From the horse’s mouth.

I have been wondering about life the universe and everything and how it is that I live in two worlds, or two different personalities if you will. The ‘in real life world’ and the ‘online world.’ Although I am finding those two worlds are getting closer together.

 I was filling out a Members survey for The British Psychological Society http://www.bps.org.uk/ and one of the questions there was asking where I get most of my psychological knowledge/information. There were only two options, one was the British Psychological Society and the other option was ‘other.’  Well yeah, I wasn’t going to sit there and list them all but it did get me thinking. I guess I go to the British Psychological Society to check on rules, regulations and ethics. I get rather a lot of emails from various divisions/sections/faculties of the society with the latest information on what’s happening. I even got to vote on national policy changes, it’s quite scary to think that little ‘ol me has a say on what happens for people in our country. I’m not going to say too much about that as it scares the pants off me!

Anyway, going back to the topic of where I get my day to day psychological information it does indeed come from the internet and of course, you guessed it, it would have to be Psych Central! http://psychcentral.com/ a wealth of information just with a click or two.

 Someone asked me the other day whether I was a therapist, I happen to be rather confused by that question. In real life my job title is rather odd and doesn’t tell anybody what I am. In real life I support people. On the internet I’m not a therapist either but I do use my psychological knowledge to help and support others. My professional organization is the British Psychological Society.

 A little psychologist, it’s not what I do, it’s what I am.

Well, I never knew www.linkedin.com was such a massive thing, 55 million professionals use it and how I never knew about it I’ll never know but then I don’t use facebook or anything like that. I have just joined https://twitter.com/ aswell and had to ask a few people what a tweet was!

 For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a flying horse on http://forums.psychcentral.com/ a wonderful mental health community where people give and receive support. I have been there four years now and known as the ‘Wisest Elder Ever’ with over 56,000 posts! That’s an awful lot of talking and mostly supporting people one way or another. I spend 80% of my free time there inbetween work and the odd bit of cooking and cleaning for my family. I used to take my notebook to bed with me but have learnt to limit my obsession with the website.

 I’m hoping this year to branch out a little more throughout the web and I have already made a start on that. Thanks to Doctor Henck’s invite, that got me thinking on spreading myself out a little more. Maybe I’ll start my own website one day…

2010 - Here we are! The horse has a blog and plenty to chew on…

 Well, I meant to write lots of tidbits and interesting information and wow everyone with my insights and such today but got side-tracked by something else.

I got invited to join something called ‘LinkedIn’ by a famous clinical psychologist called Henck Van Bilsen. He is one of the ‘bigwigs’ at the British Psychological Society. I am totally amazed and honoured that he chose little ol’ me to be one of his professional network buddies. If only he knew that I’m just a little horse with wings and hooves.

 I can’t say much more today as my brain has disappeared elsewhere, maybe the wisdom will come tomorrow…