Blog
"Designer to Therapy Student"
Hi, I’m Ki. I also go by Karen. I have been lucky enough to have a career in design for over six years, designing web apps and product service design systems in toys. I spent much of my time with exceptional, smart people building start-ups. My daily work resembled research, which involved talking to people, ideating, collaborating on solutions, and testing for outcomes. Yet, I slowly realized that I had a deep desire for social impact, particularly on an interpersonal level, which felt unimaginable when designing web software for profit. When you build for others, people’s behavior and psyches can become a fixation.
Since childhood, whenever I met someone new, I often thought, “Tell me why you do this thing. Now tell me why you think that. Give me your why if you can.” I live for your “why.” Learning about what makes people distinctive is endlessly exciting. This lifelong fascination with understanding people’s motivations and my burning desire to improve the status quo wherever I am drew me toward therapy as a profession where such insights can facilitate healing and personal growth.
The work is satisfying until you notice it doesn’t help anyone who needs it. We don’t have to rescue anyone to satiate our need for hope. (Though some of us do.) But you may wonder if you can do anything to dull the ache of seeing others suffer. Working for money has the utility many of us desperately need in this broken economy. Still, it doesn’t give me a profound sense of purpose. While I enjoyed the creativity of design, I realized that I was seeking a more profound, more personal impact on individuals’ lives, something beyond what my design projects could offer. When I graduated with my bachelor’s, I ruminated that most people would spend most of their lives at work and in traffic. Our work may not help us grow or provide transpersonal meaning, and that’s okay. It seems a privilege to make a living and have our work offer a soul-aligning purpose. Regardless, you might be like me and crave deeper meaning and connection. If life is for those living, don’t you want to feel alive? And we must define and work towards what feeling alive means to us.
If I can make you feel seen, you might feel less alone, develop more self-compassion, and reach your potential in life. I aim to achieve this as a therapist and social impact entrepreneur. For my thesis during my Master’s in Design for Kids and Toys, I began to launch a company focused on the social-emotional well-being of children and caregivers. I learned about holistic child development through play. In therapy, play can also be a unique way to help children with self-understanding and emotional regulation. Amid a mental health crisis, I want to make mental health interventions more accessible to young multicultural families across the globe. You can check out my progress at playwithkip.com.
There are always steps to ensure a more understanding and accessible world. We can create environments that safeguard others’ safety and promote their autonomy when thoughtful. As a designer, I’ve learned how listening with empathy can change someone’s life. I can recall some intimate interviews with parents of deafblind children. These caregivers would recount their lives to me, often expressing deep loneliness and isolation from greater society. However, listening to these parents made them more connected to their humanity and aware of their strengths amidst challenges. We can support and transform each other with new perspectives when we listen.
I’ve started this blog to share parts of my journey in Marriage and Family Therapy (or Couples and Family Therapy.) I am excited to be starting a two-year master’s in May to become a mental health clinician and will have plenty of reading to do. I love taking notes, and school often only gives you a little time to pore over every insight in a book. (Nor would you want to, given how dry and pedantic some textbooks are.) I plan to write these blog posts as a study and memory retention exercise. I hope my notes and thoughts might be helpful to you or someone else.
How do you define ‘feeling alive’? Have you undergone a significant career shift? Please share your stories with me at howdy[at]kiyanip[dot]com.