ALLOWING a safe space for people to express their emotions and helping them process them in a healthy way is what Jone Etuate Veisamasama aims for everyday.
As a therapist working for a private company in Suva, Mr Veisamasama deals with clients and their individual issues, whether it be about their own families or the stresses of life.
With an amazing support system growing up, he was able to value the importance of family and hard work, a trait that was instilled in him at a very young age.
“I grew up in a very communal family, I was always surrounded by cousins and uncles,” Mr Veisamasama said.
“I don’t think I can remember a time where I wasn’t surrounded by extended family members; there was always room for us to share.
“I think that was one of the biggest things I was taught while growing up, and being in that space taught me the values of how to be someone who supported different people.”
Blessed to have been born to parents who taught him and his siblings how to love and be loved, it was their family values and routines which shaped him to be the person he is today.
“My late parents were very supportive of the things we did.
“Growing up, we always had a certain time for devotion. We always had to do our homework on time and our chores, so I think I respected the value of hard work, and I respected the value of being just a good person.
Being a therapist wasn’t something he planned to become. The 30-year-old said he “stumbled upon the field by accident”.
Initially, he studied to be an architect because that was something he thought would suited his persona.
“As I was doing that, I had a lot of questions about myself, I had a lot of questions that I thought needed answers and I went into this rabbit hole, and I stumbled upon psychology. It helped me understand some of the things I was going through at the time, and it also made me understand other people.
“In the end, even though I stumbled upon this field by accident, it provided a lot of light in terms of how I understood this light and how it works.
Eight years in the psycho-therapy space has given him an understanding of how people think and act the way they do.
He worked in different organisations before going private.
“The work I do is very confidential. We try to create a space where we value mental health and provide systems that allow you to work on your mental health in a way where you’re moving forward, and you can be productive.
“The work has been really rewarding, and I can honestly say that this is something that’s geared towards what I’ve always wanted to do.
“Because at the end of the day, it’s just us being able to help people understand a lot more about themselves, so we don’t really keep count of the people we’ve counselled.
“My mom would always say, ‘Leave the world better than you found it’. That was always something she’d drilled into us and I think that sort of created the foundation for us to move forward and just do good by others and do good by ourselves as well, which has projected onto my work now.”
Mr Veisamasama is a graduate of Edith Cowan University in Western Australia with a master’s in counselling and psychotherapy. He continues to shed light on protecting and understanding mental health with the help of social media through his page Mindflow.
Jone Etuate Vaisamasama. Picture: ELIKI NUKUTABU
