When I was a kid, on being asked the universal "What do you want to be when you grow up?", I did not have a specific profession in mind. My answer was simple: "I want to help people." I grew up trying to do that as much as I could. It was as simple as that.

When one asks a newbie therapist why they chose the profession, a common response is that they chose this profession out of a desire to help others. Three years into being a therapist, when I think of this answer, I am reminded of eight-year-old me who had the same response, and I laugh fondly at the innocence of it. It is not as simple as that.

We do enter this profession with a genuine desire to help others, yes. Over time, as we commit to our own inner work, the unconscious becomes conscious - we realise that the person we most want to help is our own self.

It is an unraveling that follows,

dominos falling in a row -

one cannot slow it down,

or stop it, or go back.

One does not want to go back.

This is where it all begins.

The more I meet myself,

the more I am able to meet others.

And in therapy, we meet it all -

the hope and the despair,

the rage and the grief,

the laughter and the love,

the hatred and the tears.

We meet it time and again,

in different combinations and different interpretations.

We meet.

The "I" dissolves.

It is paradoxical, and that's the beauty of it.

Now, when someone asks me why I continue to be a therapist, I say - "I want to accompany people as they meet the deeper, fully authentic versions of themselves."

- For all the wounded healers. Thank you for all that you are and all that you do.

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