Brand New to the World of the “Blog”

I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while, off and on.  I’m a Clinical Psychologist, I’m a Contextual Behavioural Science Practitioner, I’m an ACT Therapist, I’m a Mother (wife/sister/daughter/friend/colleague/insert-your-own) – and at moments I feel like I have something worth sharing.

Generally, when I think about blogging, here’s what happens next – doubt shows up!  With its good friends fear and anxiety.  And they have quite a few things to say.  They say:
“You’re not smart enough”
“You’re not eloquent”
“Others post / blog so much BETTER than you could – why bother”
“You have nothing original to say”
“No one wants to hear it anyway”
“You’re a FRAUD – if you start blogging, everyone will KNOW”
“You’ll misquote science, you’ll misrepresent your discipline”
“NOT… GOOD… ENOUGH!!!”

I’ve listened to these voices a lot.  It’s stopped me doing this sooner.  It stopped me linking my blog with my Twitter and Facebook accounts because “oh my gosh, people who KNOW me might READ it” (which is possibly the point of blogging), and now I’ll have to go back and figure out how to change that setting and “MAYBE I DON’T KNOW ENOUGH TO DO THAT BECAUSE I’M NOT GEN Y!!!!”

My mind has a lot to say when it really gets going.

Here’s the thing though – and here’s why I’m writing this all out: I’m not the only one who has a loud, scary mind that shouts at me any time I want to do something that matters.  Here’s what I know – you, the person who’s reading this, assuming anybody does, your mind does this to you too.  It’s part of its job – but I’ll probably blog about that some other time.

That’s why I’ve used a starting title of “We’re on the Same Mountain” – it comes from a metaphor commonly used in Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), and no doubt elsewhere too, and basically it’s about the fact that we are all in this together.  I don’t have it all together, and I’m never going to, and that’s okay, because the same goes for all of us.  It’s part of being human.  (Also, I was trying to come up with some ACT-consistent title and it turns out I’m a little late to this whole blogging thing, and just about everything else I tried was already taken)

Here’s why I want to blog: I am fully, totally, and completely in love with geeky science about the human condition.  As a psychologist, my calling is to do what I can to alleviate the suffering of others, and I love what contextual behavioural science (CBS) is bringing to the table on this (don’t worry if that’s a new acronym – I’ll get to that later too).  There ARE plenty of really awesome, clever, eloquent, kind, compassionate and fabulous people with more knowledge, skills and experience than me who blog and publish books and journal articles on all of this stuff.  But some people haven’t come across those yet.  Some people just know me – and maybe I can be a gateway.

Maybe this blog might be a starting point for people sitting on my wait-list, or the wait-list of others (I hate wait-lists, seriously, I will get to you as soon as I possibly can).  Maybe it might be a gentle introduction point for friends to point out to other friends when they’re feeling lost.  Maybe people I’m working with right now might find useful stuff on here to think about in between times, or to jump ahead, or explore deeper.

What I know is that in my heart, I keep coming back to feeling that I have some stuff I want to put “out there” – and those voices I mentioned, since they’re not going anywhere any time soon, I’m going to let them shout a bit – and I’m going to post this first blog!!

Thanks for joining me for the ride.  I wonder where this road might lead?