Self-Care for Psychologists Tip 101: Don’t Be With Psychologists All the Time

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About 4 years into graduate school, I found myself one morning at a sex workshop in a San Francisco hotel conference room. It wasn’t too far out there, buuuut it was kinda out there. My interest in incorporating topics of human sexuality into my clinical work was growing, as was my wonder and incredulity at why it wasn’t a core part of training for clinical psychologists in the first place. But that’s another blog post…

I had started to look for some non-traditional self-directed educational opportunities, which led me to attend an intro to Orgasmic Meditation. The content of this seminar would also need to be the topic of another blog post, however what I will say is that I was very quickly struck by the diversity of the workshop attendants and my simultaneous realization of how insulated I had been since the beginning of grad school until then, moving in and out of different circles of psychologists only.  Sure I had my non-psychology friends, but in terms of any type of new learning or exchange of ideas, it had been clinical psychologists, and only clinical psychologists for a while. So I set out to diversify.

One of my most enriching experiences to date of engaging with non-psychologist, awesome, and inspiring others has been a Book Club, formed with other ex-pats in my temporary home of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Together we are a Captain of the U.S. Coast Guard, a crew member of the U.S. Coast Guard, an accounting consultant, an MBA student, a CDC Health Educator, and myself, a clinical psychologist.   

We meet every 1-2 months. We alternate reading fiction, and non-fiction, and we rotate who picks the book for the next reading. So far we have read the following:

1.     Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha
2.     Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3.     Anthem by Ayn Rand
4.     Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito & Dalia Mogahed

Why An 'Integrated' Book Club is Great for Self-Care:

1.     It gets you out of your 'psychologist' mindset. As a psychologist, I tend to ‘process the hell’ out of everything. And when I’m with my psychologist friends and colleagues we tend to ‘process the hell’ out of everything (no offense intended to any of my fellow psychologists who are reading this!). This is what we are trained to do. Now not that book club is not analytical, but it is so refreshing to have thoughtful and fun discussions on diverse subject matter with people whose thoughts, opinions, experiences, and approach to thinking are so different from my own. How can you challenge your 'psychologist' mindset from time to time? Who might you want to reach out to or spend time with?

2.     You read books you might not read otherwise. Reading for pleasure really changed for me when I entered grad school. If I was doing it for fun, I wanted to only do the beach read, escape fantasy, and magical realism type books that I had always loved. I did not want to stray from my comfort zone – The Hunger Games, The Magicians (highly, highly recommend these by the way!), re-reading lots of Isabel Allende. I love these books and these types of books; they are entertaining and thought provoking in their own right. But I was missing out on all other types of reads. With the alternating fiction and non-fiction of Book Club, plus the fact that I don’t pick the book each time, I’m exposed to so many new, interesting, and entertaining texts. What types of books do you tend to read? Which new ones would you like to try?

3.     You get to laugh and spend time with friends. This one is the most important. Sometimes there's meetings where some of us haven't read the book in its entirety, but its no pressure. In the midst of life that's filled with deadlines, never ending to do lists, and extreme focus on productivity and output, we take it easy in Book Club. At the end of the day it’s just nice to have time carved out to bond with friends over a good meal and a good (half a) book. What's the next fun thing you have planned in your life?

I love psychology. I love being a psychologist. I write this on the eve of my last Spring Consolidated Business Meeting of the American Psychological Association where I will be surrounded by many of my beloved psychologist colleagues all weekend long. Eating, breathing, and sleeping psychology.

And last night I went to Book Club. #balance

Here Inside

This was first delivered as an interactive component to a documentary film I created for my Senior Project in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures in February 2006. The subject of the film: domestic servitude in Brazil as observed in my Brazilian homestay.

It was March of 1998 – the month I turned 14. My sister and I got a post card in the mail from Brazil. It was from our cousin telling us that she was at Carnaval, that everyone was singing and dancing in the streets, and that we just had to come some day. Not only her words enchanted me, but the black and white post card image made me want to be there: a beautiful girl, dressed all in white, mouth slightly open, eyes lighting up in anticipation at something outside the frame of the photograph. I wondered what she was about to say. I imagined what her smile would look like. 

I looked at that picture often over the years. When I finally left to study abroad in Brazil, despite my parents hesitation after having just seen the movie City of God, I wanted to find her, find out what she saw, what could make her expression so enticing. While looking for that girl in the photograph, I found a different girl. I didn’t wonder about what could make her smile, I wondered how she could smile at all.

In February of 2005, a girl who looked to be about my age greeted me at the entrance to the building that would be my home for the next 5 months. She took hold of my rather large suitcase and carried it into the elevator for me. Her name was Rosie. Not quite sure who she was, I followed her and when my host mother invited me to sit down for lunch I realized, as she served me, that she was their domestic worker. I encountered a home unlike anything I had ever imagined. Everything remained under lock and key: telephone, food, toilet paper. Apparently, after working for the family for 11 years, Rosie was still not to be trusted. My host mother’s harsh tone directed at her was a familiar sound. 

After a while, I asked Rosie if I could document her story. I wanted to share it with others to give voice to a young woman who said that I was the only one who had ever really listened to her. I borrowed a video camera from a fellow student in the program and we conducted the interview over the course of two days: the first on a Sunday, also one of her two free days a month, and the second at the end of a regular workday. We waited until my host mom was away and filmed in the kitchen. Rosie’s friend, Cristina, a domestic for a neighboring apartment, stood watch at the front window. If anyone were to come home, Cristina would notify us and then quickly run out the back door and up the stairs, as Rosie was not allowed to have guests in the house.

Her story was one of poverty, ignorance, and a country still holding onto the remnants of its colonial past. As we began filming, I asked at what age she began living with and working for the family. Fourteen. At the same age that I began to exoticize Brazil, Rosie began to be commodified by its flaws.

During my time there, she talked to me. She took an interest in what I was doing, when my host family did not. She helped me with my Portuguese, always so patient, never laughed at me, and never gave me that awful blank stare I got from my host mom when she didn’t understand what I was trying to say. We talked about our families, our boyfriends, about everything that was wrong in that household, and about other Brazilian women in similar situations. She taught me how to make Bahian dishes like moqueca, feijoada, and sweets like Romeu e Julietas. She taught me how to fry bananas and made them for me on my birthday. We discussed the possibility of her leaving her job. We lamented the fact that it was nearly impossible for her to go to the domestic worker’s union to plead her case about past wages due. They were closed on Sundays – her only days off.

On the rare occasions she finished work early, we went on evening walks to escape the heat of the house. Down Avenida Centenario to Oceanica, glancing behind us to the mini-statue of Christ on the hill, with the ocean to our left, we continued on until we got to the famous lighthouse of Barra. We sat on the grass surrounded by capoeiristas, the homeless, and vendors selling their souvenirs. There we were, an American and a brasileira – two mor­enas, two brown-skinned girls.

She could have been me.

I could have been her.

Luck and misfortune: one person born into privilege, the other into poverty.

I left Rosie with a promise to return someday and a secret copy of the phone key. I call her occasionally now that I am home. Once when she answered, she was there at the lighthouse with Cristina. Two brasileiras escaping the heat of the house. In the words of my good friend and kindred spirit, “Deveria ser diferente.” It should be different.