The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Compare & Contrast: Irish Vs UK Psychology Training

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 125: Comparing the Irish & UK Psychology Training with Dr Leora DeFlumereThank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. In this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast, we speak with Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Leora DeFlumere, a psychologist who has worked in different parts of the world! If you have thought about training elsewhere outside of the world or considered moving abroad after qualification, then this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast is for you! Join us as we explore the differences between the UK’s trusty NHS and the equivalent in Ireland, the differences in doctoral training across the world, Leora’s journey into the world of psychology and private practice which involves supporting parents into transitioning to parenthood. Leora also shares her top tip in reducing burnout and explores the concept of “matrescence”. We hope you find it so useful.I’d love any feedback you might have, and I’d love to know what your offers are and to be connected with you on socials so I can help you to celebrate your wins!The Highlights: (00:00): Introduction (01:36): Introducing Dr. Leora DeFlumere(02:36): What is HSE and is it similar to the NHS at all?(04:42): Doctoral pathways in Ireland and are they as competitive?(11:32): How similar are the issues we face in the NHS in Ireland?(14:47): Brexit and political impacts on healthcare systems (16:07): Leora’s journey to psychology (20:01): How transferrable are degrees across the world? (23:28): Leora’s current work (26:50): Parenthood, life & trauma(30:09): I’ve never heard of “Matrescence” – what is it? (31:42): Connect with Leora(32:20): Leora’s top tip to reducing burnout (34:54): Summary and CloseLinks:📲 To connect with Leora on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leoradeflumere/ and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegentlepsychologist/ 🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree:

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,

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. Get ready as we dive into the fascinating world of psychology with a Celtic twist. We are

going on a cross-country road trip as we compare and contrast how Ireland and the UK train and qualify their counselling psychologists. But that's not all. We're also spilling the Barry's tea on how you can or cannot travel and work internationally once you're a qualified psychologist. So grab your favourite cuppa, stay tuned and I hope you find this really useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. My name is Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Thank you so much for choosing me to help you learn more about the world of psychology and mental health. Do please come along and download my free guide for the DeclinSci, which is a doctorate in clinical psychology, which also includes lots of useful tips and guidance

for anyone embarking on professional psychology applications. You can do that by coming along to my website www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk and then check out the free resources option. You can also click any of the links in my show notes or any of the links in my social media. Come and follow me everywhere I'm Dr. Marianne Trent. Let's dive in and meet our guest for today. Hi, I just want to welcome our guest for today, Dr. Leora de Flumery. Hi. Hi, it's so good to be here this morning. How are you, Marianne? I'm really well, thank you. So thank you for connecting with me. We connected on Instagram

this time, didn't we? And we got to chatting in the DMs about whether a podcast episode might be really interesting. And I think it will be. So we're going to be talking about kind of all things today, but qualifying and training in Ireland, living and working in Ireland. But also, I think you said originally that you were born in America and then moved over from the States to Ireland. So we're going to kind of talk about that and we're going to talk about individual differences between what we think might be the Irish programme for counselling psychology and the UK programme. And I thought it was about time we did an episode with someone based in Ireland who is working there because actually my second biggest audience for the podcast is in Ireland so delighted to have you here. I'm delighted to be here and I'm not surprised that it's the second largest audience there is so much overlap between people who are qualifying in Ireland and

UK we go back and forth a fair bit. Yeah good well one of the first differences I've noticed already is that you mentioned in our pre-chat about the HSE. Could you tell us a little bit about the HSE and how that differs from the NHS, if indeed it does? Great question. So I am not an expert, I suppose, in the HSE. I work in private practice at the moment. I did complete my placements during my training, primarily within the HSC, actually all within the HSC. So my placements were in adult mental health, in primary care for children, adolescents, families, all that stuff, and also some assessment work in there.

