How being a therapist has changed me!

Being in the field of Mental Health is both extremely rewarding and taxing as well. There are days when I feel absolutely blessed to be in the position of helping others and there are days when my resources get exhausted and I just want to press pause.

I’ve been working in this field for the past 3 years and it has been a great learning curve. When I started out, I was extremely excited to listen to people’s stories, and in some aspect help them find the parts of themselves they had yet not discovered. In the same process, I also realized that it was indeed an opportunity for me also to gently take a look within and retrospect. While working on the issues together with the clients, I also started reflecting back on my journey. This gave me plenty of opportunities to do some very challenging yet deep inner work. For example,

when a client talks about an experience that I also have gone through personally, it gives me a chance to look at the same experience through someone else’s lens and even reflect back on it.

There have been many clients who have inspired me to break some of my own inhibitions, and misconceptions. I think therapy is such a magical space that it allows both the people involved to have a natural rhythm and grow together. The therapeutic alliance for me acts as a magic ingredient that helps both the people involved to be authentic and growth-oriented.

Being a therapist has been making me work a lot on just about every aspect of my life. There’s not a single topic on this planet that doesn’t involve interaction with the human mind. Therefore every time I take up a new task, make a new friend, travel to a new place, or try a new cuisine it by default involves Psychology.

I took up Psychology as my major subject in 2016 and since then there hasn’t been a single day when I have not been curious about the functioning of a particular thing. This field has given me a very beautiful gift of being observant and analytical. I believe that I always have been a listener but this field also taught me to be patient and to observe without judgment.

Ever since I started learning Psychology and practicing it, I’ve seen myself become less

judgmental and more and more empathetic. Each individual is unique and everyone has their own reasons why they behave the way they do. Therefore I very hardly see myself judging people. This has been one of the biggest breakthroughs personally.

Being in this field as a therapist has given me a lot and I am eternally grateful to my younger

version for choosing to cancel the noise caused by other people and choosing this field as a career. I cannot wait to embrace the journey of self-discovery that awaits me.

Chinmayee Aphale, Mental Health Practitioner

Pune, Maharashtra