I knew I wanted to be a psychologist when I was around 10 years old. I come from a very help seeking family, which means that my family members gravitate towards health professionals when they are sick, or mental health professionals when they feel like they need some assistance with their mental health. My family members are also really open about discussing mental health conditions - we have quite a lot of it running in our family, from ADHD to depression to anxiety to PTSD to Autism Spectrum Disorder to dementia, etc. I was exposed to what mental health conditions were at a young age because my family members talked about it.

I want to acknowledge that this is probably quite contrary to what other families experience, this openness to discussing mental health, and ESPECIALLY so for an Asian family, born and raised in Asia. Because of this attitude towards mental health, I never really saw mental health conditions as different to physical health conditions. If I am comfortable with seeing a doctor for asthma, why wouldn’t I be comfortable seeing a psychologist for anxiety? After all, mental health has a massive impact on our functionality and enjoyment of life.

A core memory comes to mind for inspiring me to be a psychologist. My younger brother was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (now known as part of Autism Spectrum Disorder) when he was a toddler. As part of his treatment, he went for therapy and my mum will bring my siblings and I along. I remember one session where my brother was afraid of going into therapy session alone. The psychologist advised against having a parent in session as that could be distracting for the child, and suggested I join the session instead, so that my brother had someone familiar with him.

I remember sitting in this massive room with tons of toys and observing the psychologist interact with my brother. I joined in on a few more sessions and thought to myself, “this seems like such a cool job”. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, my family went through some major life adjustments. During each life adjustment, my siblings and I saw some kind of mental health professional. Youngest age I remember seeing a psychologist was probably when I was around 12 years old. The schools I went to had pretty good support for students as well - in primary school, I was part of the Rainbow Club, which is a support group run by the school psychologist for students who come from single parent/divorced families. In secondary school (high school equivalent), the school psychologist was quite involved in student welfare, and we could always visit her office to talk to someone if we needed to.

I had a lot of support from mental health professionals throughout various parts of my life. While I may not have always remembered their names or what we did during our sessions, I remember them being helpful. I got into psychology because I wanted to work with children with special needs, and I have learnt so much along the way about myself. I learnt that working with adults is not as scary as I thought it would be - in fact, it’s actually quite meaningful. I learnt that there are no such thing as positive or negative emotions. I learnt how early childhood experiences affect the way you respond to certain triggers when you get older. Doing a degree in psychology has taught me so much about myself and others, and I am very thankful for being able to do what I do.

I feel privileged to have been given the amount of exposure I have had to mental health awareness from a young age. Thank you to all the people I met along the way who inspired me (whether directly or indirectly) to pursue this career, and hopefully I can impact my clients’ lives the way you impacted mine.

If you feel like you might need some psychological treatment, feel free to check out the mental health concerns I can help you with, if you would like to make an appointment.