What I Wish I'd Known Before I Became a Therapist
I want to share something I've never quite written down before.
When I started studying psychology, neuroscience and psychotherapy I genuinely loved it. I wanted to understand people — what drove them, what held them back, why we do the things we do even when we know better. I was curious. I read a lot. Asked a lot of questions.
And somewhere along the way, something quietly started to bother me.
The more I learned, the more I started to feel — in a way I didn't have words for yet — like something was missing. Like I was building this detailed map of the human mind and still couldn't quite find my way in my own life.
The thing studying doesn't really prepare you for
Studying teaches you a lot. How to hold space. How to ask the right question. How to sit with silence, spot a pattern, understand what's underneath what someone is saying.
All of it valuable. I mean that.
But what years of studying — and then going on to do the clinical training — didn't teach me was that you can understand something completely and still not be able to feel your way through it. That insight has a ceiling. That knowing why you do something doesn't automatically change the part of you that keeps doing it.
I knew this in theory. I'd read it. But I hadn't lived it yet.
The strange thing about knowing too much
There was a period where I started turning all of that knowledge on myself. And instead of helping, it kind of made things harder.
I'd notice anxiety, or that flat tired feeling, or just a moment of being really not okay — and immediately start analysing it. Where is this coming from? What's the pattern here? I had a framework for everything. I could trace almost anything back to something.
And still. I couldn't just feel okay.
I remember thinking — genuinely — I know all of this. I understand all of this. So why does something still feel missing? Why can't I just be present? Calm? Actually content on an ordinary Tuesday?
I was harder on myself than I'd ever be on a client. Which is a strange place to find yourself when you're studying to help people.
Looking back, I think I was just exhausted. Running on a kind of busyness that felt productive but was actually keeping me at arm's length from my own experience. Very capable on the outside. Not really here on the inside.
The moments that started to shift things
It wasn't one big realisation. It was more like noticing.
The clearest moments came when I was away from ordinary life — yoga studies, breathwork intensives, travelling. I'd drop into a state that felt like — I don't know how else to say this — coming home. A quiet aliveness. Present without trying to be present. Not manufactured calm, just actual calm.
And I'd think — oh. This is what I've been reading about. This is what baseline actually feels like.
And then I'd go back to real life and it would fade. For a while I genuinely thought that was just how it worked — that this feeling was available on retreat or on holiday and ordinary busy life was just different.
But something kept nagging at me. What's the point if we only get to feel this for a few weeks a year, if even that? What are we actually doing the rest of the time?
When it started to click
I went deeper into somatic work. Breathwork. Movement. The body-up approaches that sit alongside — and sometimes underneath — everything I'd learned from years of studying.
And things started to make sense in a different way. Not because I understood something new. But because I started to actually feel something I'd only ever known about before.
There's a difference. And it's enormous.
I started catching myself earlier. Noticing when I was drifting away from that grounded, regulated place — and finding my way back. Not always quickly. Not perfectly. But it became more familiar. More available. Less like something I had to chase and more like something I could return to.
I started seeing this in clients too. The moment someone stops talking about their experience and actually has it. When the shift happens not in their thinking but somewhere in their body — something settles, something releases, something that had been held for a long time quietly lets go.
One client said to me — and I think about this a lot — "it's like I gained a superpower. I get more done, I feel stronger, my relationships feel different. I feel like anything is possible."
That's not insight. That's regulation. That's what happens when someone's nervous system learns — through felt experience, repeated enough times — that it's okay to come home to itself.
And what still gets me every single time is that it doesn't take months. It can take minutes. The right minutes, done consistently, until the system starts to remember a different way of being.
What it actually looks like now
I work more than I ever have. I've always been busy — that hasn't changed. But it comes from a different place. I actually recharge when I'm not working. I feel more focused, more present, less like I'm running on fumes.
I still have hard days. I still drift. I still catch myself watching Netflix while replying to messages and knowing full well that's not rest. The difference is I notice it sooner. And I know how to come back.
That's really it. Not having it all figured out — just getting better at returning.
This is why I built Baseline. Not because I had an idea for an app. But because I spent years — studying, doing the clinical work, sitting with clients — noticing how much changes when people have access to the right tools in the right moments. Not more understanding. Just more moments of actually being here.
More moments at baseline.
The most useful thing I learned had nothing to do with studying. It was the moment I stopped trying to think my way to okay and just — slowly, imperfectly — felt my way there instead.
Still going.