We recently connected with Roger Marum and have shared our conversation below.
Roger, so great to have you with us today. There are so many topics we want to ask you about, but perhaps the one we can start with is burnout. How have you overcome or avoided burnout?
It is my good fortune to be a psychologist, a profession about and for which I have a passion. I’ve considered it a privilege to be invited into people’s lives, share their journies in good and bad times, through joy and sorrow, and the struggles and easy times too. I get tired, as we all do when we work, but my exhaustion has never been about the flame dying out. Sports, exercise, community, and colleagues keep me fresh and engaged. So too does my belief, my faith that we are meant to live healthy and purpose-driven lives with meaning.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
This is partly answered in the first question’s answer. I’m committed to assisting people who seek my services to find healthy ways of living in all facets of their lives. Learning to embrace and love the who, what, and how of their lives is a crucial part of that. Finding a way into accepting and loving one’s self is the beginning. My home of origin, a good home with parents who loved me, valued the presentation of acceptability rather than the uniqueness of who I was. Psychoanalysis saved me from continuing that false-positive and accepting the warts and all or being me. I enjoy writing, have been fortunate to have two books published ( Faith, Doubt, and Listening and Seasons of a Psychotherapist’s Soul ), and continue to find ways to learn about people, life and myself as a writer.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Resilience, boundless curiosity, and the support and companionship of people who believed in me and informed and shaped my life.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
Dr. James O. Laughrun, my psychoanalyst, taught me to listen and trust myself, and do so not without struggle, accepting success and failure as part of life, and in both cases live fully into them without losing myself or becoming overwhelmed or enamored with either.
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