The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - An Aspiring Psychologist Interviews Dr Marianne

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. episode. With Dr. Marianne Trent Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:33 I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I am a qualified clinical psychologist. So what I love about doing the role that I do in supporting aspiring psychologists is the truly random and wide breadth of different expertise and experiences that you guys have as listeners. And today's podcast is a guest podcast episode with someone I've connected with on LinkedIn. And they are at a much earlier stage of their psychology career and had wanted to ask me some questions. And I said, you know what, this would make a really good podcast episode because other people will likely want to know the answer to your questions too. So would you be up for coming on and asking me on the session so the answer was yes thankfully um and yeah we had a slight glitch um with the wi-fi um for our guest today and so I'm on camera

Starting point is 00:02:36 um but the lovely Ben um we've got we've got a photo but yeah if you're wanting to to watch on YouTube please do come along it's Dr Marianne Trent and whilst you're there to watch on YouTube, please do come along. It's Dr. Marianne Trent. And whilst you're there, click a few likes, make a few comments, and, yeah, get chatty in the comments because that's always really nice to see. You can also, if you're not a fan of listening to podcasts, you can also access the back catalogue of these podcast episodes as blog articles too. To do that you go to www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash blog. I hope you find this episode really useful and I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side. Hi, welcome along to Ben Munro who's joining us for today's podcast episode. Hi.

Starting point is 00:03:26 Thank you so much. And this episode is going to be a little bit different to usual. So for those of you who have listened to episodes before, you might well have heard me say that I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. And I think Ben was like, well, I'm taking her for a word and I'm going to connect with her. And, yeah, we got chatting in the DMs on LinkedIn. well I'm taking I'm taking her for her word and I'm gonna I'm gonna connect with her and um yeah we got chatting um in the DMs on LinkedIn and I was like Ben do you fancy coming on and being a guest on the podcast and you were like ah okay so um to give a bit of context, Ben is a little earlier in his career than most people, well, all people we've had on the podcast so far, which I think is really, really exciting and shows us what a diverse group of people we are reaching with this podcast.

Starting point is 00:04:19 So Ben has told me that he is in his first year of A-levels at college. Is that right, Ben? Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. So it's exciting. I, you know, it's bringing back all sorts of memories when I was doing my A-level psychology. Yeah, exciting times, exciting times.

Starting point is 00:04:39 How are you finding it? It's good, yeah. It's definitely much better than secondary school, sort of a new independence and stuff uh it's great and obviously i'm studying psychology biology and maths and they're all that's like some of my three favorite subjects at gcc it's going real well yeah oh good so we had a little bit of crossover there so i did biology and psychology i thought about maths but my favourite maths teacher wasn't doing the A level syllabus and I was like well no I think I only got my A in maths because of my favourite

Starting point is 00:05:11 maths teacher so I'm going to give that a side swerve oh and you did psychology GCSE you said as well yeah I did yeah yeah yeah it's still quite um like nobody who I know who I didn't go to my school does it so it's quite rare around where I'm from but yeah it's uh it's definitely different today a lot less what's less essays and stuff yeah so what's the dream where do you hope to get to what do you want to do when you're I was gonna say when you're when you're all grown up when you're a proper grown-up but frankly I still don't feel like a proper grown-up so what do you hope will be in your future career um a decline qualification i guess at the end of the day um but i want to be able to help people is the end goal i guess no matter sort of what it ends up being just helping people in general brilliant well I think

Starting point is 00:06:06 that it's really exciting that you know that at this stage of your career because it really helps you to like supercharge the direction that you want to go in really whereas I only discovered or thought that I wanted to be a clinical psychologist pretty much during the last weeks of my undergraduate degree when I was already studying psychology so you know you've got this golden opportunity to really use this time as bonus time and I guess yeah like I know that our purpose of our podcast today is for you to ask me lots of questions um but in your position what I'd be doing is thinking about whether there's any work I could do even now at a level years that is about developing my ability to work with some of the core and key groups that clinical psychologists work with.

