A Better Person

Before I had an office, and well-before I started seeing clients, I was with my wife and friends at a busy restaurant. We were talking over the enjoyable izakaya ruckus and, as was the case with friends who didn’t know at the time, I mentioned how I was switching careers, to be a psychotherapist.

Telling someone, whether you know them well or not at all, that you are going to be a psychotherapist is like telling someone that you’ve written a novel (*ahem*). They inevitably want to know more, and that inquisitiveness often leads to questions that, at least for the first few months, you struggle to form into sound-bite-sized snippets.

I think I was able to describe the hows and whys and whats effectively, and was about to reward myself with a slug from my porcelain choko of sake when I was asked: “Do you feel pressure to be a better person?

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The Ides of March

Basement: mostly done.

We pushed ourselves hard to get everything (doors, baseboards, furniture) cut/fitted/assembled. The result is beautiful. The space is marvellous. I could not have asked for a more comfortable working environment.

Novel: revised, but sifting through new notes.

I spent two months grinding through a very large, complex recommendation on my novel – that it be written in 1st-person rather than 3rd-person. A tall order. And yet, I went through with it because it made perfect sense. The narrative style I was using was such an intimate sounding 3rd-person that switching to 1st-person felt more natural – the fact that I was using 1st-person for the follow-up novel I was already working on also helped.

The new notes only regard the first part of the book – not a huge deal, and yet I will admit that I’m tired of going back to this beast. I tell myself: if it makes it better, if it improves my understanding of storytelling, if it’s still my book in the end – then it is worth it.

Film job: crazy.

Dealing with battlefields in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Seoul, it’s not hard to imagine that I’m getting emails 24-hours a day. Most of the people I’m working with are professionals who are dedicated to making this project a success. Some of the people are, for various reasons, driving me crazy. That’s pretty much par for the course.

Psychotherapy practice: saw first client.

Therapist-client confidentiality notwithstanding, I am happy to finally be getting my practice off the ground. It is a new beginning and it feels great in all the right places.

 

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Why Psychotherapist (pt. 2 – tangent)

In the course of moving towards a practice (which has begun, if gradually), my wife and I have been renovating our basement for nearly the past year. Yes, one of those reno’s. The purpose of which was so that I could work out of the house as opposed to rent office space (which is not cheap in downtown Toronto).

It’s been a learning experience: learning about renovations, learning about doing long bouts of manual labour beside a loved one, learning about the ways in which two people can live together, be married and all that, yet have different approaches toward planning and executing large-scale operations. On this note, it’s also been about communicating, dealing with stress, and knowing when to take a break (from the basement).

Most recently, my wife – who is an amazing designer – designed a compact website for my practice: please visit. With the basement almost done, and a website online (heck, I also have business cards), it seems all of the hallmarks (and clichés) of “change” are ringing true.

Of course, the practice is in its infancy. I am still working hard on a Hollywood 3D dance film, and waiting to hear back from my agent (can’t get used to typing those two words) about the most recent revision to my novel that I submitted.

I will let you know how it proceeds.

Here’s an interesting question someone asked me, when they heard I was studying to practice as a psychotherapist. I will discuss this in an upcoming blog post:

“Do you feel pressure to be a better person?”

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Why Psychotherapist? (pt. 1)

It would seem a bit of a 180° turn, to go from someone who works behind the scenes of film and TV shows to becoming a psychotherapist. It’s not a dramatic story, but over time I’ve found that my strengths have always been interpersonal, particularly when talking about weighty matters. Friends have always valued what I offered in our discussions: impartiality, a different perspective – something more than just sympathy or advice. Combine this with my artsy leanings, my active life as a fiction writer, and the simple fact that I’ve had more than one person say “You should be a therapist”, I decided that it was something to look into.

Actually, it was something I mostly talked about, rather than looked into. It was my partner who happened upon the website of the institute that I ended up enrolling in. The more I looked into it, even though it had been a very long time since studying anything relating to psychology or psychotherapy, the more it felt right (or at least, worth the risk if it didn’t turn out to be something I liked).

And, slowly, I came to this place: a year-and-a-half later, an almost-renovated office in the basement, business cards and website in the works. I’m still enrolled in the program (halfway through my second of three years) and hope to take on clients part-time in the next month as a therapist-in-training. Of course, I’m still going to be working in film until I’ve completed the projects that I’ve started. I have no clue how the transition will go: slowly, quickly, easy, bumpy. Not sure.

That said, being a psychotherapist, I am discovering, feels natural. I have no hesitation sitting in the therapist’s chair and sharing time and space with someone who needs to talk. It is an obviously challenging career, but one that I feel better-suited to than what I am currently doing.

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