still look only through the filter of my reality.

4. Count on yourself and those on your side

Those who “wish well” usually say - “don’t even try, soooo competition for a place! Everything is there for money. You will not make it. My friend couldn't. Why do you need, don't go there. " I smile politely - "Thank you, your opinion is very important to me." This opinion falls into my box from point 3 for eternal storage, and I go and try - what if. It can be scary, to wet palms and sleepless nights, to the impossibility of making up the eye with shaking hands.

In moments of numbness and weakness, I turn to those who say: “You are great, you can do it. I will keep my fists. Let's be afraid together. Call, send an SMS, when you come back - I'm worried about you."

I separate the concepts of "support" and "advice". When I need advice or a solution to a problem, I turn to specialists. And I myself work a lot on my professionalism. I work efficiently so that people who are at my appointment and who need help never regret visiting a psychologist.

Alina Adler / psychologist - psychotherapist /