Why did you become a therapist, and what motivates you to continue?

When people ask me why I became a psychologist, the fact that I'm a psychologist leads me to give kind of complex answers so please bear with me. The first thing that I would tell you is there's a very personal level, to why I became a psychologist and it has to do with my own parents divorce, and then some of the challenges that I myself and my family experienced afterwards. And as a result of those experiences. I was left with the desire to want to be of service to other families and people going through similar kinds of trials and take my challenges, and be able to make them be a value to others. And so that's a very personal level, to this. And then, on a different level. I will tell you that initially in college I was studying acting, and I was studying approach to acting called method acting, which involves really an internal process of kind of connecting to internal memories and experiences in order to bring forth a character, or, you know, real experience on stage or on film. And in that process, I ended up taking psychology classes just to better understand people's motivation and conflicts. Well, as things would go, I ended up being a lot better at the psychology than I was at the acting. And so there was this point at which I thought hey, you know, maybe I'll just take those qualities that helped me, you know, be interested in theater and they'll apply them in a new area, which I've now done with psychology. And so, throughout my work as a psychologist, I've continued to connect with some of those things that that also led me to be interested in acting such that, I've had a radio show. I've done things like psychodrama, and really therapy itself involves using oneself as an instrument and so there's been a way in which having that background in theatre is blended actually quite nicely with with psychology. Now a third level is also pretty interesting, which is that, as I've gone along in my life, I've taken an interest in Buddhism, and I've, I've not only studied Buddhism, but I've actually now evolved to a point where I'm teaching meditation and Buddhist philosophy and practice. And as part of that, something that has now become clear, is that my, my role as a psychologist is actually perfectly aligned with my spiritual commitments to try to help liberate other people and other beings from from suffering and from misery. And so, what's, what's kind of curious is that it wasn't completely intentional, from, from the beginning, but now, something that had started off, you know, early on in my life, growing out of some, some difficulty that I had, and then got flavored by some of my experience in college and my interest in theater and how that led me to psychology classes, has now even more fully and richly blended with some of my, my spiritual commitments and values, as, as a Buddhist student practitioner and teacher. Now, bringing up the Buddhism is also kind of interesting because, although I don't try to push any particular belief system on people and in fact, many of my clients come from various backgrounds such as Christianity, Judaism, Hindu is Muslim faith. What, what is the case, is that I'm very much focused on supporting people in finding ways to liberate themselves and doing that in a way that's consistent with whatever their beliefs are. And so, by saying that I am teaching or sharing things from Buddhism doesn't mean that I'm trying to proselytize or convert somebody to any particular belief system, so I just thought I would share that as well. Having now kind of rambled and giving you a very complex answer I hope that at least gives you a little bit of a flavor for me and what brought me to this field and maybe some of the things that it connects to in my own life, but what I think would also be interesting, is to now see how I might be able to help you. So, if you found some of that interesting or at least informative and you wanted to know. See how that might have value to you, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and I'd be glad to offer you a free video consultation and we can maybe talk through some of the things that you'd like to change new life and see how I might be able to assist with that, thanks a lot for taking the time to learn more about me and I hope that we can talk soon. Take care, bye bye.