my specialty

This has been a household joke: If you look at descriptions of counselors, they list their specialty. Here's so and so who studied at psychology at Sarah Lawrence then earned a Psy D from Penn. She specializes in eating disorders, body-image issues, and emotional abuse. (That's a random, made-up example, by the way.)

I don't know about you but me, I immediately conflate the face of the counselor in the photo with an image of her double-fisting Tastykakes while looking in the mirror, with her mother yelling at her from the other side of the door. My tendency is to think that this person specializes in this because it has been their experience.

Mine would be: She specializes in hopeless vanity, people-pleasing, and preoccupations with the retail company, Anthropologie. Or specializes in poor time management, call screening, and guilt about housework.

I am reminded that listing one's counseling specialty can be like in medicine-- specializing in something because its study and development interest me. Or having experience in a given field can mean personal primary experience or because someone I was close to puked so much that she tore her esophagus and had to give up being captain of the field hockey team and had to have her senior photos airbrushed because her teeth were so damaged from the acidic bile. (That was an example from secondary experience, by the way, if you couldn't tell.)


We were on a double date with a couple who are both in the counseling program and the woman was like, "It seems like you like to joke about self-doubt a lot." Whoa. This program's going to be great but searing investigations of our own souls is totally an occupational hazard. I'm probably not ready for it but it is an act of great strength, restraint, and faith to open up my soul/psyche and say, "Okay, audit."