PSYCHOLOGY.
I've always loved the science of human behavior and understanding why people do what they do, what motivates them, what gets them to tick. In college, the degree that I was most drawn to was psychology.
Every summer while in college I volunteered or did internships in some type of psychology arena.
My first job in psycholgy was at a facility called the Tom Ray Center, in 1992. This institution was for juvenile felons; basically a place for youth felons that couldn't go to jail because they were minors. We provided a lot of group therapies and sessions centered on choices & anger management.
The summer of 1993, I worked at Shands Hospital (now UF Health) in Gainesville, Florida on the psychiatric unit. That was where I was first exposed to patients undergoing electric shock therapy, psychosis, multiple personality disorder, self-mutilation, and some of the more, “extreme mental disorders and methods of treatment” .
I remember one woman that I was assigned to who was a self mutilator, her name was ‘Phyllis’. On the surface you would assume, she was an everyday normal mom. She was such a charming and beautiful woman, but then any chance she would get, she would try and cut herself. It was confusing because you couldn’t help but wonder why she would do this to herself. Phyllis had thick scars, on top of scars, across her stomach where she’d repeatedly cut open scar tissue.
Phyllis was allowed no privacy. She had to be watched in the shower, going to the bathroom, sleeping... because she couldn’t be trusted to be alone. Sadly, on one occassion (it wasn't my shift, thank goodness) she had broken a piece of glass from the fluorescent light bulbs and swallowed the glass. She did this to herself the second she had the opportunity.
The time that I worked at the psychiatric unit at Shands affected me profoundly. I saw first hand the depth of pain people have & carry with them. I realized how deeply habits are ingrained in our behavior and how much our thoughts no matter how hard we try, can’t be fully suppressed; they must be dealt with. I felt daily the magnitude of pain there is in the world that needs to be healed.
Next, in 1994, I worked at Charter Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. At Charter I was a mental health technician on the adult unit. I took patients to Electric Shock Therapy, sat in on group therapies and helped discuss treatment plans based on my observations.
I’ve learned from working in psychology, sociology, studying human behavior and how our interactions are with others can truly define the quality of life we choose to lead.
Behaviorism specifically fascinated me because so many of our choices & interpretations is about the reinforcement or reward we get, doing what feels good, and avoiding what doesn’t.
I worked at Charter Hospital for a year. Do you know what about myself at that time? I found the majority of it very frustrating because most patients in that setting weren’t there to truly get help or change their life. Most were there because they had to be. Most patients were there because they were Baker acted, and just going through the motions ….and often the legal system. I realized when it come to helping people, you can’t push a rope.
What I wanted to do and the difference I wanted to make in the world was not going to thrive in this environment. It was a hard reality that I’d just gone to college for 4 years of my life, spent summers dedicated to getting experience yet I did not find it nearly as gratifying as I imagined.
There had to be a way that I could make a bigger difference in the world by using my strength of insight, my passion for psychology, my study of sociology and facination for behaviorism. I realized I could apply my strengths on a broader scale where I can inspire & impact people that truly have a burning desire to work past their self limiting beliefs and become something bigger than they ever imagined.
And with that realization, life nudged me to take what I love, the lessons I learned, and go create the next chapter in my life.