AustinCounseling.info

I have wanted to be a therapist since I was 16 years old and read a book my father gave me called The Fifty Minute Hour, by psychoanalyst Robert Lindner. The book contained stories of people with very serious emotional problems who through the process of psychoanalysis were able to get to the root of what troubled them and move on to productive lives. I was very unhappy as a child and teenager but had no idea what was wrong. Growing up middle class I was not supposed to have any problems. My physical needs were being met. Whatever was bothering me was beneath the surface and even if felt, could not be talked about in my family. I wanted what the people in the book had – a way out of their (my) misery. I wanted it for myself and I thought that if I studied and learned how to do it for others I would be able to figure myself out in the process.

So I studied psychology in college in hopes of becoming a therapist. But as a baby boomer college graduate, getting into graduate school was highly competitive. Being an introvert in a large university did not lend itself to developing relationships with professors who could recommend me to graduate school. I could have gotten a teaching credential with one more year of school, but my father was a teacher and I did not want to be like him. So I followed Timothy Leary’s advice and “tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.” I pursued “field research” in the areas of drug and alcohol use, abuse, and dependence for the next two decades. I did manual labor as an antidote to the many years of overachieving and exploiting my intellect. I lived a marginalized, subsistence existence in the “alternative culture” of Northern California. When it became clear that unskilled labor would not provide me with the lifestyle to which I aspired I enrolled in graduate business school and spent five years earning an MBA. That degree along with my self-taught computer skills opened some doors and I became an administrative analyst at a major university. Like my career in the trades, however, it became apparent that this was not my calling.

I was still very unhappy, and using drugs and alcohol. Not just unhappy. Depressed. Isolated. Lonely. Through a series of suggestions from others I entered recovery from my addiction and from my dysfunctional upbringing. My life began to change. I started to connect with other people – on a more than superficial level. I began the process of learning to love myself. I began to ask for and receive good things in my life rather than expect and accept less than I was worth. I still wanted to be a therapist but could not bear the idea of having to get another masters degree. I learned that I could become a drug and alcohol counselor with just two years of adult education courses and an internship. So that is what I did, after which I left my university job and began counseling substance using ex-offenders for the California Department of Corrections. Later I returned to the university as a drug counselor working in the county general hospital.

After several years doing drug counseling I knew that I wanted to go deeper, as Robert Lindner had. I wanted to go beneath people’s problematic behaviors to learn what motivates them and how to help them change. I returned to school for a masters in counseling and became a marriage and family therapist. This is my calling. This is what I was meant to do. This is what I am good at. This is what I love to do. My gift is helping people uncover their gift so they can live fully, productively, happily, in the moment.