u/nads825

I have to be forthright, I feel a little off posting on here. I don’t want to tie my identity to intelligence, but I could really use support from people that may understand.

I have always been high functioning. 140 WISC, 136 retest as a teen as a roundabout ADHD assessment. Really wish I would have never known, if I’m honest. Breezed through school without ever studying, even through my AP courses in high school, and had enough mental energy to spend most of my time in music. Got a 33 on my ACT without any study effort, National Merit Scholar. The problem is that I was fairly naive as to what this would imply for career. Neither of my parents have four year degrees, so I had no experienced perspectives on universities. I didn’t do any independent research on career options and outcomes. My high school didn’t have established STEM clubs or anything like that. The only passions I really had by high school were animal care, music, and psychology.

I majored in psychology on a gut feeling of becoming a therapist, due to being told I’m a “good listener” over and over. I spent most of college depressed, not really attributing it to the lack of rigor and stimulation. Psychology can be challenging when you combine neuroscience and acute psychopathology, but otherwise, the degree was a drag. I have some good experiences from college but overwhelmingly wasted four years of my youth learning hard lessons and letting depression take control. I mourn for the person I could’ve been.

Now, I currently work in inpatient psychiatry as a tech, and I love the chaos. It’s challenging and exciting, but more so for my demeanor and emotional resilience than for my intelligence. On that end, I have been incredibly bored and am becoming depressed again, as much as I love our patients. This job has forced me to grow so much in my cultural awareness, confidence, interpersonal skills, and mental health management. I even met my partner by chance through this job. He’s the only person who fits me both in intelligence and altruism. Even so, I am feeling unfulfilled.

I start my program to become a therapist soon and have been seeing an influx of posts about how much more boring outpatient will be. This concern is on top of the low pay and potential burnout. I’m kicking myself. I thought this was what I wanted, but now I feel like I’m not truly built for this. I might have made a terrible mistake that will set me back forever and will have wasted resources in my field. Do I need to bite the bullet and pivot to something harder while I’m young? I feel like it’s not fair to clients if I’m bored all the time. Is there anyone here that has found long term fulfillment in mental health? Any career insight is welcome, I’m completely and utterly lost.

I’m about to start my program in counseling to become a licensed therapist. I’ve been working in inpatient for two years now and felt very assured that this is what a want to do. However, as I get closer, I’ve been seeing an overwhelming amount of professionals talk about the mental exhaustion and lack of compensation for what they experience (ex: realistically only being able to handle 15 clients a week before it bleeds into their own mental health).

I’m a little discouraged. Right now I barely make a livable wage, and my average day at this point is 12 hours of trying to deescalate full crashouts, listening to ear-splitting screaming, and avoiding getting assaulted. I thought that if I’ve been able to absorb this and function just fine, I’d be a tank in outpatient work. Now I’m not so sure. This is all very scary to process now that I’m already two years out from my bachelor’s degree. Is it really that bad?

I could use any advice to stand out and get where I want to be. have a BA in psych and have been working as a tech in inpatient psychiatry for two years since I graduated. I started in psych naive like most everyone else, said “I’ll be a clinical psychologist” with zero understanding of how academia works. I had a 3.7 GPA taking honors college courses, had a 4.0 major GPA. I got a little research experience but it was in ABA and was mostly monkey-pressing-button work, lots of just entering qualitative data into excel sheets. No posters, no papers. I let myself get very depressed toward the end of school, ended up quitting the lab. Worked night shift at the hospital, stayed depressed, then moved to day shift and realized how much I love the patient interaction. Inpatient has blessed me with reassurance in my field and a directed passion for finding clinical interventions for delinquent behaviors. To me, this entails a deep understanding of behavioral neuroscience, neurodevelopmental disorders, and more acute psychopathology.

I start my program in CHMC in the fall and I’m super excited. However, I still have this terrible feeling weighing on me now that I’m “awake,” almost like grief. I have always been academically inclined and I feel like I threw it away for depression and timidity in undergrad. When I was younger I always imagined I’d research something impactful and profound, but now I feel like I’ve wasted so much time and potential. I follow people that are in academia and I want so badly to get involved. There are labs with projects related to behavioral neuroscience, c/a psychopathology, and maladaptive behaviors, but I don’t know how to get my foot in the door as a counseling graduate student. Many positions seem to be reserved for undergrads. I reached out to a couple labs but got very vague responses indicating they will contact me IF there are opportunities as they move forward.

I’ll take absolutely any advice. My wish for a doctorate down the road is uncertain, but I know for sure I want to at least spend some time in research I’m passionate about. Is there anything I can say or do to strengthen my odds of recruitment?