The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How to become a UK psychologist as a non-UK citizen

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. Getting started in a psychology career can be challenging at the best of times, but what

Starting point is 00:01:06 if you've got additional challenges that you are a non-UK citizen? How can this make getting ahead in your career in professional mental health in the UK even more challenging? What skills does it require? What barriers come up that you need to find a way through? And how are you also trying to learn, develop, shape yourself? And how at the same time of trying to navigate what it is to work in the UK, you are also learning, shaping, developing, and growing yourself professionally and personally. This is a brilliant episode, probably a long overdue one, and I hope you'll find it really interesting. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a

Starting point is 00:02:01 qualified clinical psychologist. I am regularly contacted by people all over the world looking at how they can get started in a career in the UK and I have to say I often don't really know the answer but after today I will know the answers and you will too. So I hope you'll find this a fascinating listen even if you already have the right to work in the UK, there is so much beauty and brilliance to learn from our guest who is so thoughtful. And I really, really enjoyed our chat. I hope you will too. And I'll catch you on the other side. I am so delighted to welcome you along to the podcast Ananya. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me for this podcast. I've been listening to it for a long time now, and I'm just so delighted to be here.

Starting point is 00:02:52 It's so kind of you to say, thank you. We connected on LinkedIn, as I do with many of my podcast guests. And if you have been a listener to the podcast, you will realize that I do mention LinkedIn a lot and when I suggested an episode you must have been like oh but you went with it and you were you were up for the challenge so thank you for that absolutely I mean I was thrilled when you'd sent a comment on my post and I was just telling all of my friends that oh my gosh I've gotten like someone asking me to be interviewed on a podcast. Do I am I am I eligible for this? Do I I mean, have I have I actually done enough to be on a podcast? So, yes, thank you so much for the opportunity. Oh, you're so welcome.

Starting point is 00:03:34 I think you have because actually your post stopped me in my tracks because you're an assistant psychologist. And I think that's a really fascinating conversation for us to have. But you aren't just doing assistant psychologist work within your paid assistant psychologist stuff, you are really looking at how you can maximise that for you, for your service, for your career. And actually, that was my experience of being an assistant that, you know, if you're able to carve out time to do relevant extra bits that that's beneficial for you but it is beneficial for the service too and I know from our pre-podcast chat there are really exciting additional reasons why I think this podcast chat is going to be really useful because you explained to me that actually you were born and raised in

Starting point is 00:04:25 India and then you are now you know doing your psychology career to become a UK qualified professional psychologist so I really think there's going to be so much for our audience to to learn here that's going to be really interesting so yeah let, let's dive in. Let's have a little bit of a think about, you know, let's start with your undergrad. So where did you do your undergrad? So I did my undergrad in Bangalore, India, from Christ University. And it was a triple major in journalism, psychology and English literature. And I decided to pursue psychology after that and I think I knew you know when I was doing during my university undergrad that I wanted to come to the UK I wanted to do a master's in the UK and I sort of applied pretty much

Starting point is 00:05:20 everywhere that I could think of and I really liked the program at Newcastle University where they offered an MSc in clinical psychology so I enrolled and got through and I think my I think there's a there's sort of a sense of a pre-UK Ananya and a post-UK Ananya I feel like that was a huge huge change for me just from sort of being away from home being in a completely different country and just understanding you know how to how to deal with independence and how do you make the most of the time that you're away from home and also not feel homesick um so so that's sort of the the sort of academic journey that I've had so far thank you and I've got lots of friends in the northeast and I know I know them to be really friendly and really welcoming but

Starting point is 00:06:19 the accent is not always the easiest you know to to get to grips with and also absolutely the weather it's it's kind of it's kind of chilly up there um so it must have been for so many reasons such a big cultural shock for you it was i i struggled a bit during winter uh but i was very excited to see snow because that was the first time that I was actually seeing snow for the first time so that was very exciting but I have to say what I enjoyed the most about Newcastle was the affordability and how just how cheap everything was and in fact I really miss it now that I'm living in Oxford and everything is so expensive. Yeah and the Northumberland coast is really beautiful I've only been there once but I was was just blown away, you know, and yeah, just very, very different to life in the Midlands. Absolutely. to get even if you are you know a UK national there are so many more layers of complexity

