Luke McDonald – Who am I?

I thought I would share some information about myself to provide an understanding of my work as a psychologist as well as who I am as a person.

I currently work as a psychologist at Leading Psychology, a private practice I launched a few months ago. Leading Psychology is a business I started to ultimately help improve the mental health and wellbeing of individuals in the community. My desire for Leading Psychology in the future is for it to be a prominent and trusted psychology practice in the community, with a reputation of providing quality care to all their clients. In my private practice work I see clients who present with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, stress, addictions, relationship problems, anger issues, self-esteem, family issues, trauma, suicidal thoughts and self-harm. I also work as a psychologist for the Box Hill Hawks Football Club who play in the VFL and for the Hawthorn Football Club who play in the VFLW. In a football club setting I work with the players, coaches and staff to address mental health and performance related issues. The performance side of sport psychology addresses issues such as leadership, communication, performance anxiety, concentration, confidence, motivation and managing disappointments such as injury and missing team selection.

My passion for psychology started with a general interest in understanding how the human mind works and why people do the things they do. This natural curiosity was paired with a desire to help people who are struggling in life or needing help with a specific issue. However, my passion for the study of psychology was not always there, particularly as a teenager going through high school. I distinctly remember starting psychology as a subject in high school and wanting to quit the subject after just a few weeks. I thought the subject was boring and difficult. Luckily I didn’t quit because over the next two years I slowly developed a keen interest to the point where I enrolled into an undergraduate psychology course at university. Throughout this course I realised that I wanted to turn my passion of psychology into a career. I then went on to complete post-graduate studies to become a fully registered psychologist.

Speaking on a personal level, the most important part of my life is my relationship with God and the faith I have in Him. Also, the church and my family have been important in determining who I am.

Sharing a defining moment that happened in my life when I was a teenager will explain more of the story of my life. I have always been passionate about sport. I started playing tennis when I was 7 and would always play some sort of sport at school and home when I could. I started playing football when I was 14 and eventually stopped tennis at 15 due to the high level of commitment with playing football. I played football throughout juniors and was fortunate enough to play in the TAC Cup, which is an elite under 18’s football competition in Victoria. During my time playing for the Eastern Ranges in the TAC Cup I achieved two of my proudest sporting accomplishments. In one year I won the leading goal kicker award for the competition and the best and fairest award at the Eastern Ranges. My dream was to play in the AFL and I strongly believed that I was good enough to do so. I would train every day, with my life revolving around football. I received feedback from many people including coaches, other players and a player manger that I would get drafted into the AFL. Furthermore, I was contacted by AFL clubs which provided me with further confidence that it would happen. However, I suffered a bad ankle injury in a finals game at the end of my final year which did not allow me to firstly participate in the rest of the finals games, but also stopped me from completing the physical testing that was conducted in front of the AFL club recruiters. I eventually did not get drafted and this led me to experiencing a range of negative emotions such as disappointment, frustration, anger, sadness and depression. However, the initial feeling was shock, given that my expectation of getting drafted did not become a reality. In the period after I missed out on getting drafted I asked myself many questions. One of these questions was “what do I do now?”. Because I was extremely single-minded in my goal of getting drafted, I did not imagine or plan for an alternative life. I was in a state of despair and lacking meaning and purpose in my life.

To pause here, I think there are many people who could relate to being in a similar situation. A situation of lacking meaning and purpose in life due to circumstances they have been through or are going through.

I spent a few years in this state of despair, having no hope for a better future. Believing that my life now would never be as good as my dream of playing in the AFL. Over time this disappointment and despair transformed into hope and optimism as I was led down a new career path. I needed to re-shape my identity. Previously my identity was as a football player and a future AFL player, which meant that when it didn’t happen, I was lost and experiencing an identity crisis. I was placing all my eggs into one basket. Not getting drafted into the AFL was not what led me to study psychology. However, this experience has given me an understanding of what it’s like to have a dream, to train every day for that dream, to get injured, to not have your dream come true, to experience a long period of depression and to finally have hope for a better future. Going through this situation has helped me to empathise with other people going through a similar situation, although understanding that everyone’s situation is different.

In the years after this disappointment I have been able to reflect and see things from a different perspective. My initial perspective was that this experience was a negative experience, however I now see it as just an experience and something to learn from. I have learnt that there are things that happen in life that don’t go the way you want them to, but that is not a bad thing. You don’t know how these “negative” experiences in life will influence you later on. Often it is through disappointments and struggles that you learn about yourself and mature as a person. Sometimes it’s hard to see at the time, but there is hope in a difficult situation.