For those of you about to enter a mental health graduate program

Whether you're thinking about a mental health discipline -- such as becoming an LMFT, LPC, LCSW, Psychologist, etc. Or perhaps working on the prevention and education side, such as become a Family Life Educator. This poem, written by Benjamin Caldwell, is a wonderful way to punctuate this big decision you are making...and forcast all the ways you'll change the world. Enjoy, KMR

Prologue

Welcome, new students.

You have chosen a career in mental health,

One of the most noble lines of work on earth.

I assume you chose this career because you want to

What’s the cliché?

Help people,

And perhaps because at some point earlier in your life

You had a wonderful, transformative experience

With a therapist who gave you the help you needed when you needed it

Or

You had a horrible, traumatic experience

With a loved one who wasn’t so lucky.

Whatever your story,

I presume that, all clichés aside, you are here for the right reasons

To begin a noble career of helping people.

I do not, however, presume

You know what that means.

First, you should know that when people talk about a career being noble

They mean it is unsteady

Underpaid

Sometimes unsafe

And always underappreciated.

Your noble sacrifice

Of the potential for a bigger house

A nicer car

Nights where you don’t cringe every time the phone rings,

In fear that perhaps this is the night one of your clients followed through

Will not be recognized.

By anyone.

Confidentiality, baby.

No one can know what you do.

Great for your clients.

Sucks for you.

Second, you should know that helping people

Is not the feel-good movie of the summer.

It is hard.

It will weigh on you.

It is true that some people don’t want to be helped;

Those people will not spend a lot of time in your office,

And even when they do, you will not worry about them so much.

What will break your heart

Over and over and over again

Are the people who want desperately to be helped

In ways you can’t provide.

A warm conversation

Is not a warm meal.

A perfect diagnosis

Is not a bus ticket home.

Even the most brilliantly executed therapeutic intervention

Is not a mother’s child back in her arms.

I know, and you know

We all only do what we can.

But people in other jobs

Normal jobs

They don’t have to see

The enormous and deeply personal tragedy

Of how badly we fail every day

At being a community.

If you really want to help people,

You need to start by toughening up.

Few things are as frustrating

For a teacher in mental health

As a student who says she wants to help

But then is too uncomfortable to spend five minutes

In the company of anyone who actually needs it.

If you want to never be afraid

If you want to never have your beliefs challenged

If you want to never see the victims or the perpetrators

Of poverty, racism, rape, religious fanaticism, child abuse,

And everything else you cannot stand

If you want to never have anyone angry enough at you

To scream your name so loud that you can hear it several blocks away

If you want to never have to face these things

Not only are you in the wrong line of work

You are in the wrong line of life.

Because sometimes fear is your body’s way of telling you to wake up and pay attention.

Some of your beliefs are not just naive or misguided but simply wrong.

There are people suffering from all of those things all around you, every day.

And sometimes, screaming at someone who is trying their best to help you change

Feels really good.

In other lines of work

Or life

You may be able to just deny these things

Or pretend they don’t really exist.

In this line of work

You can’t.

In this line of work

Blinders are laughed at

And then violently torn off.

I don’t mean to be a downer.

I just want you to go into this career with your eyes open.

This work is hard.

But if you’re ready for it

Physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially

(A development process that will take at least three times as long

As the time you’re in school

And that’s if you have a good therapist of your own)

If you’re ready for it

This work will be your window

Into more scratching and clawing out of the gutter,

Onto one’s feet, and into the air

Than you ever thought human beings were capable of.

This work will be your window

Into more love found after years of having gone missing

Than some families experience in ten generations.

This work will be your window

Into how the mere act of being in someone’s company in the right way

Can change their life

And their children’s lives

And their great-great-great-grandchildren’s lives.

That thing I said before

About the right diagnosis not being a bus ticket home

Is true

But sometimes, being in someone’s company in the right way

Enables them to build themselves a new home

Right where they are.

You picked a line of work that will change you.

So get ready for it.

Really ready.

As in, brace yourself.

You are approaching turbulence.

If you are in a romantic relationship of some kind,

You will not be in the same relationship two years from now.

You may be with the same person, if they are adaptable

But I guarantee you that your relationship as it exists right now

Will not survive all that you are about to learn about people.

Are you ready for that?

Through this program you are about to begin

You will learn about oppression, bias, discrimination, and hate

And by that I mean your own

And if your teachers and fellow students are doing their jobs well

You will be held accountable.

Are you ready for that?

Perhaps most importantly

In this noble career you have just started

You will be not only called upon but actively taught and encouraged

To empathize with suffering worse than any you may have ever known.

Are you ready for that?

Once you are ready, we are

I am

Ready to teach you.

If you are not prepared, we

I

Cannot help you, for you will fight against this journey every step of the way.

Instead of the client who does not want to be helped

You will be the student who does not want to learn

And I will not worry that much about you.

I will simply encourage you to consider other career options.

If you are prepared, we are

I am

Ready to walk through this turbulence with you.

The kind of teacher I aspire to be

Is the one who tells you

“Hold on, there’s a rough patch coming”

And then lets you do the work of getting through it.

Doing it for you is not teaching you.

Letting you fail and then learn from that failure is.

Initially, I’ll be here at your side,

Telling you you’re doing fine

Or, if you’re not doing fine, reminding you that you have what it takes to do fine

And telling you what doing fine looks like.

As you get used to the rough patches

I’ll move a little farther away with each one

Because you’ll know how to get through them without me.

By the time we’re done here,

You will not need me at all anymore.

Getting to that place is difficult. And working in this career is difficult.

But if you’re well-prepared,

You’ll love it

Long before you’re good at it.

Are you ready

For that?

Let’s get started.

#mentalhealth #behavioralhealth #graduateschool #mastersdegrees #careers