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How My Mental Health Changed My Career Working With A-List Celebrities

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I have spent most of my life focused on one career, which was working in the audio and broadcast media industry. For 20 years, I was a professional sound engineer and location sound recordist. I got to work with A-list celebrities such as 50 Cent, Coldplay, Gwen Stefani and Mariah Carey, just to name a few. For half of that career, I worked for one of Australia’s primary TV channels as a location sound recordist, working in children’s TV recording sound for a couple of iconic shows such as “Totally Wild” and “Scope.” After many years adventuring around Australia recording children’s factual content, The network decided to centralize operations and move production interstate, and that made a team of people redundant, including myself. My audio career ended there.

During the last year in broadcast media, I struggled with my mental health as a result of some workplace bullying. I made the mistake of letting a gaslighter get into my head and the resulting psychological abuse was too much. I fell into a deep depression that almost destroyed me, so I went and got some help. But the story does not end there…

I was lost, alone and felt helpless, but the curiosity inside of me sparked and ignited, and I wanted to know why. Why exactly was I feeling like this? So, I embarked on a new journey of learning and started to study counseling and psychology.

Learning all about the different personality types, psychological theories and how to apply structured counseling models was all really interesting stuff for me, but then something strange happened: I started to see how theoretical studies related to real-life situations. I started to understand why people behave and act the way they do from a psychological perspective, and combine the theory and practical elements of psychology together. It all started to make sense. Having my own lived experience contributed to my learning as well, and looking back, it was extremely valuable. That experience activated my empathy too.

Now, I’m a counselor and help people process their emotions, and help them explore solutions to their individual situations. I specialize in the area of mental health and suicide prevention, but also now majoring in family therapy, grief, and mindfulness-based therapies as well.

So in a nutshell, that is how experiencing a mental illness changed the focus and direction of my career, from living a busy broadcast life as a sound recordist, to understanding the psychological aspects of life and helping others. So if you are currently struggling, keep moving forward as you will eventually see the light in the darkness, and if you need help navigating that and need a counselor, get in touch! Using today’s technology, you can be anywhere in the world too!

Image via contributor

Originally published: February 15, 2021
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