Top 10 myths about psychologists

Sophia Martinez Villalpando asks, what are the common misconceptions about psychologists? I really love this question because I've never received it before. Usually people always ask me myths about psychology, but not really misconceptions about psychologists. So here are the top 10 I came up with. Number one, we all see patients about half the psychologists in the United States are practicing in some way, but the rest work in a wide variety of areas from research and administration to consulting and business. Even those who practice and are involved in patient care also are usually doing other different things. Number two, we all have doctorates. In the United States, the degree of entry to be, uh, to have the title of psychologist is a doctorate, but internationally it's largely a master's degree that grants you the title of psychologist. And number three, we're rich. Psychologists tend to do okay. I'm going to put some salary information right over here. You should be seeing that right now. One thing you want to keep in mind is on average it takes someone about five to seven years after finishing undergrad to get a degree that enters them into the field of psychology. And during that time, most accumulate a lot of debt. I'm going to show you some average debt information right over here. Number four, we're analyzing you. This is the question I always get when someone finds out I'm a psychologist. I get it so often that I made a video about it. Uh, definitely check out that video on why we're not analyzing you. Number five, psychologists and psychiatrists are the same thing. Psychiatrists have a degree in medicine. They have MDs and psychologists have a doctorate in psychology. A psychiatrist get training in the medical model. They deliver a lot of medical care. They largely prescribe medicine. Whereas psychologists primarily are involved in the deliver delivery of psychology related services. We work together in a lot of situations though. Number six, we're all messed up. Many of us got interested in the field because we do have some personal interest in whatever area we're focused on. That doesn't necessarily mean we're struggling with the exact same thing. And in situations where we are, because we're human, we tend to get our own treatment or our own support or find a way of dealing with our own issues so they don't impact the people we work with. Number seven, we have to be like you in order to be able to help you. One of the questions I often get when I'm working with families is do you have kids yourself? And I mean, the answer is yes. And you can hear her in the background, my little girl there. It's kind of like if someone asked, um, an oncologist who treats cancer, have you gone through cancer yourself? Our expertise is understanding these problems, understanding the science related to them and how to best help you. We can't possibly understand what your experience is like. And that's part of our job to figure that out. But we don't have to have gone through that experience ourselves in order to be able to help you. Number eight, we can read your mind. My area of expertise is in anxiety. I've been treating it for a long time and I still can't 100% tell when someone is anxious, nor can I tell what is making them anxious. I can work with two people. They both have social anxiety. They might both have a fear of public speaking, but the way they experience anxiety, the things that they're afraid of how it all plays out for them can be very different. Number nine, psychologists just use common sense. This is an extension of the myth that psychology is just common sense. Whether we're working with patients or a business or, um, we're designing new interfaces. What we aspire to do is combine the best of the science of psychology, the brain and behavioral sciences with our professional experience. Some of this stuff might feel like common sense and some of it is, but there's a lot of findings about psychology that are very counterintuitive and so we always try to base everything we do on the research. Number 10, we're all extroverts who love working with people. I can tell you from personal experience, this is not the case at all. There's a lot of reasons why people become psychologists. Some people want to get into a helping profession. They love working with people and maybe there are more extroverted. Some people want to go in a helping profession, but they're more introverted. Uh, some people are interested in psychology because they like understanding problems or bringing clarity to data. Thank you to Sophia for submitting this question. If you want your question answered on a future episode of the psych show, you can leave me a comment down below or, uh, post it on social media with the hashtag, the psych show QA. 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