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Upon reflecting on my 20-year journey of being a clinical psychologist, I found out that my path and way of doing psychotherapy is constantly evolving.  This week marks the 13^th anniversary of my private practice.  Looking back, the journey of private practice is full of challenges and blessings.  Among the thousands of clients I had encountered, I learned a lot from each of them.  They taught me to be humble and flexible because their issues are diverse and everyone of them is so unique.  I gradually learned that psychotherapy is truly a hybrid of science and art.  As a clinical psychologist, I am trained to conduct evidence-based psychotherapies for my clients.  On the other hand, due to the uniqueness of everyone of them, I need to learn the art of conducting psychotherapy is a flexible and creative way.  In fact, there is no single type of psychotherapy adequate enough to meet the needs of every client.  In psychotherapy, “one size fit all” mentality is not feasible to cater for the diverse needs of my clients.

One important thing I have learned from my clients is that everyone has their true nature.  For instance, it is counterproductive to force an introvert client to learn to become very sociable.  Even though, being sociable or having more social networks is being valued by most of the people in our society.  In fact, there is no definitely right or wrong paths.  “Right” or “wrong” is relative and is dependent upon one’s perspective in a particular time point.  From this, it brings in the need to be humble as a psychotherapist.  As a psychotherapist, I am not always right.  Sometimes, I need to practice yielding in order to find my peace and calmness.  Without always being the authroity, contradictory to our society’s view on a clinical psychologist, I find the peace of being a humble learner when encountering my clients.  Of course, I need to strive a balance between being an effective psychotherapist with some authority and a humble learner in life and psychology.

In my evolution throughout the past 20 years, I also learned that the outcome of psychotherapy is dependent upon multiple factors.  It is beyong dispute that the psychotherapist’s professionalism and personal qualities are important factors.  However, other factors, such as motivation of the client, timing of the psychotherapy being conducted, or external environmental stressors of the client, also play important role in the outcomme of psychotherapy.  As a result, I learned to go with the flow and embrace whatever is coming up in the therapy with my clients.  In fact, the outcome of psychotherapy depends upon the interactions of many factors in the universe.

Practicing as a clinical psychologist is similar to all of us learning to become a better human being.  It is important for us to accept the fact that we are constantly evolving and changing according to our internal and external environment.  One thing we can be sure is that with humility and patience, we can gradually evolve to our true nature and be peaceful and calm in whatever profession or role we are pursuing in our lives.