There are such funny pictures on the Internet “my job through the eyes of my parents/friends/clients.” And there usually paradoxically different views are obtained. So sometimes I receive feedback from clients and acquaintances that my work is probably gloomy. Hear human grief, see tears, see people as they do not want to see themselves. And one gets the impression from the outside that it is difficult and carries an endless amount of negativity. And I say no. My work is a joy for me. She brings me light and pleasure. And no, not because I’m such a monster that I get sick of other people’s negative emotions, no. And why – that’s what I’ll try to talk about now. But first I’ll have to resort to some theoretical speculations. I highly recommend everyone to read the book by the American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “Flow. Psychology of optimal experience." This book is about happiness. About how any activity, organized in a certain way, becomes happiness (such an activity is called flow, and the experience itself is called flow). Such an organization of happiness includes several components: 1) The task that a person sets for himself must be feasible. 2) The person must be able to concentrate. 3) Concentration of attention becomes possible because the task set allows one to clearly formulate goals and immediately receive feedback connection.4) During the activity, the subject’s passion is so high that he forgets about everyday worries and problems.5) The activity performed allows a person to feel control over his own actions.6) At the moment of performing the action, awareness of one’s self seems to disappear, but after the end of the flow episode, it becomes stronger than before. 7) There is a change in the perception of the passage of time: hours turn into minutes, and minutes can stretch into hours. Subject to these conditions, any activity can bring joy. Csikszentmihalyi talks in his book about factory workers who turned their monotonous, monotonous work into flow activities. But the very beauty of work in psychological counseling and psychotherapy, in my opinion, lies in the fact that its success is possible only with a certain flow organization. High-quality work with clients is possible only with full concentration on the client (and you, in some sense, dissolve in him and do not exist), only with awareness of the boundaries of your competence (this is about the feasibility of tasks). And at the exit, however, there is a feeling that time and the whole world outside the walls of the office have stopped. And this is happiness. The happiness of a job well done. And this is not about the content, but about the form, it turns out. So, it seems to me, the joy of working for a good psychotherapist is inevitable!))) Well, for me personally, happiness is about meeting with the inner world of a person. For me, a person (both individual and in theoretical research) is more interesting than anything else. More interesting than travel, music, entertainment. So for me psychology is the joy of both form and content.