We all have Messy Lives and it's Okay!

I spend a big chunk of my week working with my patients, reading about their symptoms, and discussing their cases with my colleagues and supervisors to plan for their treatment interventions. For the longest time, I believed that to become a therapist, I needed to have my life “sorted”. But, the more time I spend in my training, I realise that it would be a futile goal to work towards. Of course, I cannot be suffering from a mental disorder as a therapist. But, it would be foolish to expect me to have a perfect life just because I am a therapist.

We all have messy lives. Some phases and/or aspects of our lives are just less messier than the others. For example, our work lives might be less messier than our romantic lives. Similarly, some people just have more number of messier phases and/or aspects than others. For example, my patients have had a lot more messy parts of their lives as compared to other more privileged people in my life And, the dialectic (also, a type of psychotherapy I’m getting trained in and absolutely LOVE) of life is that only when we accept this imperfection about ourselves can we make real growth!