The first thing you notice about Kelly Weekers is that she has honest eyes, which I suppose is expected for a psychologist who specializes in authenticity. The model-turned-psychologist and author of three books, including the recently released Choosing Me: Staying True to Yourself and Living the Life You Want, has had an exciting career, even winning the 2011 title of Miss Netherlands Universe.
Weekers was interested in psychology first. Her modeling career was more of an accident.
“My true passion is psychology, and it’s been that way since I was 10-years-old,” she says. “I always read books that were about self-development [and] self-help, and 20 years ago, that was kind of unique because people weren’t really into the whole well-being and psychology thing yet.”
Kelly Weekers—an accidental model
“I had a wonderful childhood, but we didn’t have a lot,” Weekers shares. “Everyone had to work. I found myself doing these little jobs around our town that we lived in. But again and again, I was scouted as [a model]… I only knew that it would earn me more money, so I was like, ‘OK, maybe I should try it.’”
Modeling took off quickly for Weekers. After completing her bachelor’s degree in 2011, she decided to give it a year.
“I was wrapping up my bachelor’s degree in psychology and neuroscience and everyone said you have to go full time; you have to go to Milan and Paris,” she recalls. “OK, this is everybody’s dream. So I should love this; I should do this.”
“Then the worst year of my life followed where I was so insecure,” Weekers says. “It was way before the whole #MeToo scandal came out. For top models, it was [maybe] an amazing world to be in, but for everyone just below it was a tricky, tricky world to be in.”
After modeling for a year, Weekers decided to step away and finish her master’s degree. She maintains that becoming a psychologist was always her intention, although people often talk about her pivoting her career.
“It was always a true passion,” Weekers says. “And it showed me that if you chase someone else’s dream, you will end up feeling very miserable.”
Weekers said that celebrity clients were drawn to her because of their shared experience living in the public eye, feeling insecure and hunted down.
“I understood them perfectly,” Weekers adds.
…And a deliberate author
Weekers maintained a full-time caseload for some time. “It was back-to-back days, five days a week, fully booked,” she recalls. “My entrepreneurial side said, ‘OK, I also want to have some freedom. It’s pretty tough hearing everyone else’s drama five days a week for eight hours straight. So that’s why I changed it up. I started writing books because I love to write.”
Weekers is now mainly focused on her books and her media work, still seeing clients very exclusively—a perfect fit for the self-described introvert.
“Writing, I love it,” Weekers says. “Being in your own zone, and I still feel like I’m helping lots of people. That’s why I’m also happy that my books became such bestsellers and sold so many copies. I know that I’m still helping people, but they don’t have to sit with me.”
A focus on authenticity
Weekers’ specialty is authenticity—she works with her clients to help them understand why they make the choices that they do.
“Psychology helped me to ask myself the question, ‘Why do you do what you do?’” Weekers explains. “So many things we do now, like on autopilot, are patterns that are coming from our childhood or something that happened to us. It isn’t always a trauma, but it’s still how your parents loved you and what you felt was necessary to show and receive love.”
“That’s what my books thereafter were about: the power of choice, or choosing me. You have a choice to do things differently,” she adds. “What I always say is to go from automatic pilot to your authentic pilot. Who are you truly? Who are you really? Try to think and feel and do as that person that aligns with who you want to be.”
The truth about self-love
According to Weekers, self-love is more than treating yourself to a bath bomb or a fancy dessert.
“Self-love is so commercialized,” she says. “I think self-love is more about being your own best friend and getting into that zone. That could be filling up that bath for you and reading your book, but it’s also acknowledging your own bullshit… Self-love is not about buying anything and it’s not about screaming in the mirror every day that [you’re] the most fantastic person ever. It’s seeing what you’re good at and seeing what you suck at—and being OK with it!”
Weekers is skeptical about social media as our lens into the world. It’s easy to write other people off as having the wrong type of energy. Authenticity is also about being able to acknowledge when you’re the problem.
“Sometimes you yourself bring that toxic energy,” she notes. “It’s also about really looking yourself in the eye and saying, ‘Where do I come from? What do I have to change to be a kinder person to myself and others and to love myself as I would expect others to love me?’”
Photo by Emma Peijnenburg/Courtesy of Kelly Weekers.