Before switching to psychology Samayoa was pre-med at CCRI for two years. He did well in his classes but his experiences during his volunteer hours at hospitals changed his career path. Samayoa said, “Sometimes I would see the same doctor everyday, every week, drained, unmotivated and just clearly not for the patients, so that’s not the path I wanted to go into.”

   Samayoa was working with one of his patients who was SI (suicide Ideation) with hyper aggressive tendencies towards others and themselves. The patient was around pre-teen years, and Samayoa went into their room to talk with them for a consult. Samayoa said, “With full knowledge that this was a patient who was aggressive towards others, I could also tell that just by the conversation method they were implementing, that in in other words they just sounded constantly pissed off.” Out of instinct Samayoa flipped the script of the conversation and implemented small aggressive tendencies into his speech as well. This allowed for Samayoa to see the patient change and open up to him and connect with him. This in turn led to a therapeutic relationship between Samayoa and his patient.

   This patient opened up Samayoa’s eyes to the power of psychology. From that point on he decided to go into a lot of psychotherapy consults and this led him to choose psychology as his career. 

   Primarily Samayoa works with pediatric patients and feels overall he is better with children. However, he has veered into working with late adolescents, adults and the elderly. Samayoa said, “There’s specific criteria for each stage of life so that’s why I say I work with different groups.”

   At Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Samayoa had a young patient around nine or ten that was transitioning from one gender to the other. Samayoa talked about watching this child struggle with their own identity and also struggle physically with their own bodies’ changes. This young child Samayoa explained, felt trapped in a body they didn’t think belonged to them and had to overcome these feelings of questioning themselves. 

   This experience was very insightful and impactful for Samayoa. He said, “The struggle of identity is very much human. It’s not something that any specific gender, sex, color or ethnicity can say that only they struggle with it, everyone does.” However, when someone as young as the patient Samayoa had goes through this crisis it is especially hard to watch. Samayoa said you have to individualize the situation for them and not broaden it too much. The patient needs as much support as possible from everyone around them.  

   In regards to his future, Samayoa said, “Things will go where they’re meant to go according to how hard I am working and how hard I will work.”