How does education in clinical psychology prepare you for the emotional impact of the career?

Hey Davis,

This is a tremendous question. It applies to many careers that have or may have a risk of emotional or physical trauma on the practitioner. To ask it indicates that someone told you about it which means you have smart and caring friend(s) or you thought of it yourself which means you are the smart and caring one. Either way, good job.

I am a retired engineer with absolutely no training in psychology (other than living and working with humans for 62 years), but I have known a practicing pediatric psychologist for several years, so my response should answer your question, and in addition will capture the essence of the answer that applies to all careers mentioned above.

In my opinion, the best way to prepare yourself for the emotional impact of your career is to talk to current or former practitioners and ask them what it was like and what they did under the circumstances of which you’re thinking. I would also guess that as your curriculum unfolds questions like this will come up and should be answered by your professors. However, the probability is low that anyone given similar generic warnings or advice would remember more than a few concepts when the shelling starts.

Therefore, after going down this path of reasonable (but in the end incomplete) precautions, my complete answer becomes as follows: in the same manner as surgeons pick other surgeons to operate on themselves and lawyers pick other lawyers to represent themselves so should clinical psychologists pick other clinical psychologists to evaluate themselves. I think the reasons are obvious. In fact, my practicing psychologist friend told me that he was encouraged during his school years to join or form a group of students or already practicing psychologists that over time might learn to trust each other enough to talk shop together and hopefully be a key resource if anyone needed private care. I do know that some pastors do this as well.

At the beginning of this answer I said that this particular question and answer applies to many careers, but as you might have suspected, applications of the answer may differ. Military personnel for example are highly trained to do things as planned, and highly trained to do different things when plans go awry. I think you’d agree that the training military personnel receive about how to deal with some of the things they will do and see (planned or not) is of necessity more thorough and intense than training clinical psychologists might receive. Even so, many who serve still come back in need of care, not only for direct physical and emotional trauma received, but for trauma resulting from their inability to cope with their experiences.

Military personnel described above may seek care they need from other military personnel like surgeons and lawyers do, but they may also need care from clinical psychologists. The training they received to deal with their own careers obviously didn’t work completely or they wouldn’t need to see you, nor can their training be transferred to you via mind meld or whatever. So now it becomes your job to provide the needed care, as you were trained to do. In cases like this, maybe seeing someone like you was part of their training (spoken or not) to deal with their own careers. I know you’re part of my unspoken training in the event I engineer myself into a dark emotional corner, same as all the other careers I mentioned. Good luck.