Starting point is 00:07:07 So when I was your age, which sounds so patronising, and I'm sorry I just said it, I was working in boots at my weekends. But had I known I wanted to be a psychologist, then I might well have looked to work with adults or um you know children young people older adults I don't know like some sort of care role or something that allowed me to to get a really good head start on that so that I was you know hitting the ground running when I got to university I guess yeah so I worked with the with the vaccination program for COVID doing like sort of the behind the computer um stuff and that sort of helped me sort of get a more feel working for

Starting point is 00:07:53 pay working with patients and you know um and other healthcare professionals like nurses and all sorts yeah really good experience yeah very good lovely so um yeah you have got some questions for me do you want to do you want to fire away yeah so first off i guess what's sort of your day-to-day like day in day out an average day for you what does that look like okay do you want the answer now that i'm in self-employment or do you want the answer as when i was an nhs psychologist or do you want the answer as when I was an NHS psychologist or do you want two answers? A bit of both, go on. A bit of both, okay so let's give me, I'll give you an idea of what my NHS role was like. So my most recent NHS role was working with working age adults in sort of community mental health team. Let me give you an idea, let me try and pick an average day. So I had what's called a job plan, which I had brought with me the kind of

Starting point is 00:08:59 idea of a job plan from a previous service that I worked with. So my weeks always look pretty identical in terms of content. So it meant that I knew where my client bookings were going to be because I had to book the rooms in advance. So if I, for example, pick a Tuesday. So I was peripatetic, which means that I worked out a number of different bases. So I have one key base that I found myself. Yeah, when I was four days a week, I was actually in, I think, five different bases. So it was really frenetic. But I was really keen to be able to deliver the 50% face to face that the service wanted of that grade of staff. And people even told me it's not possible. It's not possible. You can't do it. And I was like, well, that's what I've been recruited to do. I'm gonna, I'm gonna blimmin well, go out there and do it. So my average Tuesday, when I was working most recently, I was using the outpatient department

Starting point is 00:10:08 of a psychiatric hospital and I would break my days down into clinics. So on a Tuesday morning, for example, I would see three clients. I would see a client at nine, a client at 10 and a client at 11, which meant that come 10 to 12, I just then had to write notes and then I was done and I could go and have some lunch and then head off to a different base. So those clients I was seeing, initially we were doing just, you know, waiting list clients. So people that I was seeing initially we were doing um just you know waiting list clients so people that I was doing interventions for um that come to the top of the waiting list for trauma predominantly um but um after a while I began to think we need a group in this service to try and teach some of the stuff that we'd usually do one-to-one so that it speeds up

Starting point is 00:11:06 people's access to the service and so you know often when you're in NHS or employed services groups take up a whole morning and I was like well that's not gonna help the waiting list that's going to make it worse in effect and so I said I want to use one of my existing client sessions but make that like a one-to-many model make it a group so do a whole group within an hour and so that's what I did before I left the service I'd done that twice so we'd done a pilot and then we'd done the whole group so it's what I did before I left the service I'd done that twice so we'd done a pilot and then we'd done the whole group so it's slightly shorter as a 50 minute session but actually in terms of the amount of information we were able to impart and the amount of people we were able to serve within that it was really useful and so you know I pride myself as thinking

Starting point is 00:12:00 outside the box a little bit and then in the afternoon um on a Tuesday I think it was largely um admin time and supervision so supervision for myself which is obviously very important but also supervision for any um aspiring psychologists so either trainees or assistants or honorary assistants um also a bit of time to connect with the team as well in the shared office so hope was that a useful whistle stop tour of an nhs day ben yeah definitely yeah that's that's much more than i thought yeah i'm i'm quite productive yeah i'm productive have you got any questions or you, things that have been triggered for you when hearing that? I guess what are the different challenges of working with, you said working adults, but like different sorts of patients, I guess.

Starting point is 00:12:56 Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the main challenges was that I was doing the bulk of the assessments. I love doing assessments. I find it a real privilege. I was doing the bulk of the assessments because they love doing assessments. I find it a real privilege. I was doing the bulk of the assessments because they were predictable and they're routine. People knew when to put those into my diary. So I would do an assessment on a Friday morning. And I think I'd also do an assessment on a Monday afternoon. It's a couple of years ago now, but Monday afternoon. And so there was two slots where people could book in for assessments but for me one of the main challenges was that I could really connect with people and could really see that they were in need of the service and more than that that they were going to be a good fit for what we had and we're going to respond well to our treatment. So I always used the assessment

Starting point is 00:13:45 sessions to kind of give a flavour of the work and to check that they were able to engage with it. And so for me, knowing that these people were there, they weren't just names on the list to me, they were people, they were people with stories and lives and loves and things that mattered and things that were hurting them. So for me, the biggest challenge was that people were having a wait for that service. And also that sometimes by the time people got to the top of the waiting list, they would disengage or there would be what we call DNA. So did not attend sessions. And it's just, yeah, it's tricky. But, you know know when you get when you pick up a client that just starts flying and does really well and um does come regularly um