And then my third year placement was in psycho-oncology in a HSC hospital. The reason why I paused there is because it wasn't kind of your typical psychologist training and practicum or placement opportunity but it wasn't a hsc hospital so it was more acute hospital treatment setting um so the difference is i have not worked in the nhs i do not know a whole lot about it in the hsc i just have my placement experiences so the hsc is it takes an mdt approach i'll just outline kind of what i'm aware of about the hsc and you let me know where the differences are i suppose we take an mbt approach and it is psychiatrist-led and that's slowly changing where psychologists are taking on a little bit more leadership within each team every team is going

to have an occupational therapist um it's going to have an SLT, it's going to have all those people in the allied health services that are working together under the leadership of a psychiatrist. Is it psychiatrist led within the NHS typically or do psychologists lead psychological teams? I've wondered that. It tends to be so it's it has traditionally been that way but it is changing and there are some psychology-led teams or even even nurse-led teams you know so but generally speaking in the most part certainly in inpatient units I would say in the most part it's still psychiatry-led but not exclusively. Yeah so I'm trying to think about other potential differences that there might be the differences for for the people who are going to be listening

to this podcast I suppose would be that recently counselling psychologists have received funding from the HSE so that means that you're paid a salary as you would be for clinical psychology training programs but in both the UK and in Ireland. Basically, what that means is that you are supposed to work for the HSE as a counselling psychologist and as a clinical psychologist in those first couple of years post-qualification, which I believe is the same in the UK, but there is kind of an expectation that you might work within a public health service. There isn't actually. So when you do your training in clinical psychology, they're offering you a fixed term period of employment as a trainee clinical psychologist. But there's no prerequisite

that you must work in the NHS post qualification. Obviously, they are hoping you will. But certainly in my case, when I qualified qualified in 2011 there were no jobs available and so I was unemployed for a period of time and so whilst that has changed now and now usually people are getting jobs even when they're in their last year of training um you know it was it's bleak times and it was like I did do a little bit of kind of you know research work and stuff for myself but you know I was fortunate I was able to get an NHS role but there's no you're not you're not contracted to say that I will work for this period of time I wonder if that might change ultimately because as private practice

becomes more and more popular and more and more viable and people think about the work-life balance that's perhaps afforded from doing that I wonder if that will change but currently that's not the case so in ireland there there would be kind of the expectation for clinical psychology um clinical psychologists once you complete your program that you would be working for the hsc for a little bit um i don't again i'm not a clinical psychologist, so I haven't looked at the contracts. I don't know whether that's pressure that people kind of fall into and people don't want to, people don't want to step on toes or whether it is actually contractually obligated. Cancelling psychology trainees have only received funding in the past six months to a year. Prior to

that, it was entirely self-funded doctoral programs and it was like in the UK incredibly competitive to get into these training programs um we're talking I think that the numbers were there were 480 applicants the year that I applied to about 45 to 50 slots available around the country um in clinical training programs. For the counseling training program, I think that it was 150 applicants for my cohort, which took in 14. So again, it's similarly competitive. There are similar expectations to my understanding of working in relevant settings beforehand. And then you're put on this three-year professional doctoral training program within the counseling doctoral program and you're expected to

do a research phd level piece of research um so you're held to like the proper viva it's not that you're doing a doctoral service project you're doing a full dissertation which would be a difference I suppose between the counselling psychology doctorate and the clinical psychology doctorate to my understanding here I hope that answers some questions at least there are lots of differences yeah I mean the one that will be very exciting for our listeners if they're based in the UK is the idea that actually you guys have managed to secure paid funding for counselling so I'd imagine that the rates of applicants will go up considerably now in Ireland for counselling because I don't know why this has

perpetuated in the UK it doesn't seem For me, they're often advertising qualified band seven clinical or counselling psychologists. You know, they're essentially saying, it's fine. You know, you can do the same job. So why the inequity? It's not right. To my understanding, so there's been a lot of work behind the scenes here in Ireland to secure that funding for the past, honestly, 15, 20 years going on. To my understanding, there is an understanding within the healthcare providers that our trainings are so comparable. You and I were even discussing in our pre-chat there that in Ireland, it sounds like counselling psychologists receive even more similar training to clinical psychologists than counselling psychologists would in the UK, where we receive placement opportunities from childhood all the

way up through adulthood. We're encouraged to take on older adult placements. We have a multitude of placements. Some people do ID placements. You really receive comparable training. But from my understanding, it's that HR hasn't really understood that the two programs are similar um genuinely like I've heard that there is just this little this delay in being oh wait do you have a lack of qualified providers who can actually help people with their mental health and we have this entirely untapped group of psychologists who are coming out every year um we only got that funding recently so that means that many of us would go into more private sector work um if you did qualify before this group

