I am a generally anxious person. I couldn’t remember not being an anxious person in any stage of my life: childhood, teenage, early adulthood, now; all–I survived thirty years of my life in a constant wave of anxiety. Being a psychologist–having two degrees to be that—doesn’t make me not an anxious person anymore. I am a less anxious person now, but I’m not a not-anxious person–unfortunately, that complicated-double-negation sentence is the only right way of saying what I wanna say.
I’ve never dreamt of being a psychologist. I didn’t care about becoming anything other than being a writer. Yes, my childhood dream was to be a writer. And, am I one now? No. Am I almost one now? No. Am I something else now? Yes and no. To call myself a psychologist still doesn’t feel fully right, because I’m not sure if that is who I want to be known for. Personally, I am more of a writer than I am a psychologist, but professionally, I am more of a psychologist than I am a writer. I am a wife as much as I am a sister. I am a daughter as much as I am a citizen of Indonesia–my home country. I am a human as much as I am just one among millions of species living on earth. I am an anxious person as much as I am a straightforward person. So, who am I? I think… just myself: Kalista Vidyadhara. And to be me is a complex interaction of those different things. And to slice those million things about me into tiny pieces in which people make conclusions of me; in which I eventually conclude things about myself as well, does not feel right.
For instance: I’ve been trying so hard to contain my urge to write only in my journal, my unfinished novel manuscripts, and my notes app–not in my blog, Instagram, YouTube. But what am I doing now? I am writing. Even after I decided to open my private practice last month, my writing-self–how I’ll name my need to write from now on–still overflows to things I don’t think have anything to do with writing. I created a “blog” page on my professional website just so that I have a platform for my writing-self. The same applies to any other things that make me a Kalista Vidyadhara: a wife that I am, a sister that I am, a daughter, a citizen of Indonesia, a species on earth, an anxious person, a thinking person, a curious person, etc. One cannot not overflow the other. They are one just as I am one. In other words, to expect one is only her professional job and not the other things that she is, is a difficult–if not an impossible task.
Being a psychologist doesn’t make me stop being a human, thus doesn’t make me not an anxious person, thus doesn’t make me not everything I’ve listed above. I understand if some people expect to see a psychologist like she can give them all the answers. I do. That’s why I decided to open my own practice. Now, I have more flexibility–time and attention–to pursue what I think matters the most in providing the best psychological services: to read deeply about the latest practice development, to not just cognitively understand what I read; but to reflect the meanings and rationale of those practices; and experiment with those practices to myself. I do understand, but I also wanna emphasize that the truth about one thing doesn’t negate the truth about other things. Two, three, millions of things can be true at the same time; and still, we can make them work.
I think that’s what I want to preach to my clients in my practice and to myself: to not always negate one thing for the other, to acknowledge that a lot of things can be true at the same time, depending on: if we want to make room for them; which room we’d like to vacate to make room for the other; and if we can accept the reality that we have to always remind our-forgetful-nature-as-human-beings to keep on doing the psychological and physical work of: wanting; and contemplating; and being a little/much anxious; and deciding; and re-considering; and doing; and making mistakes; and doing again, consistently, consistently, and consistently.
We all are only humans after all.
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