Guillermo Orozco: "A new car won’t give you security, good self-esteem will".

Guillermo left the world of advertising to become a psychologist: a vocational decision.

Some people think that psychologists dedicate themselves to therapy only to satisfy their curiosity in a purely intellectual sense; to be able to study the human being like someone observing a colony of bacteria from a microscope. This way of understanding psychotherapy is not only incomplete, it is fallacious: in many cases, it is precisely the human and empathic component that makes many people decide to dedicate themselves to this profession.

This is the case of Guillermo Orozco, a psychologist from the Canary Islands, who left behind a promising career in psychotherapy. who left behind a promising career in advertising to turn his life around and become a psychologist. His testimony shows that vocation, at times, can prevail over the inertia of continuing to work on something for the simple fact of not having to adapt to a change.

Interview with Guillermo Orozco: psychotherapy as a philosophy of life

Guillermo Orozco is a General Health Psychologist specialized in third generation and cognitive-behavioral therapies, with a practice in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His professional career is a declaration of intentions: changing profession and city can be worthwhile if it is to develop as a professional for vocational reasons. In the following lines we talk to him.

Guillermo, before entering the professional field of psychology you worked in the world of advertising, and even had your own agency in that sector. What made you decide to change your life by starting to study psychology?

There were several reasons that led me to consider changing my career path, but the most important was my own process of self-knowledge and personal growth. I started working very young, from the age of 17 I was serving drinks, and when I was 19 I combined my work as a graphic designer with that of a waiter. When I managed to save a little money I became a partner to set up an advertising agency in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Those were good years and the business was going well, but I always felt that something was missing.

I started reading a lot about personal growth, psychology, philosophy, metaphysics and spirituality. My values and personal concerns were changing, I felt that I was evolving as a human being, and the simple fact of living to work, earn money, get married, have children, buy a house, a car... stopped making sense to me. Inside me, a great compassion for human suffering developed and I became uneasy about the meaning we give to life. I realized that what really matters are the people and emotions we share, and I felt the need to do my bit to make this world a better place.

So I made the decision to give my life a deeper meaning and dedicate myself to something really worthwhile. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I decided to dedicate myself to helping people, and I succeeded.

Although there is a lot of psychology in the marketing world, you probably noticed a major change in what you were doing when you went to university and then to graduate school. Were you able to adapt smoothly throughout the process that led you to become a psychologist?

When I started studying at the UNED I was still working as a freelance web designer, so it was a great effort for the little time I had, but I really enjoyed those years. Every book I read, every new subject, was to go deeper and deeper into a world that I was passionate about. I studied and read all the free time I had, including Saturdays and Sundays. This effort was reflected in my academic record, which was very good and allowed me to choose a university to study the Master in General Health Psychology.

The biggest difficulty was when I went to Madrid to study the Master's Degree, as it was very difficult for me to adapt to the city. I missed the sea, my family, my friends, and my partner at that time. In addition, Madrid is a city with a difficult rhythm to carry, I will never forget the Nuevos Ministerios subway at 8 in the morning, with hundreds of people pushing each other to get in...

But the effort was again worth it, since I wanted to study and learn with the best, and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid has one of the best Psychology Faculties in Spain. So, after finishing the master's degree, I felt confident and ready to start my professional career as a psychologist.

The popularization of online psychotherapy in recent years is a fact. Do you think psychologists should adopt a new way of managing their personal marketing to take advantage of the potential of this type of therapy?

Personal marketing is definitely a must for any professional, especially if you want to direct part of your work to the online world. In my experience, it is very positive to dedicate effort and a significant economic investment in marketing, as this way you reach many more people, beyond your own locality. I have a website that I update regularly by publishing articles on my blog, I am in several professional directories, I publish ads on Google AdWords, social networks, etc.

When you are in a health profession, such as psychological therapy, you deal with people who are suffering and need a trained professional. The fact that patients can get to know and trust you before the first consultation is essential. Thanks to digital marketing and social networks, people who contact me already know me extensively, and know that they place their trust and their health in someone who deserves it, and not in a stranger.

What do you think psychologists can learn about human beings by looking at the field of advertising?

Actually, it is advertising that has been nourished for years by discoveries in psychology. We know how people can make decisions based on emotions, and then "rationalize" them, how they trust brands just by continuous exposure to them, or by associating them with people they admire, and so on. What I have learned about human beings from looking at advertising is that we need to trust something, we need to be able to believe and be sure that what we are doing makes sense.