and this cohort that's just starting in now um that being said many counselling psychologists work in the public health service of my friends the majority are working in the HSE a couple are working in the Irish prison service there's incredible work happening in the Irish prison service that counselling psychologists are specifically well suited to perform in my opinion but also a lot of people in private work like myself it's just really interesting it's really useful and it almost seems like Ireland get it more than you know than than the UK do at the moment so I think you know certainly some of the work that my one of my colleagues Dr Tara Quincharillo is doing she's absolutely demonstrating her capabilities as a qualified counselling psychologist she does lots of work in the media but I think even in our disciplines as a clinical psychologist it's only really in the last few

years we've realised how similar they are yeah can I ask what might feel like quite a naive question so in the NHS you know you in essence get free at the point of delivery healthcare from cradle to grave is that the same with the Hse that's the promise is it the delivery i don't know um yeah so there's not so it's fun it's funded by taxpayers in the same way as the nhs is it yes there you you have access in terms of mental health care you have access to public mental health care your whole life that being said waiting lists are very, very tricky and very long comparably. I think in Wexford, so I'm in Wicklow, which is just south of Dublin, Wexford is just the county south of that. Wexford had very, very long waiting lists last year. I think that we're talking like 18 month

to two year waiting lists for child mental health service. and obviously people do age out then and it gets quite tricky um in terms of assessments in terms of assessment of needs does somebody need to go for specific assessments it gets really tricky quite quickly so yes that's the promise okay and is hse only mental health care or do they do broken legs and i don't know it's everything it's everything and hSE is the health body for everything um so it's mental health care it's physical health care it's cancer care it's it's everything yeah but you also can opt into the private sector you can opt into the private sector for all of those services as well which is the same in the UK yes absolutely thank you um

just uh in case our listeners obviously we're in ireland you absolutely get yes but you know i think part of my role as you know a mental health and psychology advocate is to help illuminate what's happening just over that small patch of water um and you know it i find it baffling really with, with Northern Ireland. Like literally you could be living next door to someone that is seen by the NHS or is training in the NHS and you're with the HSE. I find that bonkers. It's wild.

It is, it is. I've heard it's easier to access treatment in the NHS. There are, I'm thinking back to people in my master's so prior to my doctoral training two people from my master's are currently training at oxford um in the clinical psychology doctoral program there are lots of people who choose to go the uk route just because there are so many more universities that do offer uh clinical training programs and counseling psychology doctoral programs um so i very much understand that do offer clinical training programmes and counselling, psychology, doctoral programmes. So I very much understand that.

Over here in Ireland, we're a much smaller country. We're much smaller. We're 5 million people. That's it. I was over in Galway for the Irish Psychological Society conference in September and I absolutely loved it. And I loved that it felt so much smaller and everyone was so friendly I felt like I was a natural natural born Irish woman like everyone

was so friendly and chatty and I was like these are my people like you know it's it's one of the it's one of the perks of being in a smaller country is that we are a smaller network so you know people who are working just over the border in Wexford you know people who are working for Jigsaw which is our young people's mental health service that makes it even easier for people 18 to 26 to access care you know people who are working in all of these different services it's very easy to kind of find your feet here in Ireland and to come at home professionally, to be honest. So with the whole Brexit situation, has it made it trickier for people in Ireland to come over to the UK or is that still as easy or straightforward as it ever was? As easy as it ever was and will continue to be indefinitely british universities to my

understanding are treating irish applicants as though they're applying from within the uk um so that means that you qualify for if you're going to a program that's fee paying um you qualify for in uk fees which is great um i'm not sure because I don't know personally, I haven't actually asked people about kind of whether they're able to take on the role of trainee clinical psychologist. I assume you are, if you are Irish, because if you're Irish, you're allowed to work in the UK with no work permit. And that would probably meet the threshold then for you to be able to get paid by the NHS. Yeah. OK. Yeah. All right. So there really is. And there's also British Psychological Society also basically says if you're targeted with the PSI,

the Psychological Society of Ireland, it's a really smooth application process to get those qualifications mutually recognised both ways. Great. They they understand. We have a land border. People drive up and down it all the time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for illuminating that for us. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your early years. You were born in America.

