Ignore at your Peril [LOH #257]

I'm typically wary of "If only I had this or that" thinking, as I believe it fosters an attitude of helplessness I don't resonate with. My attitude is typically - you want it, why are you not going after it?

Still, when I saw one of the prompts for this week from the Ladies of Hive, I found I resonated.

If you were told you had won a scholarship to study or learn something new, what would you like to learn and why?

As you know, the last couple of years have been heavy on education. From PA to "yoga school", to prepping for my SATs, to more and more. It's been a readjustment. At 26, after about 11 years being away from any traditional learning environments, I found taking notes and paying active attention for hours on end to be quite a trick.

It got me thinking, turning more towards that world.

I've flirted with psychology for a long time. I've always been fascinated with people - why we do, how we work. I've played armchair psychologist for friends and sometimes random acquaintances. It's somehow always the case with me that I'll meet somebody that I consider strange or interesting, and within the hour, be asking them about their motivations, fears, their life and their background. Okay, the fact that I'm no good at small talk might also be a part of it.

Now. While figuring out why my friends are reinforcing toxic behavioral loops and choosing the wrong partners is one thing, the meat of the issue with all budding psychology students is themselves - why am I so messed up? A much thornier question that many of us prefer shying away from.

For a long time, I resisted the idea that I too had my hurts and trauma. Even now, depending when you catch me, the "t" switches from lower-case to upper-case at will. Not me. Not I. But I've come a long way in understanding, unraveling and observing myself. If there's one thing nobody tells you about psychology is that it's a lifelong process. You kinda hope you'll go to therapy for a year and be "fixed", but in truth, it's just an open gate. There's all this self-monitoring and awareness. There's constantly the pressure between the brain trying to revert to old, beaten track pathways, and you fighting to implement what you've learned. How you communicate. When you react. The words you fall back on in times of crisis.

I could talk about it for hours. It's a neverending realm of fascination to me, and since I'm a big believer in turning the things that are alient to you into occupations, I've been looking at ways in which I can bring psychology closer to the forefront of my living.

I thought, maybe this is a burning bush. Could be, I ignore it at my peril.

So if I won a scholarship, I think one strong option would be a university education in Psychology (proper with papers n stuff). I'm still looking at options. Since I would like a remote studying experience, the options become limited or pricy, so a scholarship would be welcome.

At the same time, I go back and forth. The future of psychology seems somewhat uncertain, especially some 6-7 years from now, when I would actually be legally allowed to work in that field. There is so much AI will take over for sheer convenience, and I can't really fault it.

Besides, I've always been the sort of person who takes a more unusual route, and I'm growing set in my ways. Another option for this magical scholarship would be towards an education in somatics. After all, my plan has always been somehow combining my existing yoga practice with psychology. It's something I love doing. My exam class was half yoga sequence, half therapy session, and I loved it.

So I've been looking a lot into somatics, trauma stored in the body, informed bodywork, all this amazing work. You may be surprised, but a good education in that also takes years and about the same funds as a proper university.

Over the past couple of years, I've witnessed first-hand the intense relationship between psyche and body. The way my therapy combined with my contact improvisation. Just now, while reading Pat Ogden's cornerstone book, I had a moment of understanding. While I'd always equated my early dancing movements as self-defense, tense and frightened, reading this book gave me a certain confirmation.

If the body remains stuck inside a traumatic experience, it gets stored in the way we hold our shoulders, walk, or look others in the eye.

I would say right now, this second path has the lead in probable outcomes by quite a margin. And thankfully, there's so much wisdom to educate myself. As there is with psychology, of course, but there are more obvious limitations there in how you can apply that education. In bodywork, the regulations are looser. I've met in my life enough people doing powerful work of this kind who held no psych degree, and still did incredible work.

There's a plethora of books to be read, and I'm slowly making my way through them. There's smaller, more affordable courses that I look forward to starting once I wrap up the SATs (figured it was high time, and why not have that check-marked for future?). There is such a thrilling abundance of knowledge in our present world that all it takes is interest.

And to me, that has never ceased being a hugely exciting fact.

What about you? If the prompt aroused a response of your own, I highly encourage all you ladies to contribute to this week's LOH prompt. There's still a tiny window of time, so go for it.