The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Garden party psychology - boundaries and conversations you might have as an aspiring psychologist!

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 37: Garden party psychology - boundaries and conversations you might have as an aspiring psychologist!Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. When you tell someone your job title people might just here the “psychologist” in assistant psychologist or “mental health” in mental health practitioner and then look to you for help. Considering the recent news in the press on SSRI’S and depression, people may be asking for your advice, and you may not be sure what is appropriate to say. Today is a short episode, filmed in the sun, that gives you some tips and guidance around navigating (or avoiding!) these difficult conversations! I hope it helps, stay kind to you! The Highlights: 00:28: A sunny day to record a podcast 01:23: To socialise or not to socialise? 02:14: Staying mindfully excited about life.03:08: Are you a garden party psychologist?07:23: What to do if people around you want your mental health advice? 16:30: When people hear your job title!19:15: Come and let me know what you do! Links:Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervisionConnect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the upcoming Aspiring Psychologist Book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent• To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunityLike, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the podcast, please do subscribe and rate and review episodes. If you'd like to learn how to record and submit your own audio testimonial to be included in future shows head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/podcast and click the blue request info button at the top of the page.

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.

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. I am absolutely making hay whilst the sun shines. I am recording this in the school summer holidays and my children have just gone to the park with daddy. I've got to go to the dentist shortly and I was like I've got some time I can record this podcast episode that's been floating around in my head for a few days now. So here I am, where are you? I hope you are living your best life right now and if not that you've got plans to unwind and de-stress and make yourself feel a whole lot better. Some things that make us feel better and sometimes things that make us feel worse

are socialising and getting out and about. You will know whether that is a good thing for you, you will know whether that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable and not entirely like you are thriving. We are all different and what the pandemic showed us is that sometimes stepping back from social pressures can be a good thing but other times it makes us feel like we're not really connecting to people when we're not meeting people and getting out and about. For some people Zoom Zoom just doesn't cut it. And like I said, you will know where you're at on that. I am very much looking forward to this coming Friday when I'm going to be meeting up with one of my very loveliest friends who I actually trained with. And then life and children have somewhat got in our way. And the pandemic of course of face-to-face antics but we're going

out for dinner this coming weekend and I cannot wait and I'm like I'm totally going to pick you up to maximize all of our gossip potential so yeah don't underestimate the value of having things to look forward to and having things to be excited about. My sister-in-law uses her fridge as a method of helping her feel really excited about life. She likes to have like a little list of things she's got booked up and once that list starts looking a little bit light what she does is she makes sure she's booking things so that she can be really mindfully excited about them in advance every time she opens or closes the fridge. So, yeah, that might be a little technique that you find useful. It's a bit like having a dream board, isn't it?

But it's on your fridge and it's stuff that's actually going to happen. You could put things that you dream about as well. You could well put your goals for psychology on there as well so that you see it day in day out and becomes part of your daily fabric but anyway this is my roundabout waffle for helping us get on track with thinking about being social being a psychologist? How does that work for you? Do you tell people what you do for work? Do you tell people if you're working in mental health or if you're working in education or if you're working in forensic services, how does it make you feel when you do share stuff? Does it make you feel exposed or does it make you feel good? Do you like being the garden party psychologist? Do you like having people ask your opinion and helping them feel differently or better about things? Or are you finding that when you mention what your job is, that you are

welcoming in, you know, complicated questions that you'd rather not have? Or maybe you are finding that your viewpoint is very different to the viewpoint of people that you're socializing with. Maybe in your culture or around your friendships, there's not much of an understanding around mental health. Maybe there's a pull up your socks kind of mentality and get on with it. Or maybe there's just a lot of stigma, shame, kind of guilt inducing stuff around people who do need your service. Or maybe people are even shaming you, thinking you ought to be the service user and not the person offering the services. Maybe other people find it hard to take you seriously as an actual grown up offering useful stuff. Maybe you find it difficult to take yourself seriously in that regard as well. You know, I'm acutely aware of when I was an assistant

