Hello and welcome to Psychology and Seattle. I'm your host, Kirk Honda Professor and Licensed Therapist.

It's just me today. I thought I would do an episode on choosing a career in psychology or psychotherapy and

applying to graduate training programs.

Listeners Zoe wrote in the following email and in others have asked me very similar questions both

through the podcast over email and also at the school where I teach. So her email goes like this.

And I'm skipping over the parts where she talks glowingly about the email and about me, of course.

So I won't go into that, but just let it be known that listener Zoe loves me and the podcast.

As I progress through the stages of preparing to apply, I find myself very afraid and discouraged.

It's very odd to me actually because I'm not doubting that I want to do this work, but I'm also very unsure as to my suitability for it.

I worry that I'm not capable of handling the emotional stress of other people and their suffering.

I keep putting off the application process thinking that I need to be more mature. I just graduated from college, I'm 22.

But then I reproach myself a little for stalling and not moving forward in my life where I could.

So she asks the following questions.

My question is how did you know you were ready to be a therapist?

Did it take a lot of time to adjust to the demands of the job or was it something you felt fairly comfortable with despite moments of stress?

Do you think there may be some people who want to do the work but are not constitutionally built for it or can anyone do it with the right amount of effort and motivation?

So these are very good questions and I would say they're very common questions I would say.

Hey deserving listeners, this is an old episode that we have re-released as a patron exclusive episode.

So if you want to hear the full episode you have to become a patron of the podcast by going to patreon.com.

How do I tell them?

How do I tell them?

How do I pay the bills?

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