Starting point is 00:14:32 you know it's just golden golden stuff it's a real privilege um yeah it's yeah um that sounds like something that i would be interested in like working with like one-to-one sort of with patients and uh like every week or every so often and sort of seeing that progression it was uh something that I'd like to do I think what's the work-life balance like sort of in the NHS I guess in the NHS um for me it was much better when I went part-time so I've got two children which you might well know if you listen to the podcast um you know when I was first qualified I was driving 25 miles each way um through sort of heavy traffic so before I had children you know I had to I worked nine till five and so I was out of the house um you know from 10 to 8 until 10 past six and that's that's a lot five days a week as well as obviously the exhaustion of if

Starting point is 00:15:34 there's traffic and stuff um but I've always been a real fan of lunch breaks I've always taken my break and always taken time to have that away from my desk and to encourage my team to do that with me and so that's something that's been really really lovely actually and really for me helps with the work-life balance so either strolling out to like the local shop or the local deli or eating together and then having a quick stroll or just sitting in sort of communal staff areas and just chatting and connecting and you know forming norming and you know storming in terms of what we do with teamwork um so yeah I think very fondly of my time in the NHS services that I've worked in but it is tricky you know there's a big job um and you know I think we need to make sure that we've got stuff going on outside of work that

Starting point is 00:16:35 this isn't all we do it's tricky because you know um I absolutely think of myself as as being Marianne but part of my identity is that I'm a psychologist and so when I first met my husband he was like why don't you do more why why haven't you got more hobbies and I was like I don't know I'm just kind of fulfilled like you know I spend time with my friends and that's enough for me because I'm already fulfilled by my work. So, you know, that might sound a bit weird, but that's how it is for me. Yeah, I suppose if you enjoy what you do, it's not worth it. In terms of what I do in private practice. So I very much kept the clinic model.

Starting point is 00:17:20 So I do on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, I see three clients and I wanted to keep it. I want to keep it at that. So that that tends to be as many clients as I see in a whole week. So, yeah, I'm done by lunchtime, but I use the afternoons to write for the media or to edit podcasts or to to work on books and courses and projects so I'm definitely not sitting around twiddling my thumbs and on a Monday and a Friday so I've definitely got better work-life balance now that I'm self-employed so on a Monday tends to be a bit of a quieter day for me where I can get through some of the admin the bits and pieces um on a Friday morning I tend to do podcasts on a on a Friday morning I also go out to personal training as well um but yeah I I do media coaching and um yeah I just I love my life actually um so yeah there's uh there's always you know articles I'm being asked to write or that I pitch

Starting point is 00:18:22 for um so yeah I keep myself very busy and try and diversify my portfolio so I'm being asked to write or that I pitch for um so yeah I keep myself very busy and try and diversify my portfolio so I'm not getting burned out or kind of yeah strung out in any particular area yeah um what would you say the key skills to do sort of a job like being a clinical psychologist what sort of skills should I be developing now before I get to? Yeah, good question. Probably they're ones that are pretty tricky to measure, really. But I think it's the ability to have empathy, to be moved by the distress of others, but not in such a way that you're panicking or you're kind of brought into the chaos as well. But, you know, sounds really silly. Why is this the first thing that

Starting point is 00:19:14 comes to me? But long before I was a psychologist, I was reading magazines like That's Life, which you might not have even heard of. But I really liked those kind of weekly magazines that have got human interest case studies in. And like I said, it does sound pretty silly now I think about it. But it gave me a really useful firsthand insight firsthand as much as magazine articles can, but a firsthand insight into the kind of inner thoughts and feelings of real people and to a variety of um yeah presentations and things that happened so the first time I'd read or been aware of people who'd um been sexually abused as children was via that sort of magazine. And so I felt like that gave me a really useful head start in terms of empathy and in terms of the wide array of things

Starting point is 00:20:17 that we need to have some knowledge or experience of in clinical psychology. So absolutely it doesn't matter. i often some you know i will say to clients i'm really sorry i've not heard of that before could you tell me a bit about that and what that's like for you um but you know it does does help if you've either worked with people in a specific um presentation or if you've got some knowledge of that because I think people do feel a bit more at ease you know like you understand their position and so they feel seen and heard and validated and I guess empowered they're hopeful as well so that's probably a rubbish answer you know go to your supermarket buy some magazines but you know just try to get on board with some of the ideas that your future

Starting point is 00:21:07 clients might be struggling with i don't that might be a really rubbish answer then it sort of falls into my next question quite nice actually um what books would you recommend i sort of be reading and sort of types of types of books and stuff like that yeah um so I'd be remiss of me not to say the aspiring psychologist collective and the clinical psychologist collective of course those are must reads for any aspiring psychologist um but I would read a wide array of books including autobiographies so I recently really enjoyed um Michelle Obama's autobiography um where she talks about kind of she really reflects on her intersectionality and how she was able to achieve the things that she achieved even before she met um her husband um and you know what greatness they achieved but how it was

