A Call to Therapy
By Andy Williams, LCSW
In hindsight it feels a bit inevitable that I ended up a therapist, as I have always had a deep curiosity about the mind and how others construct and experience their inner worlds. And yet, as I began college, the idea that such curiosity could find expression in an academic pursuit, let alone a long-term profession, was nowhere on my radar. Originally a biology major with a love of the outdoors, I had visions of playing in the woods for a living (although hadn’t really thought through whether or how one might get paid to do so). I was only taking an introductory psychology course to satisfy a social sciences requirement, and then another because it was interesting and why not, then a couple more and maybe I’ll minor in psychology, and then wow this zoology lab course is really a lot harder than I thought and by the way that Carl Jung guy had some pretty wild ideas about the universal unconscious and suddenly I’m being handed a diploma that reads “Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.”
Not sure what to do with a degree in psychology and with only vague notions of the additional education and licensure required for many of the jobs in the field, I took a position as a direct care worker on the psychiatric floor of a local hospital, and knew immediately that I was where I was supposed to be. While it was the big ideas, classic experiments, and elegant theories that had attracted me to psychology as an undergraduate student, it was through the practice of connecting with and supporting those in psychological distress that I found my calling. A move from Asheville, where I had gone to college, back to the Triangle, where I had grown up, led me to spend several years working at a residential program for adolescents in Durham, and in a fun twist of fate to sometimes pursue my original career goal of playing in the woods--even now, I can vividly recall warm summer evenings spent accompanying teens along stretches of the Eno River, grateful to be out of the group home for a few hours and not realizing then just how powerful such interventions could be. In time, I decided that clinical social work would allow me the best opportunity to continue the relational approach to helping others that I had come to see as so valuable to the change process, and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2007 with my Masters in Social Work.
Nearly 20 years since those first, formative experiences as a professional, I am excited to join Raleigh Psychology with a continued passion for helping others to navigate the many internal and external challenges that life presents. I have spent much of my professional career working with individuals and families at the highest levels of our mental health system, including most recently as the Director of Clinical Services for an inpatient psychiatric hospital, and while these experiences have taught me a lot about therapy and provided opportunities to learn different models of care, they have also highlighted the amazing resilience and adaptability of the human spirit in the face of incredible life disruptions and traumas. It is with a spirit of humility, curiosity, and collaboration that I seek to engage in the therapeutic relationship, and hope you will find my experience and approach to be helpful. While I may not spend my days exploring the outdoors as I once imagined, I have been privileged to explore the much richer and mysterious topography of the human experience, a journey I look forward to continuing in this new practice setting.