Josephine Wilson Personal statement 2016

My name is Josephine Wilson, I am extremely passionate and enthused with the subject of psychology. I am very interested in the sciences as a whole and in particular working with people and using my intuitive and empathetic nature to make a difference in their lives. I currently spend a large proportion of my time researching psychology and other related recourses that interlink with the main areas of the subject I am interested in. I also spend much of my time implementing my knowledge and learning into both my own healing work and broadening my understanding to enable me to facilitate others healing in the future.

Currently my main focus has been on the impact of trauma, in particular during the key developmental stages of a child/infants life and how this can impact a person’s adult life, such as the experiences they run into, how the mind and body reacts to these experiences and how this impacts their psychological, emotional and physical health. I have been looking very deeply into integration work and other methods of trauma therapy such as EMDR therapy and EFT tapping, I am very keen on the subject of inner child work, using a combination of these four methods I have made a large impact and improvement in my own life and have realised the benefit of these techniques that I believe everyone can benefit from, especially those faced with extreme childhood trauma. 

I have developed quite an in depth understanding of the different coping mechanisms that are taken on by individuals to survive trauma and get their needs met, and also how these coping mechanisms carry on into adulthood. I am interested in how the integration of trauma enables a person to stop using these coping mechanisms and live a healthier, functioning and positive life.

I also have a keen interest and understanding of neurobiology, this began after a close friend suffered a traumatic brain injury, and I became fascinated with the brains capacity to heal due to neuroplasticity, and how our brains are constantly changing and adapting even into old age.

I have also been recently learning more about neurochemistry. In particular, how our cells create a dependency or addiction to the neuropeptides that are released into our body from the hypothalamus as a response to our experiences and emotional association with these experiences. I have realised our body becomes dependant or addicted to these peptides regardless if they are pain or pleasure based.  This provides a great understanding as to why people often repeat and are drawn to similar experiences, that often match those that are experienced during these developmental stages regardless of if they are healthy or unhealthy due to the bodies dependency on those chemicals. I am very fascinated with the link between trauma and integration work and the correlation with the improvement in people’s life experiences as well as their overall health, due to the shift in the bodies dependency on certain chemicals.

There are also many theories in the field of quantum physics that back this up and have become a great interest to me that are providing more evidence for ancient Chinese medicines such as acupuncture and the bodies energy centres. The leaders in this field are NASA scientists so it is gaining far more credibility than it once had.

I feel university will provide me with a far greater field of knowledge and understanding and the tools required to enable me to implement this into my own work possibly in psychotherapy or clinical psychology.

I believe that everyone in society has suffered trauma, therefor everyone is suffering PTSD to a certain degree (if they have triggers they have un integrated trauma) it is only when this condition reaches an extreme that it impacts a person’s day to day functioning that it becomes a diagnosable condition. Therefor I strongly believe that my current research and knowledge can benefit everyone, not only those with diagnosable disorders.

I am also interested in the correlation between unresolved trauma/grief and cancer and also other physical illnesses and how these therapeutic models can facilitate a reduction in these illnesses, this shows how strong the mind and body connection is and how I believe these things should be brought into mainstream medicine.

I also prefer to see psychiatric disorders such as eating disorders, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety etc. as symptoms of a deeper and resolvable issue rather than the problem in and of itself, I am keen on healing the root cause of these conditions and seeing them as symptoms of an injury rather than there being something “wrong” with the patient. I am happy to see people off of medication due to the route cause being looked into which will stop the manifestation of these symptoms, as I feel psychiatric medication acts as a band aid for much deeper issues. This will enable people to live a much healthier functioning life the way nature intended. 

After leaving school I went on to study science and the creative arts, I completed a foundation art course, but was very uncertain of what I wanted to study. I decided to travel to Canada where I trained to become a snowboard instructor and qualified as a level 2 instructor enabling me to teach, this experience enable me to realise my natural ability to work well with people and understand their needs and be intuitive and creative with my teaching, I feel that the psychological element played a greater role than the learning content as there is and incredible amount of confidence building involved and breaking down of fears, it required a lot of patience and empathy, I was successful in this job as I had many returning clients and brought in the most income out of all the younger instructors.

After this I travelled around some of the US and then on to Australia where I trained in athletics which I still currently do here in the UK. I am also a passionate painter which I feel also has its place in psychology as it is a very effective therapeutic tool.