Starting point is 00:22:06 really important for her to you know to connect to unique things that she wanted to achieve and she wanted you know youth specifically to be in a better position when they left office than when they entered it. And so, yeah, just reading, reading widely, really. And yeah, asking questions, reading things that, that evoke conversations for you. So I really, really like the works of Yalom, Irvin Yalom, I-R-V-I-N, Yalom, Y-A-L-O-M. So his, but my favourite book of his is Love's Executioner. And within that, he's very honest, as he talks about his different, some of his different clients that he's worked with and the journeys they've made, but also his own kind of personal reflections on what it's like to be their therapist. Another really nice book by him, which is called Staring at the Sun. And that's all about people with death anxiety and working with not even

Starting point is 00:23:19 necessarily all older adults, but people that are considering for whatever reason their own mortality. And I just really like his style of writing. So yeah, for anyone who's probably at any stage of their psychology career, but certainly at the stage that you're at, I think it's a sort of book that you can read now with the understanding that you've got now but as you progress through your career pick it up again and you know read it again because you'll you'll get more in a different way from it once you've got different thoughts experiences and reflections to draw upon yeah yeah that sounds i'll give that a look um so my next question would be what sort of opportunities are there for progression like through the nhs you might not know i've been

Starting point is 00:24:15 like private nowadays but going like through up the nhs ladder i guess yeah good question so um i before i started training i was a band four assistant psychologist and then i got on to training which was um a band six trainee clinical psychologist role and then you qualify at band seven i actually left my band seven post, even though I adored it. And even though I'm still in contact with some of the people I worked with on an almost daily basis. Well, we've got a WhatsApp group and, you know, they were just lovely, you know, just my tribe. But they didn't have any at that time. They didn't have any progression roles available. And so when I qualified, we were quite fresh out of. So actually, when I qualified, there were no qualified jobs around because I don't know how much you know about, you know, mid-naughties financial culture. But in 2008, there was a big crash due to mortgages and things

Starting point is 00:25:28 and Northern Rock and all of that jazz. And it meant that there was a recession when I graduated 2011. And there were literally, you know, by the time we graduated, there was only two out of 16 of us on my cohort who had jobs. And so there just there wasn't much funding, I think there would be cuts made to funding places for training for the doctorate as well. So by the time I finished, I think my cohort had been reduced to 10 for new people coming on for my course whereas during training I was 15 one of 15 and then I think the following year they'd increased it to 17 and then I think it

Starting point is 00:26:14 might have gone up slightly again but by the time I finished it crept down for the new uptake to 10 which is a lot smaller so there just wasn't that level of focus on the importance of mental health and funding it, which is really unfortunate, actually. And I don't think the same thing will happen again, you know, with any future recession. Some people are saying, well, there's been a bit of growth in the economy in the last quarter. So that means technically, we can't be in recession. But, you you know I think we're still thinking that some element of recession is likely especially with the cost of living crisis and so I would hope that there won't be cuts in mental health funding and actually the opposite would be true this time

Starting point is 00:26:59 yeah I've forgotten your question did I did I answer it I can't even remember yeah yeah um what sort of what do you think the progression maybe not progression I don't know oh yeah it was let me come let me come back to that bit of question then so um I left the um the band seven position I was in because as much as they loved me and my work and I loved them and the work there wasn't that there wasn't that progression opportunity at that time and so I moved on to an 8a um which was actually closer to homes it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't all bad at all and I learned many many things and made lovely connections there too um but when it came to thinking about 8B, there were opportunities and I had been interviewed for 8B opportunities. But at the time, I think they've changed it since at the time, if you, even if you're part time, when you did a band above, you had to pay full pension

Starting point is 00:28:01 contributions, even though I was only part time. And so I actually would have been worse off for more responsibility. So for me, that was that wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. I didn't want to work harder for less money. And whilst it isn't all about the money, you know, it sure does help make things a bit easier to organise in your life um so there are progression opportunities and um you know I've got friends working in 8b roles um I don't know if I've yet got anyone working I think I did have a friend working in 8c but she moved roles um and I think went back down to 8b at some point so there is progression um but it's not really something that I was that passionate about to be honest yeah that's fair enough um I love client work

