Gossamer where did you go to school
 

and what's your title? LMHC?

just wondering

yup and Brooklyn College for grad school.

I would highly recommend it.

cool

i still have to do most of undergrad unfortunately

there are a few good psych schools here like University of Miami isn't bad, Nova is expensive as fuck but well known, then you have FIU and FAU all with like 20 miles of me.

so i have a while to go but I like keeping my ear open to people's experiences

ty

university of miami is expensive too. nice campus though, don't know too much about the psych facilities.

true. my sister is about to finish her masters in music therapy from UM and she really likes their psych program. she got to go almost for free with a teaching assistant program and already has several freelance jobs for hospices and an adult facility for people with severe autism.

she worked at florida state hospital (for the criminally insane) in between undergrad and grad and created a new program procedure that they are now using and is also getting published next year

i'd say it's worked out pretty well for her. i really can't wait to be getting paid to work in the psych field.

The only thing I MIGHT'VE done differently (even though I'm pretty happy with where I'm at right now) is that right after I got my bachelors in psych, I went to an accelerated nursing program (gotten my bachelors in nursing in 1 year) and then went straight into a psychiatric nurse practitioner program (2 year masters) so I could be prescribing meds at this point in addition to doing psychotherapy. The one drawback of that is that I wouldn't have as many psychotherapeutic skills/tools. Something to think about though for yourself (this also depends on what state you are going to practice in though). Psych NP's here in NY state can do anything a psychiatrist can do and they pretty much start at 6 figures straight out of school.

Mmm, yes I see.

That is an interesting idea. I definitely have an aptitude for understanding pharmacology but I really, really don't think I could deal with med school. The psychiatrist I see does combined psychopharm and psychodynamic therapy as well as some other techniques like EMDR and acupuncture (and CBT, DBT et al). He is very well rounded in that way and I think he is a great practitioner because of that.

Thanks for the idea. Maybe you'll go back and part-time a nursing degree? That sounds really hard though with a full time therapy schedule which is of course only a fraction of the actual time needed to be a therapist... what with billing, CEUs, researching for clients and group topics etc I'm sure it's very involved.

I might be going to this conference in January on dissociative disorders - specifically dissociative identity disorder. The doctor who diagnosed me originally is speaking on one of the days - maybe something you'd be interested in one of these years? It's an annual conference:

http://www.aninfinitemind.com/healing-together.html

i really should be in school already

that sounds really great and I think you should get back into school as soon as you can.

i think i will probably go back and get the psychiatric nursing degree once I have my private practice set up.

you have a lot more time freedom then you'd think doing private practice work if you have good people working for you in the billing/client outreach dept.

good idea with the nursing. client will get everything done at once - you'll get paid for both services - it's win-win.

true with the billing
most of the people i've seen weren't part of a bigger practice so I'm used to seeing them deal with any billing issues personally. though i guess done well you could have an employee or two doing that stuff for you

do you have any specific specialty you want to be known for? for example I found out quickly that all the trauma specialized people know each other - especially the dissociative disorder therapists and psychiatrists who are somewhat rare. they take a lot of crap just by virtue of treating dissociative disorders with all the controversy and whatnot. plus the clients are pretty demanding with lots of personality pathology thrown in here and there... but I can only imagine how awesome it is to see your patients improving

I think that my specialty at this point in terms of populations is working with triple diagnosis clients; more specifically individuals who are HIV+, poly-substance abusers, and have some form of mental illness (typically mood or anxiety disorders, but I have also done some really great work with some clients with paranoid schizophrenia).

I use an eclectic approach that is steeped heavily in Freudian theory but I tend to actually use a lot of experiential techniques. Freud and Harry Stack Sullivan and Fritz Perls are my homeboys even though they really stand for a lot of different things, I try to combine a little bit of each of them in my technique.