- Hey everybody, happy Thursday.
Now today's topic is something that's gonna be really fun
to talk about but before I get into that,
if you're new to my channel, welcome.
Make sure you're subscribed and have
those notifications turned on because I put out videos
on Mondays and on Thursdays and you don't wanna miss 'em.
But I asked you on Twitter to tell me what questions
you wanted me to answer and I got a ton about me.
What is it to be a therapist?
How to become a therapist?
What was the route that I took?
What's a day in the life?
What do people say when they find out you're a therapist
and it goes on and on.
So let's just get into this and I'll explain
a little bit about what it's like to be me.
First, let's start with my education background
and the path that I took to become a therapist.
For those of you who don't know,
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist
but there are many.
There's a plethora of other therapist options out there.
I'll talk about those a little as we get into it.
The first thing that I did is I got a four year degree,
undergraduate degree in psychology.
And you know, funny little fact.
I was a double major in music and psychology
when I first went to school, but then because I wasn't
gonna graduate on time and I was paying for my own school,
I dropped the double major of music
and kept just psychology.
Then what I did was I took a year off in between undergrad
and graduate school to study to take my GREs.
Now GREs are your graduate, it's almost like the SATs
for graduate school and so I had to study for those exams
and take them and then apply to graduate school,
which is just like undergrad.
It's a big process.
You have to write essays and fill out all that information
and pay a lot of money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Anyways, I did all of that in the year
after I graduated from undergrad.
Then I started applying.
The next things I did, if you hadn't guessed already,
is I went to graduate school.
I went to a two-year program and my program was
a master's in clinical psychology with an emphasis
in marriage and family therapy.
That's because I knew that I wanted to become
a licensed marriage and family therapist.
But there are many other paths to clinical therapy.
I'm using the term clinical because it's important
to know that if you want to see patients,
if you wanna have a practice where you see people
one on one, you need a clinical degree.
That means that you know how to practice therapy
with other people verses doing the research side
or maybe working in HR or just doing something different
that doesn't involve actual therapy, one one one,
with other people.
While in graduate school, we start a practicum.
A practicum is just a fancy way of saying an internship .
It's where you begin gathering the 3,000 clinical hours
that you need for licensing.
That 3,000 number is only in the state of California
and maybe some other states.
But each state and country is gonna have a different
amount of clinical hours you need to gather
in order to become licensed.
But we started gathering those,
I think it was the second year in graduate school.
You have, upon graduation, six years total after that
to gather those hours.
It took me five.
The reason it took me five years
is because I couldn't do it full time.
My parents weren't able to support me and they don't
wanna pay you anything when you're an intern.
Therefore, I made more as a waitress, back in the day,
before I even had a graduate degree,
which just doesn't make sense.
Someone should change that.
Super, super frustrating.
So I only did it on the weekends.
I worked a full time job and then nights and weekends,
I crammed in as many hours as I could.
After five years, I had gathered 3,000 hours, yay!
And then I studied to take my licensing exam.
Now in the state of California,
the licensing exam is two parts.
The first part is all multiple choice and no,
that doesn't make it easy.
I wanna say it was like 280 multiple choice questions.
I think I had four hours to take it,
maybe five, something like that.
It's changed since I took it, just as an FYI.
First, you pass that first exam and then you apply
to take the second part of the exam,
the second portion which is vignettes,
meaning you read about someone or a family or a couple
that comes into your office and then they ask you questions
based on what the diagnosis would be or what would be
your first thing that you'd have to do in treatment.
You have to answer all those questions on that one vignette
and then move on to the next one.
Historically speaking, that vignette portion,
the second exam, is the hardest and a lot of people fail.
I passed both of mine, thank God, first try because
if you pass the first exam, but then don't pass
the second exam, you only have a year from when you pass
the first one to pass the second before
you have to start all over.
So a lot of people find themselves stuck
in the testing process, just trying to get through it
in the time that's given.
And then you become a licensed therapist, hurray,
after only let's see four, five, six, 11 years.
Such a short path to a career.
So just take that into consideration because I don't
think people talk about that enough,
how many years it can take and how much time and effort
you have to put in to becoming a therapist.
I know I did a video about this and some people
gave me backlash, but it's not that financially rewarding.
But the truth is, we don't get into it for that.
But I just want you all to know because that was something
that was really shocking and I've told many of you
that when I was gathering my hours and even
when I was licensed, I still had to work other jobs,
not just therapist based jobs,
because I couldn't pay my bills.
Then many of you asked what a day in the life
of a therapist is.
That's kinda funny to me, firstly,
because it's not very exciting, but second,
it just depends on where you work.
I worked in many various treatment facilities, clinics.
I have my own private practice.
There's a lot, that's so varied.
Just to give you an example,
when I would work in the hospital,
I would show up and I would have to clock in
and I would scan.
I'd have to get through like four different floors
and there's all these locked areas you have to go through
because the psych ward is a locked area.
For those of you who don't know, you can't access,
you can't just come and go as you please.
So a lot of it is checking in.
You have to put your thumb print on this thing.
It scans you, it let's you in there, until you get to work.
Then, you have to go through all your files
because hospitals, if anybody doesn't know,
it's a ton of paperwork.
Everything we do is six sheets of nothing that go
in these huge files for people and you don't spend
that much time with the patients.
I'm not a huge fan of hospital treatment
unless it's necessary because it does keep you safe.
In the hospital setting, we've had all sorts of things.
The craziest day I've ever had was this woman had come in
and she was floridly psychotic,
meaning she was hearing, seeing things.
We didn't know if it was drugs or if it was some kind
of psychosis but she'd come to the hospital
because obviously she'd been picked up by the police
and they were scared for her safety
and the safety of others.