Starting point is 00:28:54 you see and the further and further up you go the less and less client work you tend to do and I love it um what do you think so obviously now going private is it is how much different is your experience like working with clients? So it is different I'd say the most similarities are health insurance funded work so that's when it most feels like the NHS work. And by that, I mean, people that work for organisations that fund healthcare for their employees. So there's a number of large employees in the UK that you might not even realise fund health cover for their employees. And I'd say that's the work that most feel similar to the nhs um you get people that are really motivated especially if they're self-funding um yeah it's

Starting point is 00:29:54 it's different it's different but still humans you know and we've still all been raised in ways that give us experiences that are not ideal and give us ideas about ourselves and it's still about spreading the value and importance of compassion and self-compassion to compassion to others compassion to self um and yeah seeing what i can do to help people work through grief depression and trauma so you know my work hasn't changed massively it's just that I've cut out all the levels of bureaucracy and all the meetings about meetings about meetings and so I'm able to get my feet on the ground and help people at the point that they need it which feels like a real luxury compared to a couple of years wait on a waiting list yeah yeah that's yeah that's my question perfectly i think um so in between the

Starting point is 00:30:53 sort of point where i am now and getting qualified do you think the system will have changed with mental health obviously it's a growing growing fields more more attention in the media and there's that so do you think it will will be a different sort of profession good question so um there is a move towards you know psychologists especially clinical ones are often regarded as an expensive resource by um by hr and other departments um uh but what i think once people have worked with clinical psychologists and other professionally qualified psychologists as well um they see the value of that they see the value of that for teams and they see the value of that for the clients that we serve. But that's not always necessarily seen in the same way as commissioners who are like, well, we could get these band six members of staff, we could get three of those for the price of, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:56 we could get four of those for the price of an 8B psychologist, you know, if the 8B is at the top of their tree. But, you know, I think there was certainly at one stage a move towards um yeah less trained and less experienced staff um but i hope there will always be a role for professionally qualified psychologists um because I see there's a real value so you know so you are in you know you're I guess you're probably 16 or 17 currently I was I was a young baby so I was a June baby so in your position I was 16 um and I didn't start my qualification and start my training until I was 27. And I graduated age 30. So, you know, you've got perhaps 14 ish years, you'll probably get there quicker than me. I went off traveling around

Starting point is 00:32:52 the world as well. So I do encourage you to do that too. But you'll probably get there quicker than me. What will mental health services be like in 14 years? I don't know. I really, really hope and pray that there will still be an NHS. So even though I don't work in the NHS, I'm a passionate supporter of it. And I really believe in people having access to free health care at the point of delivery. So I would really hope there's still an NHS for you to work in and for clients to to serve Ben yeah yeah I agree um I think that's sort of all the questions I've got unless you've got anything else you'd like to say I think I'm you've answered everything uh amazingly

Starting point is 00:33:39 oh thanks Ben um no I think yeah I think we've covered it we've covered a lot of ground but um how has it been interviewing me what's it been like for you yeah it's been good yeah definitely different to anything i've had before so yeah i having good experience yeah I was meaning to drum up some other questions as well and I will level with you all dear listeners that I had a diary malfunction this morning and Ben very set very politely sent me a message saying ready when you are and I was like oh man I was I hadn't done I hadn't even sent you a link to access recording and I was I followed you on socials like I said I would and then I was supposed to drum up some um some other questions and I'm so sorry busy week busy minds um but yeah you did really well with the questions um that you

Starting point is 00:34:39 brought to me so thank you again um for your time um we had a little bit of a wi-fi um hiccup which is why ben's not on um not on camera but we're going to get a lovely picture so you'll be able to see his face um yes but thank you so much for your enthusiasm your intrigue wishing you the very best with your a levels um do let me know how you get on um and if you need any support or guidance in future thank you yeah thank you honestly what a privilege to chat with ben at this stage of his career and i'm looking forward to to seeing how his career develops and unfolds if you've got any ideas for podcast episodes that you think would be useful, do please get in contact with me. You can fill in my contact form at www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash podcast. I hope you found this session useful. And if you would welcome any

Starting point is 00:35:42 additional support, do consider the aspiring psychologist membership the aspiring psychologist collective book and the clinical psychologist collective book too right i will look forward to catching up with you for our next episode of the podcast which will be coming to you from 6 a.m on monday, thank you so much for being part of my world, and I'll catch up with you very soon. Take care. and qualified so many tips and lessons to learn from so many things that you can try the aspiring

Starting point is 00:36:31 psychologist collective the aspiring psychologist collective Psychologist Collective My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become

Starting point is 00:37:47 one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay but trust me you will not put the book down once you start

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - An Aspiring Psychologist Interviews Dr Marianne

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.