“People should pay attention to one another, have compassion for one another, listen to each other, take an active role in each other's lives. To the extent that my work facilitates that, even on a micro level, carries forward and resonates. It feels meaningful and useful to meet that need, hopefully it gets people to be more available and recognize the need and value to be vulnerable in the world.”
Tell me about the work you do now.
I am a Clinical Psychologist in private practice. My office is a few blocks west of Friends Seminary on 16th Street and 5th Avenue. I work mostly with individual adults. I also have an ongoing men’s process group, and I am always looking for ways to do more group work.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I have work that encourages and rewards curiosity and authenticity. It commands my attention in an immersive way, and it's dynamic and interpersonal. I have close to 40 sessions a week and no two are the same hour to hour, week to week, month to month, year to year. Each session has the potential to be really meaningful—not every session is, but I am really grateful to have that opportunity again and again. I like that I have no extraneous weekly compulsory meetings, no boss and no employees.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Friends?
My friendships. Feeling like I was an integral part of a purpose driven community. Being a student at Friends felt like a really important part of my identity, that I was proud of—it meant a lot to me. Regardless of whatever posture I struck, I took being at Friends seriously and I felt was taken seriously by the School. I felt that I was accountable to Friends and that in some way Friends was accountable to me.
Tell me a little bit about your Friends journey?
There was some continuity for me transferring from Brooklyn Friends School, but it was also a big change and I had to work a bit to find my place. I think it was a steep growth trajectory, I was very eager to speak my mind and be heard, but also open to learning and eager to meet expectations. I felt very seen and cared for and, in retrospect, I was shown a lot of grace and tolerance. I am very grateful to the School. It gave me a core fund of knowledge and helped me learn how to think and the importance of having an opinion and being able to ground it in fact and express yourself with conviction and clarity. How to say something worth hearing.
In what ways have Quaker values and your experience at Friends influenced the work you do today?
The influence is essential and profound. My work is contemplative and requires a lot of self reflection, I also encourage the people I am working with to be self-reflective. The hard skill I use most every day is concentration—quieting and opening my mind in order to pay close attention to every word that comes out of someone’s mouth for a sustained period of time. I can hold silence and rely on the muscle I started to develop through the practice of Quaker meeting to break that silence when moved by a feeling of connection to something larger than myself. I am also deeply grounded in the belief that all of us, and by extension our stories, are of equal value, it's a crucial guiding principle.
How do you understand the work you do now as bringing about a world that ought to be?
I’d like to think I have found a way to be useful to others. I hope I have been helpful to the many people I have worked with over the years and I’ve put myself in the position to be of service to people by listening to them, and supporting them. I think people ought to have people to talk to that care about them and are genuinely interested in what they have to say and what they are going through, regardless of circumstances. Early in my career, working in the City Hospital system I worked with people in constant precarity, confronting terrible afflictions: chronic mental illness, homelessness, poverty. People caught up in cycles of violence, abuse, neglect, and deprivation. In my private practice I work with people who enjoy greater stability, and I’ve worked with some people born to the height of privilege and some who have reached the pinnacle of academic and professional achievement. Everyone wants to be afforded some care and attention for their suffering and some recognition of their value and worth, and finding that—giving it and receiving it—is surprisingly hard to come by and ought to be more accessible.
What are your hopes, dreams and plans for your work in the future?
Cracking the code of how to work less than I do while earning more than I do? Although I loved my time at Friends, by the end of my senior year my mind was closing to being taught about the world and I really wanted to be participating in it more directly and freed from being evaluated based on my academic performance. I was really craving experiences that had real consequences in the world. I thought I was totally through with school after I graduated college where my academic performance was uneven at best and convinced I would quickly thrive and make a difference in the world. I had a helpful rude awakening, and it took a couple more degrees and many more years of education and training before I really had something of value to offer the world. I wound up writing my dissertation on the post college transition/emerging adulthood in part because I found it so hard myself. I have been trying to expand the scope of my practice through a venture I’m calling Traverse Groups that I hope can give recent college graduates/emerging adults the support and guidance I didn’t know I needed at that time in my life. I’m nearly twenty years into my career and my private practice runs smoothly, but I still have the urge to create something and work in new and interesting ways.
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