A Journey of Becoming…

As I reflect on graduating from my Bachelor of Psychology and Counselling at the Cairnmillar Institute, with a double major in psychology and counselling, I feel a deep sense of gratitude, pride, and quiet strength. 

This milestone represents much more than the completion of a degree. For me, it marks another important step in a much longer personal and professional journey — one that began long before university, and one that continues to unfold as I move through my Honours year and look toward further postgraduate training in psychology. 

I came to university as a mature-age student, knowing that I was stepping into a six-year full-time pathway toward becoming a psychologist. That decision was not made lightly and required a significant commitment from me. It meant returning to study later in life, after decades of professional experience, fatherhood, self-reflection, and personal growth. It also meant confronting an old internal narrative that had followed me for many years: the belief that perhaps I was not capable of achieving something like this. 

That belief did not come from nowhere. 

As a young person, I experienced significant trauma, loss, instability, and emotional pain. I lost my father in childhood. I grew up around the impact of addiction and family violence. I learned early how unresolved trauma can move through a family system and shape the emotional world of a child. Like many people who grow up too quickly, I became strong before I fully understood what strength was. I learned to care, to observe, to survive, and to keep going. 

Yet within that difficult landscape, I also experienced something deeply formative: the steady care of a neighbour who, at a critical time in my adolescence, offered a sense of safety, kindness, and being seen. Looking back, I think this was one of my earliest experiences of what helping can truly mean. It was not about fixing, rescuing, or having all the answers. It was about presence. It was about someone making room for me when life felt overwhelming. In many ways, that experience planted something in me that I now recognise in my work as a therapist: the quiet power of human connection, attunement, and care. 

At school in France, I did not always feel seen for my potential. In many ways, the educational system I experienced left me with the impression that I would not achieve much. Those messages can become deeply internalised. They can sit quietly beneath success and continue to whisper doubt, even when life later proves them wrong. 

And life did prove them wrong. 

Before entering psychology and counselling, I built a successful professional life as a massage therapist, working for many years in elite sport, including 17 years with the Victorian Institute of Sport. I also worked creatively in photography and video for more than three decades. I developed discipline, clinical sensitivity, professionalism, and the capacity to work closely with people under pressure. I had achieved a great deal, but part of me still carried the old question: “Am I really enough?” 

Returning to study became one way of answering that question — not with defiance, but with integrity. 

Over the past three and a half years at Cairnmillar, I have grown in ways that are difficult to fully capture. The Institute has given me more than academic knowledge. It has offered a community, a professional home, and a space where I could integrate my lived experience, clinical curiosity, and developing identity as a therapist. 

I remain deeply grateful for the quality of teaching, the accessibility of lecturers, and the generosity of staff who have shared their knowledge, clinical wisdom, and encouragement along the way. What has stood out most to me is the personal engagement offered by so many members of the teaching team. Cairnmillar has provided a learning environment where students are not treated as numbers, but as developing practitioners with individual histories, strengths, doubts, and possibilities. 

I am especially grateful to Jenny, our course coordinator, whose support, steadiness, and commitment to students have made a lasting impact on my experience. I also want to acknowledge the many lecturers, supervisors, placement staff, and administrative staff who have contributed to my development, often in ways they may never fully realise. 

During my time at Cairnmillar, I also had the privilege of serving as a student representative and, for a period, as a school representative. These roles gave me a deeper appreciation of the work that happens behind the scenes: the complexity of education, the challenge of balancing student needs with institutional realities, and the genuine care that many staff bring to the student experience. It helped me understand Cairnmillar not only as a place of learning, but as a living community shaped by dialogue, advocacy, accountability, and care. 

My placement at Arrow Health in Woodend, within the alcohol and other drug rehabilitation field, has also been profoundly meaningful. It has allowed me to bring together my background in body-based work, counselling, psychology, trauma-informed practice, and humanistic care. I feel privileged to now be working in a therapeutic role where I can support people and families navigating addiction, distress, relational rupture, shame, hope, and recovery. 

In many ways, this work brings my journey full circle. 

The experiences that once made me feel different, wounded, or uncertain are now part of what deepens my empathy, humility, and commitment to ethical practice. I do not see lived experience as a substitute for training, supervision, research, or professional accountability. But I do believe that when lived experience is carefully reflected on, responsibly held, and integrated with evidence-based practice, it can become a meaningful source of therapeutic presence. 

My path has taught me that healing is rarely linear. Growth does not erase the past. It changes our relationship to it. The pain that once shaped me no longer defines me in the same way. It has become part of the ground from which I work: with compassion, curiosity, and respect for the complexity of human beings. 

I now stand in this next chapter with a sense of pride that feels grounded rather than inflated. I am proud to have completed my Bachelor of Psychology and Counselling. I am proud to be halfway through my Honours year. I am proud to be continuing my development at Cairnmillar, and I hope to continue there into postgraduate psychology training. I am proud of the man, father, student, therapist, and professional I have become. 

To the Cairnmillar Institute: thank you. 

Thank you for the education, support, challenge, encouragement, and professional foundation you have helped me build. Thank you for recognising the potential in students who arrive with complex lives, diverse histories, and different pathways into the profession. 

I carry Cairnmillar’s values with me proudly as I continue this journey. 

For the younger version of myself who once believed he could not achieve much, this moment matters. 

And for the clients, families, students, and communities I hope to serve in the years ahead, this is only the beginning. 

Warmly,

Arnaud