Part of my reasons for embarking upon the Amida Buddhist Psychology training is that I’d like to earn my ‘psychotherapist’ badge.

I’m already accredited as a counsellor, and have a private practice that meets my financial needs, and I love my work. I don’t want different clients or to do different work, but it just feels like the word ‘psychotherapy’ describes what I do (longer term work) better than ‘counselling’. Words, eh?

At first I thought the 2 years training course would give me the extra hours I needed. Then I realised it would need to be 3 years. Then I discovered I needed at least 3 years with a humanistic therapist – my current therapist (who I’ve been seeing for 2 years already) isn’t humanistic, and so I’ll need to start with someone new. Then I discovered that my client hours won’t count until AFTER I finish my training, which adds on another 2 years minimum…

I texted my lovely boyfriend in a bit of a panic last week. I’ll never get there. Why am I bothering? Is it worth it? He texted back ‘one word…. patience’.

Clever lovely boyfriend. What patience does is help me to slow down. Then I can look around me. I can enjoy the training course, the learning, the challenge. I can continue enjoying my (mostly) lovely life. I can keep my eye on one of my destinations, ‘psychotherapist’, but when I get there I might be having so much fun that I forget to pick up my badge.

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Another reader of The Blue Handbag is up at 100 Readers – meet Lynne Williams and her orange cat. My publishers tell me that brand new copies of Thaw will be on their way to me soon… can’t wait. We have 21 blogs involved in the Blogsplash now – if you have a blog will you join us?