Rachel Zimmerman: Why I Decided to Become a Therapist

After college I wanted to be a teacher. I loved passionate teachers in my life and thought I could be a great one.

I was wrong.

Lesson planning was awful, my classroom control was awful, and I just wanted to talk to my students, the material felt superfluous.

After a few years of this something happened that changed my professional drive forever.

A young woman who at 18 was a few years younger than me began to hang out around our house. She went to school in the area, and we knew cousins of hers.

One night after having hung out at our house for about six months on the weekends, she broke down crying. She admitted that she had an eating disorder and was hanging out with guys in what seemed to be dysfunctional relationships. She cried about having no self esteem and hating herself. She was in therapy, but she was at rock bottom and was considering entering a more intense therapy program.

I remember thinking that I had never felt so helpless. I wanted desperately to know what to say. To make it better. To be wise. I also had never felt so sure of what I wanted to do in the next chapter of my life. I wanted to talk to people in pain. I wanted to be a therapist.

I went to graduate school at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and though I had never liked school before, I felt content. I loved my classes and would have finished getting a doctorate if I could have.

In internship I told this story over to one of my favorite mentors with my ending, ‘so I’m here so that it will never happen again that I won’t know what to say’. My mentor turned to me and said ‘and I hope while you’re here you’ll learn that actually the most powerful thing you can to for someone is to listen.’

After more than 15 years as a therapist, I know how true that statement is. So few people have

someone in their life who won’t try to fix, who won’t jump in with advice, who will listen non

judgmentally and whole heartedly.

This is why I am a therapist. I am grateful everyday to do something as a profession I love doing. To be a guide side by side on a journey. To be honored to sit with people who are brave enough when they’re ready to be vulnerable. To teach what I know and reassure them how “normal” they really are. To share my tools that I have learned to see which ones resonate. To mirror back a sense of how unique and incredible each person is deep down to their core. And ultimately, to listen.