@seoulsearch has a knack for always starting the most interesting and thought provoking threads.
It's my inner wanna-be psychologist struggling to come out.
People had been talking to me about their most personal issues since I was a pre-teen, so I thought that was what God was calling me to do. I was close to getting my Master's when my husband left, but that changed the trajectory of my life. I quit school to get a full-time job to pay the bills, moved back home to be near family, and never looked back.
People have often asked me why I didn't go back go school, and one of my family members was disappointed that I didn't finish.
But the more I learned, the more I didn't like, because it's the insurance companies that control everything: who gets help, who doesn't, how long someone can receive therapy, etc.
Not to mention the fact that (in my observation) it would be easy to misdiagnose someone because insurance gives you so little time to do so. And then there is the fact that you will have to purposely give people the wrong diagnosis at times because you have to label them with something insurance is willing to pay for.
I honestly believe God pulled me out of that field, and now I'm thankful He did.
Telling people they have something they really don't? Lying to both patients and companies just to get money? Refusing or cutting people off from help all because of money? God convicts me heavily over lying as it is -- I'm pretty sure I would have burned out in the first six months, if even that.
I know there are Christian psychologists out there -- I've been to at least one of them, along with others who were very caring, and I'm sure well-meaning people. But I would have never survived in that world.
Regardless, part of my inner self identifies as a somewhere-down-another-path curious psychologist, and has a hard time staying caged.
This is why I went later went to prisons to talk to the inmates, and that's part of why I write the threads I do.
Somehow, that part of my personality has to find an outlet.