When did you move? When did you move over to Ireland? So I have only been here for six years now and so I was born and raised in America and sometimes people can't really tell from my accent but sometimes people when I say it they go oh yeah. You sound Irish to me rather than American. It's kind of in the middle, it's a bit embarrassing on both sides to be honest um so yeah born and raised in the United States um North Carolina is where I grew up which is in the south because that's confusing and then I went to college in Massachusetts at Mount Holyoke

College and then I took a year to just kind of figure out what I wanted to do, really. I did corporate consulting, kind of found my feet for a little bit, realised that I was not fulfilled. So did you do psychology in college in America? So I did a double major. So I did anthropology and I did psychology. So a lot of my anthropological research was doing fieldwork, that of stuff i was in iceland for about three months um and then psychology i followed what would be a pretty standard psychological training program in the undergrad years um that being said so when i decided to come on over to ireland my wife had actually moved over to ireland for her doctorate and then went back to america met me we were together for a couple

of years and then I went oh I want to go to grad school and she was like oh have you thought about Ireland that's where all my friends in my 20s are let's let's think about it. When I applied for master's programs I applied to Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin and to the University of Edinburgh um obviously that one's not in Ireland I just really like Edinburgh I think it's a fantastic city um so I applied to those Masters programs Edinburgh said yes absolutely we'd love to have you UCD went oh you have a double major that means that you didn't study psychology and I was like oh no no I actually I have two BAs that is what a double major means is I have I have two bachelors I did two at the

same time and then they went oh no no that doesn't make sense um so I then asked them I was like oh um am I missing any specific courses and they're like oh you have to go to the Psychological Society of Ireland to see if it's the same have to go to the Psychological Society of Ireland to see if it's the same. So I went to the Psychological Society of Ireland, I contacted them, and I was like, what am I missing here? Because I have all of the courses that are listed as what makes up a psychology bachelor's program. And they were like, well, because you did the both,

it's not the same as having done one. It makes you doubly good, doesn't it? That's how I would see that. You would think. So I was just very confused. Trinity had no issues with it, though. They understood kind of the double major thing. Trinity would have a very large international student population. So I went to do my master's there and then when I was applying to a doctorate in counselling psychology they then had me go back to the PSI and be like but is did you actually

receive your undergrad we know you've got your master's but did you get your undergrad so I actually I knew the president of the Psychological Society of Ireland at the time um again very small world in Ireland professionally, which is great in many ways. It's very easy to find your people and to find your feet again. So I happened to know him and he was like, this is completely fine.

Of course, you've gotten your bachelor's. He had to write me a letter though, basically saying that my undergrad counted and then I was able to do the doctorate. So it's really a story of just different countries having different systems of education. It's very tricky to transfer qualifications from America anywhere else. It's very tricky to transfer qualifications from Ireland or the UK to America. It just doesn't really happen because it's a state-by-state situation because we've

completed our training programs in the UK or in Ireland though we have more flexibility there is more understanding to my to my understanding of what those psychology programs entail so we could go fairly easily to Australia we could go fairly easily to to obviously the UK like there's just more flexibility within the anglophone world if you're not actually training in America which is very odd yeah I think the same is true for us so we could go to New Zealand or Australia relatively easily but I think basically if I went to America I'd have to start again like I think basically if I went to America, I'd have to start again. Like, I think that's I think that's generally sort of what it would look like. So during Covid, we suffered a bereavement in the family and I very much considered going back to America just to be closer to family. I contacted around 10 different states and just being like, here's what my qualifications are.

I have my undergrad, I have my master's, I have my doctorate. Here's what my doctorate was in here. Here's exactly how it was received, all that stuff. Here's my professional experience. Here's what I'm doing now. Everything that you would want from a professional portfolio. And again, I'm as terminally qualified as you can be. And I was told in no uncertain terms by one state in particular that they would prefer to have me do an online doctorate program that would cost me $70,000 a year for six years. us out loud and clear doesn't it so even though your your college education was America and you are an American citizen presumably we now with dual nationality for Ireland uh not quite yet but very soon yes okay all right um yeah like that's that's just wild isn't it like come and study for another six years and give us all this money then we might let you it's state by state in america and that's something that people don't often under don't don't

recognize um that i just might have stumbled into a particularly stringent state they also did not accept any electronically delivered files they said that i would have to bring in um everything in paper format so oh wow maybe it was just a really tricky stage we'll see um there were two states that looked a little bit more um amenable to international qualifications and those were california and new york because my theory is that's where people would kind of live that's where the movers and the shakers are my friend well it's where it's where let's say if you have a partner who's in finance or let's say you have a partner who's involved in film or if you have a partner in tech like that's where they would have job opportunities and of course there are many job opportunities elsewhere america has many job

