What are you working with? I´m a psychologist and psychotherapist.
How long have you been working with that? I´v been a psychologist for 22 years, since I was 25 years old.
How is the workspace? I´m sitting with the patient in a room and talking.
How does your profession change the society? My job is to make people feel better with themselves. People come to me with different psychological problems. They can be depressed, have anxiety or other problems that make them feel bad. And I give them psychotherapy so that they can feel better. If people feel better and have less emotional problems, in the long run I think that's a good thing for the society. Schools, jobs and institutions work better. I also think that families work better if people feel better. So that if parents for example feel better with themselves they are better of in taking care for their children.
Are there more girls or boys that come to the psychologist? There are of course both men and women who come to the psychologist for help. But my experience is that there are even more women asking for psychological help, it's more common. I have more female patients than male patients.
Are there more kids or adults? I think that it's more adults who go to see a psychologist or a psychotherapist. But of course even children come to a psychologist, but that's usually because their parents bring them there. Maybe if a child or a young person has emotional or psychological problems the most common thing is not that they go there by them self but that one of their parents, teachers or someone else helps the child to get psychological help.
Are there more kids than before? Yes, unfortunately i'm sorry to say that young people feel worse today compared to like 20 years ago. Teenagers have more emotional problems today than before, at least they are coming more for treatment or help.
Why do you think so? I can see two reasons. One reason is that there is more stress in society nowadays. I think that young people feel a lot of stress about how to be, how to behave and how to get successful. Another reason is that it's not so embarrassing and difficult for people to seek help. Before it was more like something you didn't want to talk about and you maybe felt ashamed about going to see a psychologist. Today I think that has changed a lot. I think it's easier for young people to come and talk about their problems. It's not something that young people are ashamed of.
Do you have professional secrecy? Yes of course.
Is that sometimes hard? When you work with this you get very use to it, like something you learn how to handle. But it can be hard because you hear a lot of people suffering, and sometimes you hear about very, very horrible things. People have very terrifying and painful experiences, and then it can be hard to not be able to share this with someone else. That's because psychologists and psychotherapists always have supervision. That means that they come to a more experienced colleague and discuss their patients and clients with this person. That's a possibility to share and to unburden yourself. But you can't do this with all colleagues, just your supervision. Then this person of course has the same secrecy around the things that I tell him or her.
Do you get affected by your profession in some way? Yes of course I always do. If some people maybe a patient or client tells me something that is very sad, I can feel sadness myself. Or if they tell me about that they are very maltreated, I can feel anger. I feel this because I have empathy with the person that tells me this. But because I´m professional i don´t express this in the same way as I do in private relations, like my family. It's very important that a psychologist has this empathy to be able to help the patient.
Has your profession changed in time? Or while you´ve been working with it? Yes, a little bit. Maybe not my profession, but things have developed during this 20 years i´ve been a psychologist. Some problems have been more common, and knowledge about some psychological problems have been more developed. For example the diagnosis of ADHD, nobody talked about ADHD when I started as a psychologist in the 90s. Now it's a very common diagnosis, I work a lot with it. That's an example how my profession has changed.
Do you like your job? Yes, i do very much. It's a very inspiring and interesting jobb. And it's a gift to get to know so many people thet I do in my work, and talk to so many people. That people come to me and have confidence, and tell me about their lives. That´s a very nice and stimulating thing.
Is there something you don't like? Yes. It's hard when I feel I can't be of any help for the patient. Maybe they have problems when I don't have the right method to solve it, that's a hard thing. Another thing I don't like is that in the psychiatric care, where i work, the pressure has been a lot bigger the latest years. Many, many come for help and we feel that we don't have enough resources and time to help all those people. That's also a hard thing.
Sofia Åberg
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