Interview with Marta Guerri, psychologist and director of PsicoActiva

We talk to the director of one of the most popular psychology websites.

Today we have the pleasure of sharing a chat with a person who has dedicated a lot of effort and work to promote and coordinate a psychology website. We are talking about Marta Guerri, director and content manager of Psicoactiva. A nurse and psychologist by training, she has an extensive and multidimensional curriculum. She combines her presence on the Internet with talks and lectures at various universities.

Psychology and Mind: First of all, Marta, thank you for sharing this conversation with us. We would like to start by asking you about the website you run, PsicoActiva. How and when did the idea come about? With what objective did you create the website?

Marta Guerri: Well, the idea of creating PsicoActiva came up a long time ago, while I was in my first year of Psychology. Back then this whole world of websites was just starting to grow, the Internet was already very popular, but nowhere near as huge as it is today. I am talking about 1998.

The idea of making a psychology website came more from my husband than from me, he is a computer scientist and he told me that it would be a good idea to make an informative website about this subject. And in the end he convinced me, even though I hated computers! So he started to do the programming and all the technical part of the web and I did the contents. He thinks that at that time there were no blogs as we know them, they were mainly programmed in HTML, which is how he developed our home page. Later we have made the blog, our most dynamic and current section and the services section with other tools.

It has always been a joint work between the two of us, but he has preferred to remain in the shadows and not appear as co-founder or collaborator, so that only I appear as director of the web, but it is not so.

Our purpose was mainly informative and entertainment, for me more the first and for him more the second, because he loved to program psycho-technical tests and wit games, hence he subtitled our page as: "psychology and intelligent leisure web". In fact he likes this field so much that he elaborated several more pages on his own just for mental training.

Psychology and Mind: I suppose that, over time, your expectations about what you wanted PsicoActiva to be have changed.

M.G.: Indeed our expectations have been changing, for many years we only had it as our own entertainment, to do in our free time, entering informative content to be accessible from anywhere in the world, we had no more expectations than this. Keep in mind that the boom of the Google advertising business and the famous SEO is later.

Honestly, we realized that we could make some profit in terms of advertising on the web in 2009, after a call from a publisher who wanted us to put a banner because we had many visits. We were not even aware of it! We did nothing at all in that sense, and it was then when we started to move the issue of advertising through Google AdSense, at least we started to cover hosting costs, which were beginning to be high. Although as you know, it is difficult to get a reasonable income even having numerous visits.

In any case, we remain focused on our initial objective of disseminating and entertaining, we like doing what we do, because it is still a creative process, a personal project that you set up and manage in your own way, without anyone telling you how to do it or how not to do it, and that is something that is very fulfilling, because it becomes a process of continuous growth at a personal and professional level.

Psychology and Mind: Let's talk about your professional side, in what areas have you worked? Tell us a little about your professional career. Because in addition to being a psychologist you are a nurse. Interesting. I'm sure that knowing both disciplines has been a positive point when it comes to understanding health in broad terms.

M.G.: Curiously, my professional career is somewhat varied, because as you say, I had previously studied nursing, and in fact I had been working as a nurse in a hospital for a few years before starting my psychology degree. But since I studied nursing I have been very interested in psychology and mental health, in fact I chose to do my final year internship in the specialty of psychiatry and I did it in the psychiatric emergency ward of Bellvitge, an experience that I loved and with which I learned a lot. On the other hand, I have to admit that I didn't feel fulfilled as a nurse, so I took a year off to start psychology.

Psychology and Mind: A brave decision.

M.G.: Well, and necessary. I was already married and with a mortgage on my back, so, although I started studying the first year in person, I had to switch to the virtual mode after becoming pregnant with my first child. I can assure you that it is not easy to work outside the home, study a career, take care of the website, do housework and on top of that be a new mother. I think it has been the hardest time I have ever spent in this sense, I do not recommend it to anyone!

Anyway, it is not easy when you already have economic burdens such as mortgage and children, to leave a stable job like the one I had, to launch into the adventure of trying to live in a new profession. There are moments in life when you have to know how to make the right decision not only for you, but also for those around you.

Of course, having knowledge of both disciplines, nursing and psychology, has given me a lot of experience, I have been working alongside psychiatrists, I have dealt with all kinds of patients and you learn from everything.

I finally left nursing four years ago, for reasons of family organization, since I could no longer stretch my schedule or my time to get to everything. So my husband and I talked it over and decided that from then on I would focus only on the website, so that I would have more time to take care of the children.

Psychology and Mind: Going back to the website, it must have been a great effort to write articles on a regular basis to keep providing the site with updated content. How important is dissemination when it comes to building a professional profile on social networks? Has the presence on the Internet helped you professionally?

M.G.: Well, as I was saying before, as I now dedicate myself only to the website, I have more time to elaborate content, although I still lack it, believe it or not. Luckily we also receive requests from professionals who want to publish with us, which provides us with very interesting material on a more or less regular basis.

It is clear that social networks nowadays are essential to obtain a good presence in the network. We started using them a little late, but I think you have to work them regularly and professionally to achieve a good profile, interesting and at the same time open and trustworthy for users, that's how you get to make your brand known in some way.

On the other hand, personally I am not currently dedicated to psychotherapy, partly for lack of time and hours of training in this field, because as you see my career has not been the most common and, honestly, I have not been able to be in everything. But currently I have set up an on-line office where some trusted collaborators offer their services and I can tell you with sincerity, that it is more difficult than it seems to get patients, even if you are well known. On the internet most of the content is free and if you don't sell a product that can be "seen and touched", then people are reluctant to pay for it. Many people write to us asking for psychological help, but when it comes to contracting a paid service they back out, it's as simple as that.

Psychology and Mind: One of your specialties is emotional intelligence. What are the fundamental keys for a person to develop this capacity? Why is emotional intelligence so important to successfully face day-to-day life?

M.G.: The key to the development of any capacity, be it emotional intelligence (EI) or any other, is of course first to want to do it, and then to follow the advice that the professional can give you as many times as necessary until the change takes place. For me it is like the phrase "Genius is made with 1% talent, and 99% work", this is true and valid for practically everything we want to learn or achieve, regardless of what it is.

If we define emotional intelligence we will see that it refers to the human capacity to feel, understand, control and modify the emotional states of oneself and others. It is a type of psychological aptitude that governs and directs our emotions in all senses. It is a way of knowing how to enjoy the events of life from a state of understanding and self-acceptance. It also allows us to know how to act on our shortcomings and at the same time expand our strengths. All this allows us to become aware of our emotions, to understand the feelings of others, to tolerate the pressures and frustrations that we endure both at work and in everyday life, accentuating our ability to work in a team, for example, allowing us to adopt a more empathetic and social attitude in our interpersonal relationships. Adequate EI will ultimately provide us with more possibilities for personal development in all senses.