Elise Phillipson was 45 when she returned to university, on what she calls her “second or third life”. She had first studied hotel management; as a nine-year-old growing up in Hong Kong, she asked her father what she should be, and he suggested she work in a hotel.
In adulthood, she retrained as an English teacher, married and raised two children. By the time her youngest started primary school, she found herself wondering again what occupation was right for her.
Her husband urged her to look at the books on their shelves. “Psychology,” he said. As a teenager, she had briefly considered the profession, but there was a stigma – “only crazy people study psychology”.
Yet friends always came to her with their problems; it was as if “good listener” was tattooed on her forehead, she laughs. Eventually, she took degrees in psychology and counselling, then completed a master’s while living in Hong Kong.
In 2022, at the age of 52, she started practising as a psychotherapist.
“It felt really natural,” Phillipson says, “like this is what I’m meant to do.”