opportunities that's great. But there would be more international movement to kind of the coastal areas generally. Great. Thank you so much. That's a really, really helpful discussion. And it's not something we've discovered or discussed on the podcast before. Could you tell us a little bit about what you get up to now in your private practice? Yeah, absolutely. So I am working private practice and I've been doing private practice for about a year and a half now so I finished up my qualifications in 2022 and then I took maternity leave regarding my baby. I worked in assessment work with the adult autism practice

for a little bit and then I opened up my own private practice so right now I specialize in working with people who are intending to become parents or people who are transitioning to parenthood so I work specifically with people who are accessing fertility treatment queer families honestly families that are like my own because I don't know of many other psychologists who have that lived experience and that being said I work with people who are not queer psychologists who have that lived experience. That being said, I work with people who are not queer or who have not accessed fertility treatment. And of course, that work is lovely as well. But that is really the work that is most meaningful to me at this moment, is working with people through matrescence. It typically is sometimes. I'm getting a lot of

non-gestational parents as well, which is really interesting to work with because there's so little research on non-gestational mothers in particular. There's very little on it. I have a fair few dads who are coming to me as well. The research generally indicates that people want to work with female practitioners and it's very rare for dads to go, oh, here's a female psychologist who actually has experience of being a non-gestational parent to a child wow so I do one-to-one work and I'm also launching during maternity leave I want to give a lot of my time back to be honest so I'm doing weekly support groups for parents of newborns completely free

of charge people in Ireland, because it's just, it's not available. I'm doing monthly workshops for people who are kind of going through pregnancy or the postnatal period. I'm trying to kind of fill in the gaps that I have seen in healthcare and in maternal mental healthcare in particular. Those solutions are there within our maternity hospitals. Our maternity hospitals have a lot of demands put on them and so if i can provide a solution in the private sector and have it be free why not um yeah well done to you sounds like you're doing incredible work and it made me think about really conscious connection to becoming a parent and you know for many many people it's something that just happens like that but even even if it does it's still a lot to get your head around um either during nine

months or when you're waiting to welcome in your in your bundle of joy to your to your family it's a big deal and it it does change lives and um I was in discussion with someone recently about you know them not wanting a family not wanting to be a parent people can find that really tricky to get their heads around as well even though it's none of their business um but yeah like yeah sometimes people have to or consider accessing counselling for for that as well you know just to validate their their choice to not do that but I love the idea of what you're doing which is actually really helping people make space for this massive change so you know I think when people have children very young I find in the clinical work I do that they've

not really finished having their own youth themselves one of my best friends would fully say that she was not done being a young person when she was then a mother. I think she had her son at like 21 or something. Sometimes people become in a position where they almost miss that they haven't had that, you know, and they weren't really ready to stop that journey. And so, you know, I think it is a big change going from being either single or in a committed relationship and then becoming a parent it's it's a massive change and what I see I completely agree with you what I see so much is that it's not a supportive change um that people have these scripts for how parenthood and family life should go and those scripts hinge on having a

supportive family environment they hinge on having people around you and your friend network who understand what's going on but there's a huge shift in even those friendship connections um your whole life changes the demands on your time change your physical your physical resources change you're blessed sleep you might be nourishing your body differently. Your movement needs might be changing. All of those things that really underpin mental well-being get shaken up. So it gets really, really tricky. There are many people who are working in the matrescence space and in the transition to parenthood space.

One thing that I feel really passionate about and I don't see a lot of people doing is including fertility and trying to conceive within that maternal mental health space because many people as they're accessing fertility treatment they will experience very high highs they will experience very low lows there's a loss there's trauma history inherent to it there's so much to reproductive trauma and fertility treatment would be considered clinically reproductive trauma even if fertility intervention is not experienced as capital t trauma it would be considered reproductive trauma generally um as with loss as with miscarriage as with all of these other things that so many people do experience on their pathways to becoming parents and that affect their parenting and their experience on their pathways to becoming parents and that affect

their parenting and their experience with their family. That being said, there is not readily available mental health care support for people going through fertility treatment or trying to conceive. It's only really when people conceive that all of a sudden there's this, oh, you're in a maternity hospital. Oh, there's a lovely paralegal mental health team that's here to support you. I just don't see the fertility support being there as needed. And that's changing. That is changing. It's available in some private clinics,

but it's not necessarily offered to every couple. But I would argue that every couple should be getting fairly regular support if they're going through fertility treatment yeah it was only I think recently I'm 42 currently it was only on your recent social media post I'm sure it was you that I learned of the word matrescence it was not something I had heard of it was not something I had heard of. It was not something I could spell. Could you, A, spell it for our audience and, B, tell us what it is? Absolutely. So M-A-T-R-E-S-C-E-N-C-E. So it's adolescence, which is the transition to adulthood, right? It's like that.

