Before qualifying as a therapist in 2013 my life was somewhat scattered... 
I had obtained a BSc (Hons) in Computing Science after I left school but knew that I had no real interest in pursuing a career in this field. 
A friend I had met in my final year was going to a fruit farm that summer and asked me if I'd like to come with her. 
This then became the story of the next seven years of my life: working on the farm in the summer months and living off the money for the rest of the time, sometimes travelling with people I met on the farm from overseas. 
It was towards the end of this period that I started to come into contact with people who had come to the farm to get away from the struggles involved with their lives. Some had breakdowns during their time there, others psychotic episodes and others still turned to drugs, all as a result of not knowing what to do to make things seem right. 
This is when I first realised that I had a somewhat different approach to such things as the others around.  Instead of being scared, and isolating these people who were clearly troubled, I found myself wanting them to know that I would like to be around them and that I wasn't scared or confused.  This alone made some difference as it lessened the aloneness and separateness that I understood to be in it.  When contemplating what I should do next these experiences led me to get a job as a support worker. 
I worked for ten years as a support worker, meeting a vast array of incredible and humbling people who had a mental health diagnosis.  
This work led to an observation that knowing what the difficulty may be is absolutely not the same as knowing what to do to overcome it. 
It is this that informs my therapeutic work now.