Creating safety is your first job [as therapist], and then once that's established, you can use many tools to help someone see the folly in their thinking.

Coming into Pacifica I knew that I wanted whatever I was going to learn there, I knew I wanted to integrate that into my art no matter what.

Being a therapist can be very serious though. There are people's lives in your hands. For me, it was too much.

I didn't think I'd be a good therapist. I didn't think I could do both at the same time. Maybe some people can, but I wanted a bigger spotlight and I don't think that's right for clients to have a therapist who wants that kind of life.

Coming out of graduation, I didn't immediately know what direction I wanted to do so I decided to just stay as an intern until it really kind of dawned on me and I felt more compelled one way or the other. So I gave it a few years and then after two years it was really clear that deep down I missed being a full time creative artist. Ironically, I started getting clients who were all in the entertainment industry and a lot of them were in comedy!

One of the reasons I picked Pacifica was because, for a lot of classes and for your thesis, you could do artwork because of the Jungian slant of it all, and that really called to me.

If my artist life didn't work or if I needed to work in some capacity part-time in something, I knew I'd have a real life skill [become a therapist].