Starting point is 00:07:28 involved for people that do not have you know there are so many more challenges involved for people that do not have indefinite leave to remain aren't there? Absolutely and I think that's one of the reasons why it's so difficult for international students to actually get an assistant psychologist post. And you're absolutely right. It's it's it's difficult even for home students to get on, let alone international students. And I remember when I was working as a support worker, it took me about six months to make all of my applications and interviews and I think I submitted about 57 applications and got about 15 interviews and I almost made the cut for four of them in fact the job that I've that I'm in right now was actually sort of the last one that I'd applied for. And I was very close to giving up on the dream of psychology

Starting point is 00:08:32 in the UK, because it was just, yeah, I was just in a period where I thought, this is just not happening, everything sort of stacked against me. And it was it was quite a dramatic reveal for me at the end, because when my supervisor initially called me, she said, Well, you're sort of on a reserve list. There are two posts, one person has accepted the other person hasn't, and we'll let you know in a week's time. And I didn't really hear from her for a while. So I just assumed I hadn't gotten it and I got a call from her about a week and a half later and I was expecting bad news but she said yeah the job's yours and I just didn't know how I mean I just didn't know what to feel and and how to respond to it and just feel like I've actually done this that I've actually gotten an assistant psychologist post so it's quite surreal and I think ever since I've just felt like this role is what I've sort of

Starting point is 00:09:33 trained for till now I'm finally using the knowledge and skills and and just my abilities to my to the full extent really. Yeah and well done to you because these jobs are not easy to get you know even when we're looking at doctoral psychology places there's often sometimes as many as 40 50 places on a course whereas for an assistant psychologist sometimes there's only one job and so you need to be the best person to get the job whereas there's a little bit more flexibility even getting doctoral places is tricky but there's a little bit more flexibility even getting doctoral places is tricky but there's a little more flexibility when there's only one job so you originally come over on a student visa can you work on a student visa could you guide us through that process

Starting point is 00:10:14 so there is some um sort of leeway to work you can work for a certain number of hours that's stipulated within your visa so it's sort of part-time work that you can do whilst you're studying and after your sort of term ends and you finish your course then you can work full-time and it was after this student visa that I had applied for a post-study visa which lasted for two years and that was the visa that I was on when I was working as a support worker. Okay that's really good to know but I know that your current supervisor helped support your application to get a longer term working visa as well what type of visa is that called? So that's the skilled worker visa and that's the sort of very tricky one to get especially you know as an international student uh who's applying for an assistant

Starting point is 00:11:06 psychologist post where it can be filled by any home student really um so my manager had to really sort of push for it and fight for it and uh i i don't think i can sort of express my gratitude enough for her to actually have seen so much value in my work and and sort of really want to keep me um in the service and continue working here yeah I think you've absolutely said it yourself you know they must have really seen just how unique special gifted talented and how for this profession you were and how what an asset you were going to be to to your current clients and your future clients and that actually to lose you from the UK mental health workforce would be detrimental you know so we want to keep you you know.

Starting point is 00:11:59 Yeah yeah I think I think I still remember the day when my supervisor sort of came to me to say that she had good news. And we both just broke down in the office. So does she get told before you do that your application has been successful? Yeah. So there's a process where we need to sort of through the leadership team, they need to secure funds for it so once that's secured the application pretty much goes through so she sort of came to me to say oh yes we've secured the funds and we both just broke down at that point. So that's funds for the role specifically so it's a fixed term contract or is that something unique and different with being a non-UK citizen? Sorry if that's a really weird question. No, no. So the funds are for the visa itself.

