Personal Narrative: My Psychological Experience

My Psychological Experience When I decided to go back to school, I had no plans of perusing a psychology degree, I just left a large tech company and gained some experience analyzing, creating, and manipulating data. I found myself enjoying the work a great deal, but knew if I was going to do that kind of work as a career I needed to go to school to do so. My initial plan was to get a degree in data base administration when I started at Bellevue collage in Bellevue Washington, but as I worked through the course work I found I had little interest in the material and felt very much out of place amongst my fellow students. Interestingly, while I was taking the technical classes, I took an intro to psychology course to fill an elective and …show more content…
Admittedly, when I took this class I was eager to dig into the content. By this time my tumultuous marriage of twelve years had ended and I had suspicions that my ex-wife suffered from a mood disorder of some kind, but lacked the knowledge to identify what the possibilities were. Additionally, this class was the first time I was exposed to the DSM 5 which helped me find the answer I was looking for. This was also the first class I was exposed to the peer review process and enjoyed digging into content that had been scrutinized though this rigorous process. Searching through colligate databases for relevant articles that pertained to the disorders which were being discussed facilitated deep understanding of the content. Learning how to navigate the data base and gaining a loose understanding of how peer reviewed articles are organized armed me with an extremely valuable base that I carried with me as I transitioned to Boise State …show more content…
Understanding the nuances of human relationships, and more specifically, romantic relationships, will be vital knowledge in order for me to be successful as a counselor. Lessons in the class that stand out to me the most include, The Triangular Theory of Love, which are, romantic, companionate, fatuous, and consummate love, which is useful in determining the likelihood of a relationships success, the Social Exchange Theory and the four types of relationship, which seeks to operationalize why relationships end, theories of conflict styles and effective conflict management strategies, and perhaps the most profound lesson of attachment styles. Having a thorough understanding of attachment styles and building skills to determine what attachment style my clients employ, which was touched on in class, will be exceedingly valuable and useful personally and