psychologist and I didn't feel like my, on paper, my life was looking as professional as I wanted it to personally given the level of responsibility that I had in my job you know so the things that myself and my friends got up to at the weekends you know Laura I'm thinking about that trip to the Bradlaugh fun times but definitely stuff that's of then as an era, not now, you know, so I absolutely treat all of those escapades as being really important and really fun and part of what has led me to be this qualified psychologist before you. But there was that sense of a bit of a life mismatch, really really that I was doing really proper and important stuff and that was the case during training as well so when I first moved for training I was just renting a room from one of my brother's friends and it just didn't feel like I was

a proper enough grown-up actually when I moved out the next year and got my own place it felt much more holistic as a grown-up experience if that even makes sense I felt like I needed to have all of my ducks in a row and one of my clients never heard that expression before and so I had to explain what ducks in a row are so in case you don't know and it might not be a super common phrase where you come from whichever part of the country you live in or maybe even which part of the world you originate from ducks in a row means kind of all of your stuff lined up you know and doing reasonably well so it might be occupational it might be educational it might be relationship it might be your living So it might be occupational, it might be educational, it might be relationship, it might be your living environment, it might be your birth family. All of those ducks are

behaving themselves and not like meandering off in random directions. So that's what I mean by ducks in a row. And that may or may not resonate with you too. But this is a little bit of an aside. This was not a podcast episode about ducks in a row. Maybe that is a conversation for another day. This was about how you feel when you talk to people about what you do, whether you choose to, whether you don't choose to. Okay, so this episode is inspired by the recent news about SSRI medication and depression. And what a number of my audience have found is that people who have been taking the medication are then reaching out to their friends, i.e. maybe you as the most senior kind of mental health professional that they know. And it's about the impact of that on yourself

and the weight of responsibility that you carry as well in the role. And of course, this is also linked to the previous episode that I did with Dr. Tara, where we were discussing what it even means to call yourself a psychologist and who should or could be using this title and whether it necessarily infers a professional trained qualification. So, you know, what we know is that that people especially people that trust you in your friendship role or in your family might well seek your opinion on on this kind of issue really you know people are wondering whether they should continue to take their medication given what's been in the news and it's really difficult you know it would be good if they'd given us a bit of a heads up that this was coming out, because this obviously sends patients, friends, family into turmoil and also can bring up all sorts of complicated feelings around. Is it just me then? So if it's not a chemical imbalance in my brain, am I broken? Am I the problem? Should I be feeling responsible?

You know, guilt, shame. And I think if you're being asked these types of conversations, it's always really useful to direct people back to their GP or whoever is prescribing that medication. So it might be that it's being prescribed by an adult mental health team or for that matter a children's and adolescents mental health team in which case these questions are especially important to be directed back towards those health care providers it may be helpful to to kind of suggest that actually because we didn't see this coming as research being published, that you don't necessarily know any more than is in the press. And your take on medication and your take on diagnosis and, you know, presenting problems is going to be based on a number of bespoke facts, you know,

formulations around the patient and around the person. And because you don't have privy to all of that history, it's not really appropriate for you to be the person to advise them. So you can talk through options, but you may not choose to. You might not want that in your life. You know, you might just want to be your friend's friend. You might not want that in your life. You know, you might just want to be your friend's friend. You might not want to be your friend's sounding board for mental health. And that has to be okay. Otherwise, what might happen is that you're holding a caseload of everybody in your work environment, but you're also holding a separate caseload of your friends and family and random people that you meet along

the way. And of course, you wouldn't be supervised for those impactful relationships, and nor would you be insured, you know, if they took advice based on what you've discussed. So I think it's absolutely important to recognise that you can say no, you aren't being cruel if you you know do refuse to comment or suggest that you're not the most appropriate person to comment that's absolutely okay and it is good to be able to talk through things with someone that's impartial you will not be impartial for a member of your friends or family group even for for a colleague, because you will have, you know, history with those people, and you'll be invested in whatever the outcome is. Whereas, you know, a therapist or a GP is that much more removed and able to be just, just there for the

person to hear them with any luck so absolutely not suggesting that you couldn't do it but it's whether whether you should be doing it and whether it's kind to you and to the client to do that um you know you could recognize with them that you can see that this is causing them some distress and that it's okay to reach out for support and advice in times like this and that it doesn't say anything bad about them if they do and that you would encourage them to do that. It's really important to be able to have these open honest communications. So it can be difficult before you're qualified because it you know you might feel that you have a professional opinion but it's whether it's appropriate to share that with people and you know I have absolutely been at parties when I've had a

