Unbecoming: On a path to becoming a Counseling Psychologist
After a content heavy qualitative research class, I asked my instructor “we talked about race, gender and so many other ways humans have classified themselves, is there something that is not a social construct?” He paused and said “most of the things are social constructs”. The class ended, but this idea got stuck in my head — we keep creating social constructs as a society and then keep reading and analyzing them. Why do we do this to ourselves? I came home and shared my thoughts with my fiancée. To which she said — “we study them to de-construct them and be free of them”. I loved her answer as it reminded me of why I am doing this.
My research topic is self-transcendence or the experience of no-self in Buddhist Mindfulness tradition. In my view, the truest form of liberation lies in freeing ourselves from our own ‘self’. Deconstructing all the ways in which we define ourselves to a point where no definition, no label, no idea, or social construct seems capable enough of holding what we truly are is a liberating experience.
I have lived my life in boxes of different labels; a male, son of Dr. Rathore, a Hindu, small-town guy, the guy who is good at sketching, the chubby guy who is also shy, an average student, a lawyer and so many more. After moving to US, I found out that I am brown. Now my label is an international student from India, and to top that my legal status is a ‘non-resident alien’.
I like some labels and feel disgusted by some, but none of them fully define who I am, and they all feel incomplete to me.
I am on a path of becoming a counseling psychologist, but internally I know that I am on a path of unbecoming each time I become something. Each moment for me is a moment of liberation because I know my goal is to break out of the boxes that are made by the society and most importantly the boxes that I made for myself.
So, for me Counseling Psychology of liberation is less about building and more about breaking: the labels, the masks, the social constructs, or the so-called prison of my own mind.
