Tips for embracing change: My journey to Attuned Psychology

I am sharing these tips for embracing change because although change is an inevitable part of life it can feel anything but easy at times.

Over the last few years I started realising that I needed to change how or why I practised psychology.

I still loved helping people in therapy but I was spending less time in therapy and more time doing paperwork.

I realised I had lost touch with what it was about psychology that had motivated me through years of tough study and many tough cases as I worked in busy public hospitals.

I was tired at the beginning of the day, finding it hard to concentrate; sometimes irritable and frustrated or sometimes anxious with tightness in the chest.

Sometimes I’d even wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep.

Embracing change because I had to

After a bit of wondering how I was going to keep energised and effective as a therapist, I realised a change was in order. After all, this was going to be my working life for many more years yet.

So my first step towards embracing change was to sit down and think through what I really wanted my practice to be like.

Ultimately, I worked out what really frustrated me was a feeling of being less efficient.

If clients needed to be seen on a weekend I couldn’t do that. Nor could I take referrals from anywhere.

Then it dawned on me. It was probably time to take the step and go out to private practice.

This of course was an intimidating prospect. My university training and hospital career had not provided me with any training in working in the private sector even though psychologists I’d known and respected for years had been able to make that transition.

Sadly, I can report that the anxiety and the “what ifs” did stop me for a time; about a year.

The breakthrough for embracing change

The biggest breakthrough in embracing change was realising how many people had managed similar things.

They’d lost jobs, started small businesses or even harder, lost partners or children, battled physical illnesses, had to move cities away from their support networks. They’d all faced this uncertainty.

I thought a lot about what made it possible to move with changes rather than fight them.

I also thought about the steps to take to successful change, one by one, slowly and gently.

It seems that the first step is being able to consider being open to change rather than worrying about what might happen.

I began thinking about what I had, rather than what I might lose.

Once I realised I was essentially a team player rather than a soloist it was easier.

I needed to join a group of like minded psychologists. Lucky for me I spotted an advertisement almost by chance: it was from Attuned Psychology seeking a psychologist to come and work with them.

Now I can combine the Clinical Psychology and the Neuropsychology across the age ranges which I absolutely love.

I can totally recommend making that time to consider the possibilities a change might offer, especially if you’re experiencing being stuck in a cycle of frustration and are aware that something needs to change but not sure what.

It’s worth setting aside some time to talk the idea of change over with someone.

You never know how far you will go if you don’t at least consider possibilities.