WELCOME TO WISE MIND
It’s been four years since I embarked on my psychology doctorate journey and today I am jumping up and down because it has finally come to fruition. Not that it’s been a difficult four years because it hasn’t but it has been intense! Lots of hours spent in front of my computer. The most inspiring part of entering into a program of extensive study is that it is genuinely undertaken with dedication. This dedication is what has got me through, small steps consistently and regularly with a commitment to benefit have helped me enormously.
Which brings me to the topic of the first blog post on my new website; Wise Mind. How did I get here and what does the name Wise Mind mean to me?
The first step on this journey was to complete a Master’s program in Applied Psychology. Although I was pleased to have completed it in 2016, I found that it also spurred me on to continue my studies and soon after began an initiation into a doctoral program. I had been working as a speech and language therapist for over 20 years but found myself lacking in continued professional development to a level where I was progressing. I did the odd course here and there but nothing caught my attention. It wasn’t until after the Masters that I realized how much passion I felt for working with mental health. It became a central focus in the clients that I was seeing. I found that many of my clients with social thinking challenges who had near average to way above average intelligence often experienced coexisting (co-morbid) mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), eating disorders, and a range of other mental health issues. Social problems routinely became emotional problems in early childhood and then later in adolescence, clinical mental health diagnoses. These individuals were so overcome by the complexities, that they experienced major mental health problems such as psychotic breaks or talk of suicide later in life. Others dealt with the emotional side effects by lashing out with aggressive actions. So challenges in social thinking are to be taken seriously, as they affect not only one’s ability to participate fully in activities and lessons but also how they view themselves and others.
As I progressed on this path, what became clear to me was that so many people needed more mental health services that were individually tailored to both social-emotional learning and mental health support. This seemed like a perfect combination for me to utilize both my speech and language background and training with the work I was doing in clinical psychology.
Alongside a growing understanding of mental health, I developed a spiritual practice that lead me to compassion. With an appreciation of the science of compassion, I recognized that eastern traditions such a Buddhism and western psychological science were the perfect partnership for understanding our mind. So why Wise Mind? Well, it makes perfect sense. Wisdom is always present. Setting our intention to be helpful to ourselves and others leads to more freedom. We need to cultivate this intention, to be courageous to work with our habitual patterns, our difficult emotions, and our attachment histories to build inner resources that prepare us to live most skilfully and wisely. Compassion is part of that wisdom and I will be writing a lot more on this topic in the future. The second part of Wise Mind relates to our minds and the minds of others. How do we connect authentically to others so we can have more fulfilling relationships? How do we work with our own habitual tendencies and thoughts, and feelings? These are some of the aspirations we can bring into a safe therapeutic space.
It is my wholehearted intention to develop Wise Mind for young people and adults to access as a place of refuge. Wise Mind is a psychological service that utilizes my extensive experience as a speech therapist working with people with a range of mental health challenges with the most dynamic psychological therapies. I hope to bring you a unique approach, one that focuses on compassion-based therapies, and social-emotional learning.