She threw poop at us.
It was very exciting.
Luckily, it didn't hit anybody.
We got into the nurse's station,
which is like a glass half circle,
but that was an interesting day.
Also, I've had people take their clothes off, run around.
Hospitals can be a lot more exciting if you can call it that
than other places only because people end up there
often when they're at their worst, when their psychosis
is at terrible level or they have drug-induced psychosis
and we're just waiting for them to come down from it
and trying to keep them safe while they do that.
Also, we have people who are struggling
with suicidal thoughts and so they're on watch
and we check on people every 15 to 20 minutes
to make sure they're okay.
But like I said, I'm not a huge advocate
for hospital treatment but that just gives you an idea
of what a day in the life at a hospital would be like.
But when it comes to outpatient and what I do now,
like a day in the life now, is a lot of this,
a lot of filming, a lot of researching and reading
and highlighting and printing things out,
'cause I'm old school and I still like to tab things
and highlight things.
You know, what are you gonna do?
But when I got to my office and I'm in private practice,
it's much more simple.
I go into my office.
I unlock my doors.
I unlock the waiting room, turn on all the lights,
and then I sit in my office.
I open up whoever's coming first and I read about
what we talked about last week and then I see my patients.
I check up on their homework,
I make sure that they're doing well,
I print out super bills for the end of the month
so they can get reimbursed for their insurance.
I return calls.
I call psychiatrists and dieticians.
It's just basic upkeep and it's not really that exciting
but it can be exciting because your patients
can do really well and it can be truly rewarding.
But as far as different things happening all the time,
it's not really like that.
This next question was honestly my favorite to think
about and to tell you about is, how do people respond
when they find out I'm a therapist.
The truth is, most of the time I don't tell people
what I do because when I do, they wanna tell me everything.
I've had Lyft drivers or Uber drivers wanna share the fact
that they just found out their wife cheated on them
and they don't know how to deal and they're crying
while I'm just trying to get to an event.
I'm like, hey, I'm sorry but you should call someone,
talk to a therapist that you can see in a therapy practice,
not in your car, cool.
Also at parties, it can be really draining
because I'm just there to hang out and somebody wants
to pull me aside and tell me all about the fact
that they struggle with an eating disorder for 10 years
and they don't know how to get a handle on it.
While I know that a lot of people are hurting,
and I wish I could help everybody,
it's hard when you're not in therapist mode.
Because something that I think a lot of people
don't realize is that I'm not in therapist mode
unless I'm in my office or if I'm filming videos,
sometimes I put my therapist on ad act like I would
in session, but most of the time, I'm just me, being me.
I don't analyze my friends or family members.
I don't overthink situations or try
to apply diagnosis to people in my life.
That would be a lot of work and I would be wiped.
So i don't tell people because I don't really want
to talk about it at that time.
I'm not in my professional capacity.
I'm just a person trying to get to an event
and I'd like to get there safely and that's it
and that's why I don't always tell people
that I'm a therapist because I may not have time
to really talk to them or I may be super wiped.
Maybe I saw all my patients that day,
it's the end of the day and I just don't have the ability
to focus enough to really help them.
Obviously, I'd love to help everybody but that's why
there's tons of professionals out there.
So I don't tell people I'm a therapist 'cause sometimes,
I'm just not ready to be one at that moment.
Also, as a side note, I find without people even knowing
I'm a therapist, they try to tell me all their problems.
I get that a lot and I don't know if I put off a vibe
or something but they won't have any knowledge
that I do what I do and they'll wanna tell me
what ails them, what's going on.
I just had the breakup and it's been six months
and I thought I'd feel better and I'm like,
nice to meet you (laughing).
You know, I don't even know them and so I don't know
if I put off that vibe, but just something interesting
about what my daily life is like.
Last, a lot of you asked how I take care of myself.
And I'm not perfect.
I don't want any of you to think I live this perfect life
where nothing goes wrong and I always put myself first,
'cause that is a lie.
I am always working on my self care.
This year, my goal was to not work on the weekends.
I know that sounds crazy but I would find myself working
most weekends and I was burning out.
So something that I've been practicing more
is healthy boundaries around work, around my patients,
when I'm available, what I can do, what I can't do,
and holding to it and also communicating those
to other people so that they understand
why I'm not so available.
Also, just taking care of my physical health.
I go to the doctor regularly and get my physicals
and get my blood work done and make sure that I'm checking
this spot to make sure that it's not cancer.
Also, I make sure I'm getting enough sleep.
I go on walks where I listen to podcasts
that are my inhale.
If any of you know, Brene Brown talks,
in her most recent book about inhale verses exhale
and we need to find things that creatively
and emotionally fill us up.
So I've been trying to take more time for that.
I also make time with friends and family,
whether that's on the phone or over Skype
or actually in person, going to dinner.
I try to make sure that I make time for all people
in my life so that I feel supported too
because I'm just like you.
I have bad days.
I have times where I need to get back and see my therapist.
I'm also in therapy and I think all those things
are kind of important and all part of a huge pie
that is self care.
It's not just one thing, but it's me making an effort
to have a bunch of things going on so
that if I can't do one, it doesn't all fall apart.
I'm still able to take care of myself when I need it most.
That's really it.
That's who I am, how I got where I am
and what a day in the life is.
If you have more questions about this or you like videos
like this, give it a thumbs up and let me know
in the comments because I was honestly surprised
that so many of you had questions about this.
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I hope you found this helpful.
If you want more videos about therapy, the process,
or how to find the right therapist, you can check out
those playlists and I'll see you next time, bye!