Matrescence is the transition to motherhood um it basically is a word that encapsulates the massive hormonal physical lifestyle shifts that you're experiencing as you transition to having children um typically it is only targeted at mums and mums who were pregnant because it does consider hormonal shifts it does consider physical shifts in terms of the postnatal body and all the identity changes that might come with that and the body image concerns that many people have postnatally there isn't really a word for patrescence there isn't really a word no patrescence no there is essence but i mean so there's so little space in my opinion for men to come

together and share experiences of fatherhood um it's it's very limited in social media um and that's because a lot of the default labor goes to women generally and to mothers um so there's very little uh available for presence I have no idea what the word would be for a general gender neutral essence for people who are turning into parenthesis. Maybe you should coin it. Maybe that should be your thing. If people are interested in learning more about you

and whether you do ever coin that term, where can they find you on socials, Laura? So I'm at the dental psychologist on Instagram um that is where I kind of do everything I have not downloaded TikTok I think I'm too old to do it but the dental psychologist is where I am I'm also on LinkedIn under my name which is very unique um thank you to my mother for that branding and for the impossible name um but that's okay say it say it once more for us say your beautiful name because I've I fluffed it up at least four times in a row when we were doing the intro

it's Dr Leora Deflumery um yeah Deflumery it sounds like a sneeze but that's okay I will make sure that I link to all of this beautiful content and advice in my show notes. But before we finish, have you got your best piece of advice for aspiring psychologists to reduce burnout on their way to where they're getting to? Know why you want to do it and know what program you want to do. And I often have people come to me through a lot of like linkedin messages actually which is interesting um i have people come to me saying why did you do a counseling psychology doctoral program for me the counseling modality was so radical and so impactful that it really kept me going through the application process. I love that counselling psychology is about putting people in their context

and that it has an activism component to it, that it has this understanding of the systemic factors that underpin mental health concerns. I absolutely love it. I find it so deeply feminist in its approach, while also obviously being incredibly evidence-based I love it I don't know that I would have been able to go through what I see so many people going through of those years of applying to doctoral programs for some people if it wasn't a program that I went oh my

god I can see everything of myself in it um write about why you want to do it. Write about why you want to do a doctoral program and not a psychotherapy program. Understand why you don't want to be a social worker, but why you want to be a psychologist. Understand what the doctoral part gives you. Do you want to do assessment work? Do you want to do research work? Do you want to do writing? Understand what all of it is because without that you'll be sitting there going why didn't I do the minimum in order to work therapeutically with people that's a long road yeah yeah it is thank you so much for your time and for sharing your beautiful compassion with us so so generously it's been a real delight speaking to you and wishing you the

very best of luck with everything that comes for you next as you become a family of four very soon too yes we have a baby incoming next week yep thank you so much um it's been absolutely lovely speaking to you and I look forward to continuing to see what you're up to this platform is so needed and I will absolutely be sharing it around Ireland as well. Oh, thank you so much. That's really kind of you. It's really lovely to meet you. Do stay in touch.

Absolutely. I will do. All right. Bye bye bye, Marianne. What an absolute pleasure it was to speak to Dr. Leora. I hope that you found it a really interesting listen as well. Please do go and follow her as the gentle psychologist on Instagram, post some lovely content. So, you know, there's lots to continue

to learn and appreciate there too. I think if I was an aspiring psychologist and I was footloose and fancy free, I loved Ireland when I was there in Galway. I might well have considered going and training there as either a clinical or a counselling psychologist if they would have had me especially now that we learn that it is actually a paid opportunity now in in Ireland for counselling psychology so maybe this gives us hope that there is change possible counselling psychology in the UK. Have you got any ideas for a podcast episode that you think would be really interesting, please do get in contact with me. Please do pitch it to me. I will look forward to bringing the next episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast, which you can access usually about 10am on Saturdays on

YouTube, with each brand new mp3 version being available from 6am on Mondays. Take care. Thank you so much for being part of my world. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent. My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological wellbeing 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 one and this kind of filled me of 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'd 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