couple of glasses of wine and people ask me a question and then before you know it it's like being on the therapy couch with Dr Trent and it's not that appropriate is it really but that said people have said to me you know wow I really valued that chat we had it's really different than what I've got from anyone anywhere else and it's not always about therapy you know people sometimes just value my stance on the world and my stance on things. So yeah, it's just thinking about what is appropriate, what is professional, what is within your, you know, current qualification realms as well. We don't want to be totally renegade, punting out advice left, right and centre, possibly for people who haven't even asked for it you know so when I'm working with clients and we're looking at the window of tolerance they notice when they

start to get better because they start to notice how unregulated the world is and they find themselves wanting to soothe and regulate the world but it wouldn't be appropriate to walk up to a stranger and go I'm really noticing that you're outside of your window of tolerance I think you're using this that and the other strategy because they haven't asked you for that help. So sometimes the power is of being qualified and or experienced in mental health is that we can observe what might need to be done in future. But it doesn't necessarily need to be us who says that or does it. OK, let's take a short break here and i will be back along on the other side if you're looking to become a psychologist then let this be your guide filled with lessons and Lessons and experience that will help you get qualified.

So come and take a look. It's right here in this book. It's the Clinical Psychologist Collective. It's the Clinical Psychologist Collective book is really insightful for anyone hoping to get onto the clinical doctorate. I really love the individual accounts in this book and found them incredibly inspiring. I've been very worried about my chances of getting onto the clinical psychology doctorate as my path is far from traditional, so it was really reassuring hearing so many non-traditional routes others have taken. Thank you for sharing these together and helping the next generation of students. Thank you. so yeah people aren't necessarily going to know the difference between your job titles you know psychological well-being practitioner assistant psychologist higher assistant psychologist

you know mental health support worker, trainee clinical psychologist or trainee health or counselling psychologist, they're just going to hear, you know, the word psychological or mental health or psychologist and they know you've been to uni, you know, so you must know your stuff but they don't know that you're not perhaps the most appropriate or the most experienced person that they could ask um i would love your thoughts on all of this i'd love to know you know what you do when you're asked for your opinion or whether people do ask or whether you know you tell people that you just work in a supermarket when you meet them as strangers you don't tell them what you do maybe you don't want to bring that to your door let's

have a conversation about this um on instagram you can find me dr marianne trent and um on the facebook group the aspiring psychologist community um come along and join us there and do join in the conversation around this so that we can really make sure we're thickening the narrative here. You might also find that people find you, they connect to you, they sense that you're a great listener and before you know it, you're drowning in life stories that can feel quite heavy or unwelcomed you know I only wanted to come to the party and drink mojitos I didn't want to be therapizing uh and that's okay and you might find that because people see the psychologist in your title maybe on LinkedIn or um you know other areas where you might be networking professionally they might be

saying oh could you just you know create this video for me on talking to people about x y or z um could you talk about this could you do that and it's like well actually i don't really feel that comfortable i don't feel it's that appropriate for me to be offering that and to just empower you to know that it's okay to say no and to direct to other areas other areas of support other people that might be able to support it's okay to say no you're not a meanie for being bounded in saying no and again this might be helpful for you to refresh your memory on what I believe is episode eight yeah I should never doubt myself it's episode eight I just checked episode eight is boundary setting for yourself and your clients and you might find that really useful right speaking of boundaries my

friends it is time that I get out of my jogging bottoms and into my jeans to go and see the dentist I hope you found this helpful and I would really love your ideas around what you might do in these situations what What do you think? What are your thoughts? Do come and discuss this with me over on the Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent.

That is where lots of good stuff happens and it's totally free to join. So come and do that, won't you? In the meantime, do come and connect in all the good places i am mostly dr marianne trent but you can also find me as good thinking psychological services thank you for being part of my world sorry this is a briefer episode than usual but you know the dentist calls um take care of you and stay kind bye if you're looking to become a psychologist

then let this be your guide kind. Bye. With Dr. Marianne Jordan My name's Yana 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 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'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be OK. But trust me, you will not put the book down once you start.