Career Advice and Personal Perspectives

People often ask me questions about how they should go about making decisions regarding their career paths. For many of us, the journey towards our chosen careers is windy and long. Further, our decisions are complicated by many factors, such as balancing family and work, the goals of serving public and private good, as well as personal versus family goals. I understand that these decisions can be incredibly complex and challenging and that identifying the issues at stake is only the first part of the journey.

Although I would love to be able to spend time speaking individually to each student to help talk through all of the factors that are operating in each student’s life, it’s not always possible for me to be able to do so due to constraints in my schedule and time availability. Thus, I have created this website to provide some additional resources for students to use to begin their process. I hope that these will be helpful to people. I have sorted the resources into sections that make sense to me — I hope they make sense to you, too!

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Mental Health: How Do I Decide Which Career Path is the Right One?

1. Problem One: Why become a therapist in the first place?

A. My two cents on why this is a worthwhile career.

B. One factor that makes it challenging to figure out if you want to be a practicing mental health professional is that except under special circumstances, you can’t really get experiences doing therapy before you are in a graduate program, which means you have to commit to a career field before you know what you are committing to. However, you can get a feel for what you are committing to by volunteering in mental health settings, like domestic violence shelters, residential treatment facilities, psychiatric inpatient hospitals, or you can read books by therapists and see if they way they describe their work sounds appealing to you (check this and this out for some of my recommendations)

2. Problem Two: I think I want to be a mental health clinician but there are so many different options for how to become one. How can I possibly decide which is right for me?

A. Here is a handout to get you started in your research process.

B. Online Resource: Mitch Prinstein’s Uncensored Advice for Applying to Graduate School

C. Here’s a Video Interview I did on this topic (and other things):
Part 1; Part 2

D. A book I recommend to every student considering applying to doctoral programs

3. Problem Three: Balance between research and clinical. Oh boy, this is a big one, and here I’m going to refer you back to two of my favorite resources on this topic.

A. Online Resource: Mitch Prinstein’s Uncensored Advice for Applying to Graduate School

B. A book I recommend to every student considering applying to doctoral programs

C. I’m also going to add in here my own advice, which is the following. Remember that this is only one person’s advice and that you should get lots of people’s advice on this very important matter. I personally think that doing a research-oriented Ph.D. would be as pleasant as getting your toenails pulled out one-by-one if you don’t love research. This is because the whole focus for five to seven long years is on research. Some people are drawn to the enterprise of research simply because they find research as an intellectual exercise fascinating. Props to those people — I kind of wish I were one of those types of people, but I’m not. I only find the kind of research fascinating that pertains to topics I love. So, if you haven’t fallen in love with research, it may be because you haven’t been exposed to the kind of research you are going to love. However, it also may be because research isn’t your jam. In which case, it would be a lot simpler to figure this out, be honest with yourself, and pursue the stuff that is your jam whole-heartedly. Doesn’t that sound more fun?

D. Recommended timeline for graduate school application planning purposes (hint: start early)

E. Suggestions for how to think about the different aspects of the graduate school application (primarily drafted for Ph.D. applicants)

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So You Think You Want to Be An Academic:

Rock on — that is awesome. To support you in your journey, here are some resources.

1. A video interview with me about my career trajectory and work: #talkmentalillness: Mental Health Experts Series

2. A podcast interview I completed regarding my career trajectory to end up at UCI

3. An article I co-authored on being an academic mother.

4. Research Matters Podcast: Work/Family Conflict, Gender Roles, and Intervention Research with Diverse Communities

5. My own perspective on life as an academic, including bits on high points and low points.

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Getting into Graduate School:

1. Helpful tips for deciding between different mental health career programs (handout )

2. Recommended timeline for graduate school application planning purposes (hint: start early)

3. Suggestions for how to think about the different aspects of the graduate school application (primarily drafted for Ph.D. applicants)

4. A really useful book to help you on your journey

5. Mitch Prinstein’s Uncensored Advice for Applying to Graduate School

6. Free grad school application review resource for low SES students

7. A THRIVE lab grad panel on getting into grad school

8. A THRIVE lab grad panel on sending emails to potential advisors and creating cvs

9. A THRIVE lab grad panel on publishing journal articles

10. A THRIVE lab grad panel on the peer review process

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My Own Career Journey:

1. #talkmentalillness: Mental Health Experts Series

2. AcaDames podcast interview I completed regarding my career trajectory to end up at UCI

3. An article I co-authored on being an academic mother.

4. Video Interview: Part 1; Part 2

5. An article I co-authored about being an academic mother; another article summarizing our research on mothers’ guilt regarding the negative impact of their work on children.

6. A video on the challenges and gifts of conducting community-engaged research.

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Resources I have provided for COVID-19:

1. Parkside chat: Pandemic Parenting

2. Staying Safe While Staying Sane

3. UCI Podcast — Mental Health and Home Confinement

4. Quarantine parenting article

5. Journal Article: Mental Health and Clinical Psychological Science in the Time of COVID-19

6. Worsening mental health

7. The Benefits of therapy during this time

8. UCI Video Podcast: Staying Safe and Sane During COVID-19

9. Washington Post Article: COVID Christmas

10. In Style Magazine: New Year’s Resolutions for Mental Health Promotion

11. Handling Holiday Stress

12. CBS News: Managing Election Anxiety

13. Surviving Election Season

14. Scientific American, The Pandemic Doesn’t Mean We Have to Choose Between Physical and Mental Health

Articles on my Work as a Practicing Psychotherapist:

1. Psychology Today, If This is the Apocalypse, Should I Still Be in Therapy?

2. Daily Pilot, Patients With Anxiety May be Faring Fairly Well But They May be Avoiding Underlying Causes.

3. Psychology Today, My Students’ Most Commonly-Asked Questions.

4. Psychology Today, In Therapy, I Give You My Nothing, and It Means Everything.

Books:

1. Nature Meets Nature: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids

*Shepherd Book List : Best Books for People Who Want to Connect with Their Child

This book was released in March 2022 and co-authored with Dr. Stacey Doan. In this book we synthesize the science on parenting, which can be daunting for many, and provide recommendations to help nurture your child’s nature (their biologically-based differences). We emphasize the importance of connection, attunement, and attachment, and offer simple yet concrete tools for parents to implement with their child.

2. How To Talk to Your Kids About Death

In this Audiobook that I wrote and narrated, I speak directly to parents, providing a hands-on guide for how to have difficult conversations regarding one of the most universally avoided and yet most important topics to discuss — death. I discuss how to assess your child’s readiness for these conversations, how to set the stage, how to capitalize on opportunities for discussion, and how to handle both sudden and anticipated losses.

3. Relational Savoring: Using Guided Reflection to Strengthen Relationships and Improve Outcomes in Therapy

This book, describes the theory, research, and how-to of relational savoring, a therapist-led technique designed to help clients gain more benefits from moments of positive connectedness with others in their lives. The book represents the culmination of years of research and development on the part of myself and my research team. The book is written for therapists, counselors, and trainees, but can also be consumed by educators and people who want to learn about the technique. The majority of the book contains chapters helping people understand how to administer the technique — it is full of concrete examples and strategies that will allow people to pick up the book knowing nothing about the technique and emerge ready to use it.