In last month's blog I wrote about graduating, becoming an ACA Registered Counsellor and being ready to go. After a year on Austudy, I had a place on the government's Self-Employment Assistance Program, registered a business name and was ready to launch Inner Gold Counselling. I had a plan.
I'm a member of a not-for-profit organisation that suddenly found itself with some fairly urgent technical problems to solve. I have spent most of my working life in IT, so I had the skills to help. One thing led to another, and what began as a part-time job managing a developer ended up with me doing the technical work myself. It quickly became something much bigger, with a huge learning curve and some tight deadlines.
So, one month later, I have withdrawn from the self-employment scheme and discovered that the mentor I approached is fully booked for the next nine months. I've done very little marketing for my counselling business and instead I've spent an extraordinary number of hours knee-deep in Ruby code, databases and spreadsheets.
So much for the best-laid plans. It's fun though; I'm enjoying the challenges.
It's not really a change of long-term plan as such. I'm seeing this more as a bit of a detour, but the direction is still the same. That plan is still very much to keep learning, keep seeing clients and gradually move into full-time work as a counsellor, ideally in my own practice.
I suspect I'm not the only counselling student or recent graduate whose path doesn't look particularly straightforward. We come to this profession from all sorts of backgrounds and at different stages of life, bringing other careers, skills, jobs and responsibilities with us. Those things don't simply disappear when we graduate, nor do most of us wake up the next morning as fully fledged therapists with full diaries of clients.
For some of us, counselling may gradually become the main work. For others, it may sit alongside another career for a while, or perhaps indefinitely. I don't know yet exactly what that will look like for me. Real life is a bit messier than the neat transition I had imagined.
The unexpected part has been rediscovering how much I enjoy the tech work. I love solving problems, understanding systems and figuring out what is really going on beneath the surface. There is something deeply satisfying about following a problem through layers of code and data until suddenly it makes sense. I'm not suggesting that people are like computers, but I recognise the same curiosity in myself as a counsellor: wanting to understand what's really going on beneath the surface and helping clients make sense of their own experiences.
I don't know how long this particular detour will last. I'll let you know next month.
Alison Whitwood is an ACA Registered Counsellor, somatic psychotherapist and wellness coach based in Sydney. Learn more at alisonwhitwood.com.au
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