We recently connected with Christian Wilson and have shared our conversation below.
Christian, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back at internships and apprenticeships can be interesting, because there is so much variety in people’s experiences – and often those experiences inform our own leadership style. Do you have an interesting story from that stage of your career that you can share with us?
Now my internship and apprenticeship was actually very recent, but for confidentiality reasons I won’t be going to in-depth on details. When I first started out, I had been doing some observations on children in the school systems that I was stationed around, in particular I would go to the schools and meet with my clients there. The organization of my arrival was simple and well put together. I would meet with my supervisor at the time and we would walk around and pull the kids from their classes when if and when we could. In the first few minutes of my arrival I realized how different the schools were put together from where I was from, versus where I was now.
In my youth, middle school and high school were kept separate, but the corresponding 6th to 8th graders and the 9th to 12th graders could all mingle in one classroom. Such wasn’t the case for the schools I visited, each grade being further divided by grade and by teacher availability. Rather than going out to multiple classrooms, most of the kids in my apprenticeship would see one teacher for the rest of their year. This was only one of the physical and organizational differences I found during my time as an intern! The actual culture within the schools I had visited were rather open to the thought of therapy, but more prone to violence than where I was raised in. It was shocking to me! I grew up learning that sharing what’s in your heart and head with strangers would get you abused. Of course that is still true today, but the difference between how the school treats it’s kids versus how the counselors treat their kids? It gave me a new perspective on the school system, if not just acknowledging how schools these days are more like daycares.
Only meant to house the kids and teach them what they need to know, while the parents go out to work and pay the bills. When I was able to counsel my first client, when I heard similar stories, perspectives to mine when I was younger. I think I realized that, people often go through the same things, and that they just need someone to listen rather than to talk back to them. They don’t need you to understand at first, only to listen. But after that first time, when they know you can understand them? It changes the whole dynamic of the therapeutic process. It makes it easier, it makes you and your clients more invested, it makes them ask more about you and vice versa. There is no perfect approach to engaging in your internship and apprenticeships, but the best tactic I can offer?
Say thank you to your clients for even showing up. Let them know you appreciate their efforts. That smile on the clients face, and the joy in their voice when they return a few weeks later? Even if it was bad news, good news, just a casual check up. It made my day, it’ll make yours too.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Good evening! My name is Christian Wilson and I am a graduate student at Troy University, currently working on my masters degree in Clinical Mental Health. I started in this industry shortly after I graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and got my Bachelors of Arts and Science in psychology. My professor at the time recommended I continue my education and pursue my PH’D, which I myself had been aiming at since high school! I always wanted to understand the mind and more importantly the decision making processes of all people I meet. The instant I learned that, it became easier to predict relative courses of action, and to provide them with the tools to live their best life.
My long term goal, was to become an Industrial Organizational psychologist, due to my love of the concept of working. Most individuals will end up working some sort of 9 to 5 job, that lacks any sort of special criteria to enter into. But most individuals will normally go beyond that initial job, to pursue higher education and a higher status job. Either for more money, for respect, recognition, influence, to revolutionize their field, or simply because they can.
However, that changed after I started to apply to my graduate program, I started noticing a heavy trend of internalized and externalized issues involve depression, anxiety, and failures in relationship maintenance. This would then feed into a person’s working life, causing them to either fail at tasks they were good at. Or to change their normal work patterns in order to avoid, confront, or to adjust to these relationship changes. If things weren’t good at home, it wouldn’t be good at work and vice versa. If any domain in one’s life was in conflict, that would affect every other domain in that persons life. Before I could reach my long term goal, I need a short term goal, something that was relevant to my major and to the overarching field I wanted to expand. Thus, I started my educational and professional journey in the field of counseling, a short term goal that would both allow me to understand and assist the individual in meeting their own life goals. While also working with individuals who struggle under the pressure of everyday life and from the pressure they put on themselves.
Life is hard, life is strange, there’s no reason to suffer through it alone! That’s why I’m here. That’s the life I want to lead. To help you, help yourself.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
The most helpful thing that a person needs in this field is a large amount of patience and empathy. This is not something that everyone possesses, most people lose it, most people never have it, or learn it. But when a counselor does have these two things, it makes a huge difference in separating the professionals, from the amateurs’. Anyone can listen to another persons problems, it’s an entirely different strength to avoid throwing your own unsolicited advice to your clients.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I had met my business partner early on when I first started my undergraduate career. At first he started out as my mentor, introducing me to the college and teaching me about the city that we lived in. We met up once per week, until I finally felt comfortable moving independently in the college, and we went our separate ways. We were still close friends, hung out in the same social circles, yet those times were rare. Time passed and It seemed that I would end up graduating before them, he had swapped majors a few times but he was a passionate man when it came to his goals. During my last undergrad year, he had made mentions of starting his own company; Light of the World Intl. Corporation. He called it. It wasn’t until I had changed my original plans of achieving my PH’D that my mentor would reach out to me once again, and ask me to join him on his business journey. An opportunity to learn more about my field? I couldn’t resist!
Since that day, we had been hard at work to organize events and to spread mental health awareness to the people in our city. Reaching out to communities who truly need the help and the resources, and to engage with communities who may not have considered services until now.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lwicorp.org