We need to be understood and valued, we need to evolve, to love, and to be loved... all this is what advertisers offer us in their campaigns, but we will not achieve this by buying the products they offer us, we achieve it by knowing ourselves, and growing as people.

A new car won't make you more confident, a healthy self-esteem will. Having the latest smartphone will not make you have more and better friends, that is achieved with social skills. An expensive perfume does not make you more attractive, assertive behavior, self-confidence and charisma do. Advertising teaches us that people look for happiness and well-being, but we keep looking outside ourselves for what we should be looking for inside ourselves.

What aspects of psychological intervention most caught your attention during your time at university? Does it correspond to what you ended up specializing in?

When I was in Madrid I was fortunate to study with wonderful professionals who nurtured my passion for the profession. In particular, I found the subjects of couples therapy exciting, so I decided to delve deeper into that topic. Nowadays it is one of my favorite areas of work, in fact, many of the individual consultations I attend have to do with couple issues, so it is a recurring theme in my practice.

On the other hand, I was able to deepen in third generation therapies, especially Acceptance and Commitment, and Mindfulness. These types of therapies are indicated in certain cases, such as rumination, intrusive thoughts, depression relapses, personality disorders, among others. After completing the master's degree I continued studying how to apply these techniques in consultation, and today I combine them with traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy.

New interesting research is constantly emerging in the field of psychology, so there are always new developments. What are you most interested in continuing your training in today?

My daily work is as a therapist in a private practice, treating anxiety, depression, self-esteem, stress, emotional problems, fears, phobias, etc., so all I am currently studying is psychology applied to therapy, in order to be more efficient in helping my patients.

As I mentioned before, third generation contextual therapies (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, Integrative Couples Therapy, and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) are being of great help to me on a daily basis, as they are tools that complement perfectly with what I studied during my college years.

The psychological therapy that has been scientifically proven, and that has demonstrated results, is cognitive-behavioral therapy. This is the type of therapy that is officially learned in formal education, and it is the one that forms the basis of my treatments, but I have realized that there are people and situations in which, for example, Mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, work wonderfully. There are numerous scientific studies that support the results of third generation therapies, so I feel more and more confident about the usefulness of these techniques.

My goal is for the people who come to my office to get better as quickly as possible and to avoid relapses, so all the tools I can include in my therapeutic repertoire will be very useful. In addition, I love my profession, and I am passionate about reading, studying, and continually updating myself with the latest advances in psychological therapy.

You studied and worked in Madrid, but returned to your homeland, the Canary Islands. Do you notice any differences in the way you work in one place or another, or in the type of patient needs?

Once you have grown up by the sea, you never forget that. I decided to return to the Canary Islands because of the quality of life, my family, the climate, the water sports and the human quality of the people here.

One of the things that struck me about the people who came to Madrid for therapy was that many of them were from provincial towns who had moved here for work. These people, even though they had been living and working in the capital for years, still felt lonely and missed their birthplace.

In Madrid I dealt with a lot of anxiety, work stress, and feelings of loneliness and sadness. Perfectionism, self-demanding, the need for control, low tolerance for uncertainty, lack of emotional intelligence... All this plays havoc with people who live in a big city, where life is extremely competitive. There we are surrounded by thousands of people, but you often feel very lonely.

In Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, despite being a large city, as it is the ninth most populated city in Spain, the rhythm is different. The sea, the climate and the proximity of all the services can help a lot to the good mood of people, although the feeling of isolation can have a negative influence.

The problems I see in consultation do not really differ much from what I used to work with in the capital: anxiety, stress, depression, relationship problems, low self-esteem, emotional problems, behavioral disorders and fears and insecurities in children, maladjustment problems in adolescents, etc.

Do you think that online therapy and emerging technological advances will soon make it almost irrelevant whether the psychologist is physically far away from the patients?

I practice online therapy by video call, and I try to make sure that the patients find a quiet, secluded place for the sessions, that they have a good Internet connection and that they use a desktop or laptop computer. I believe that it is necessary for the video call to be as close as possible to being face to face with a person. In psychological therapy, communication is fundamental, and everything in us communicates, not just words. Body language is essential to be able to receive a message correctly, so it is very important to be able to see the person on the other side of the screen.

The advantages of video call therapy are many, since it can be better combined with the busy life we lead, you can reach people in isolated places that do not have qualified professionals nearby, or even people who want to receive therapy in Spanish and who live abroad.

The new generations are very used to communicating in this way, by messages, video calls, audio messages, etc. I believe that the option of online therapy will be more and more in demand, and we must be prepared for it as mental health professionals.