My school divides up summer into two condensed semesters. I am taking the first off because I was going to absolutely lose my shit if I didn't take a break. There has been a strong correlation between me starting graduate school and me being incredibly displeased with life. I hate that I took time off because it will just prolong my time in school, and yet I would have been stuck taking classes over because I'd end up dropping them anyway mid-semester, thus prolonging time in school.
It isn't that learning how to be a therapist is an intellectual exercise, despite the many, many classes on theory. There are two-to-three year programs that are significantly more intense than what I am doing: physician assistant, law, genetic counseling, nurse practitioner, etc. The culture of my graduate program along with my marshmallow personality makes for an emotionally draining experience for me. A good portion of it lays in the fact that I hate criticism. By that I mean I will cry and ruminate for hours after some constructive criticism. Shit, my first year I cried in two separate classes in the same semester. In front of people. It was absurd. Now I just pop Ativan before presentations. As it turns out, I'm not the only one who does that - so yes, your shrink likely takes psychotropic medication.
There is a chance my "personality" falls partly into the Avoidant camp. Kind of funny, huh, considering my field? I make a strong effort to ignore the garbage my brain spouts off, and while I do find myself often weeping in my car or in a bathroom stall or on my husband's shoulder, I try to put my mental crap aside and do what I enjoy doing. I spent a good chunk of time working in human services, and I didn't have issues with the people I was trying to assist even if there was a small amount of swearing, derogatory comments, or attempts at theft when I was standing in front of a group of ten people (The swearing, comments, and theft weren't all that common - we all have bad days, though).
Academia, and the rest of life, is intense for me. Even if someone is being incredibly gentle and sneaking in compliments throughout the conversation, I take it to mean I am an inexplicably worthless piece of a human being with nothing worthwhile to contribute to society and should just find a nice cardboard box to move into because I will never be able to do my job/marriage/parenting with any level of competence and I am hated with a fire of fury hates. I know on one level this is bullshit and on another level it is utterly true, and I let those contradictions peacefully exist in my head while generally giving the rational part the benefit of the doubt. It took a year and a half of DBT to get to that point. I would say that it gets easier, but that would be a lie.
For whatever reason, the line of "I suck at life" thinking will pop out even if I know the person is being an idiot and projecting their issues onto me. A teacher or two of mine has gotten borderline nasty with me because I didn't agree with their theoretical orientation (I lean towards third wave behavioral) during a lecture. I don't honestly care about your choice of theory - I think different people respond to different techniques and it takes all kinds in the mental health field - but I guess it's a big fucking deal to some folks. I think I'm very polite about the whole thing, and a classmate or two has even told me so at the end of classes. I can't even say I sound remotely critical, because I don't think I do. But who knows.
If you're wondering, those two teachers had two different theoretical orientations.
Along with that is the attitude that students and new therapists have little level of skill - it's almost criminal we unleash them on people - and thus they have no right to an opinion. Example: an instructor told one of my classes not to criticize a diagnosis made by a supervisor or a senior member of a team. Diagnoses are funny. Is it Bipolar or Schizoaffective? Generalized Anxiety or OCD? Hoarding or frat boy slob? A lot of subjectivity goes into making a diagnosis, and there often isn't a correct answer. Here's my problem, though: if a clinician is going to slap a Cluster B personality disorder label on someone just because the person they're working with gets pissed off at them for not returning calls or being late to appointments (I've seen it happen), I might just have to step in and say (tactfully) that is some bullshit - freshly limited-licensed or not. Restraints in the middle of a hallway even if someone has voluntarily checked themselves in? (I'm against restraints anyway - they aren't evidenced-based and are just plain mean - but seriously? I've heard that story more than once) Some things simply aren't okay, and you don't need ten years of experience under your belt to figure that out.
Ugh. I have been frequently wondering why I am bothering. I can take what a client/resident/individual served/whatever dishes out with no problem, but supervisors and teachers make me want to curl up into that cardboard box and wait for winter to come and freeze me over. I have another year of this pain to go, and it hasn't felt worthwhile since I left my decent-paying job to try to finish up school quickly last June. It hasn't helped that I had some depression and a viral infection from Hell at the end of the fall semester partly resulting in tanked grades, and another viral infection that lasted a month and a half during the winter semester that made life way too difficult, and wicked back pain that made it nearly impossible to sit or stand for more than five minutes, and now there's some mystery pain that is possibly autoimmune-related (Oh yeah, and my winter semester grades sucked - before fall, I had a 4.0 GPA).
Twenty grand in student loans aside, my husband told me some people try to stay oblivious to everything that is wrong with the world and some people are aware of what's wrong and aren't afraid to address it, and I'm one of those people with awareness, and I should stick it out because I would be able to really help some people, and blah blah. I don't know if this is worth the few shreds of rational thinking I have left.
It's strange...I've talked to other students in other fields who say they get treated like professionals...and then that has not been the experience of me and many of my classmates. Unless my opinion is that of the elder's, it is worthless. Don't ask me how I'd be able to swing agreeing with everyone, considering so few people agree on much of anything. Yeah, my perception is clouded, but I know it's not just me based on conversations I've had with other people in my program.
I think from here on out I'm going to keep quiet as possible, only speak if required for a grade, and make sure I don't give my opinion at any point. That might be the only way I survive graduate school. I want to quit. I want to quit so so so much. The only reason why I'm not quitting is the debt.
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