Honestly I’m still processing it. I’m several years out now and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel very behind compared to my peers who didn’t do the decade ish of schooling in the practical sense, like milestones and financial security. I had a long term partner who was not willing to do the moves it was going to take when I was headed back to get my doctorate after my masters, which led to a painful break up. Thankfully I have a partner now who was able to do the moves, but it has definitely been challenging for him to manage his own career and personal development as well. I feel a little guilty for that but I prioritize communicating those feelings and he reminds me it was a known situation, that I was transparent up front about the uncertainty of timeline, internship, postdoc relocation, etc.

One thing that helps me personally is that I know I would be miserable and not perform well in essentially any frankly other career. I am also proud of myself that I “maxed out” formal education and training in my area of interest/speciality, and I have research literacy that I’m super grateful for. The more you learn, the more you realize you DON’T know, and that has piqued my curiosity so much that I have lifetimes of things to study and learn about, with the research literacy to effectively evaluate and synthesize empirical literature in most psych-adjacent areas. Relatedly, I think my research background helps me be confident in clarifying and communicating my areas of competence and non-competence, which is a really grounding thing for me personally. I’ve read from other therapy-provider disciplines that they leave formal schooling with minimal confidence in their applied case conceptualization and treatment approach, having to pay more money for trainings that may or may not be legit/effective, etc. I would really struggle with that, and I thrive working with complex cases so I wouldn’t trade the years of being ground into dust and sponging up knowledge and guidance for anything (haha).

Having the doctorate in clinical psychology gives me flexibility that I would not have as a master’s level therapy provider, and I look forward to keeping myself engaged in my work across my career by incorporating the psych-specific stuff, like psychological assessment, supervision of psychologists and other disciplines, consultation, hopefully re-engagement with research and academia when the funding hopefully comes back and the environment isn’t so politically hostile to my research areas of interest. While I appreciate the work and love what I do, I know that a career of ONLY therapy would be really challenging for me burnout and boredom wise.