Starting point is 00:12:49 I'm on a permanent contract with in my current role. So the funds are for the duration of the visa itself. I see. OK, so it's basically, I guess, the UK government's assertion and guarantee that you're going to be employed for the duration of as long as it takes, basically. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But it's good for you as well, you know. Does that mean then that you can essentially buy property? You can kind of put down roots in this country? Would that feel a bit premature at this stage? I think I think it's

Starting point is 00:13:26 a bit early for that I still need to sort of get indefinite leave to remain before any of that can happen but it just gives me uh sort of a lot more stability around work and knowing that I won't have to I won't be kicked out of the country and have to go back home. Yeah, that's so good. So can you move to a different assistant psychologist role, for example? Or are you now kind of wedded to this one role? How does that work? So the sponsorship is through Oxford Health. So I could sort of change AP roles within the trust. But if I do have to move trust trust then I'd have to get the new trust to sponsor me as well which would be a whole other different thing. Okay so we're looking ultimately for four assistant psychologist roles in Oxford so if anyone knows of any do let Ananya

Starting point is 00:14:18 know not that you're looking to move on because I understand that actually what caught my eye was you were celebrating your year of having been an assistant psychologist and by the time this episode comes out it will probably be coming up for 18 months actually because it's taken us a little while to get this in the diary so yeah well done to you you know what I know from being a qualified psychologist myself but also from my work with aspiring psychologists and putting together the clinical psychologist collective and the aspiring psychologist collective book is that perseverance is key um and that you know what we know is that people who do have the capacity the tenacity and the grit to persevere are more likely to get there you know and that sounds really silly it absolutely does but if at any point we put our shovel and our work boots down

Starting point is 00:15:14 that then means we're not going to progress certainly we're not going to progress at that time and it's it's being able to keep going on a journey that feels like there might be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There are no guarantees that can feel really tricky, can't it? And actually, sometimes people do burn out from that process. How did you keep the faith in Anya? Honestly, that's a bit of a tricky question. I think there's sort of a two-pronged answer, if I could say. I recently did an exercise that we actually do with our patients on myself, because it's actually a very lovely exercise to try out.

Starting point is 00:16:02 It's called the Values Can't Sort intervention. And it basically sort of helps you go through certain values and helps you decide what your top three values are. It can be quite tricky to choose a top three. But the three that came out for me was around ambition, knowledge and hard work. And I think that sort of resonated so much with me to sort of reflect on the last five years and just everything that's happened. It's so centred around these three aspects of myself. And I think the other aspect of it

Starting point is 00:16:40 is just how supportive my parents have been. And, you know, I come from a family that's extremely supportive around the kind of work that I do uh because mental health and psychology is not really considered um sort of very positively in in India just as of yet things are changing but changing quite slowly uh So I'm, I'm extremely grateful for my parents to have sort of kept that faith in me and the career that I've chosen. And yeah, I think it's, it's definitely a combination of those two things. Thank you. What a beautiful answer. Beautiful answer. Yeah, I traveled just before I got on

Starting point is 00:17:22 the doctorate. So once I knew I had my doctorate place I traveled in India for five weeks and I I definitely did see that some of the people that would have been looked after or perhaps even in inpatient facilities in the UK were not it at points it felt a little bit like um some of the people who had acute needs, it almost felt like, it's going to sound really awful, but in days gone by in the UK, there were like court fools in kind of royal settings where felt would be service users in the UK almost had that aspect in society where people were standing around laughing at them and that was really hard to watch and so almost you seeing experiences like that in India and knowing that you didn't want that to be the case and you wanted to further a career in professional mental health care. Talk us through that. Yeah, I think just, you know, from what you've shared about your experience with India, I think you see a lot of that in sort of smaller cities, smaller areas. But things I think are changing

Starting point is 00:18:40 quite rapidly in sort of the bigger metropolitan cities in India. People are accessing therapy, especially people from sort of, you know, Gen Z. And people are more sort of pro therapy at this point, which is really good. But I think the issue is that it's a very sort of there's only a small proportion of the population that recognises the importance of mental health and the need to access mental health care. And I know there are a few sort of mental health wards in India as well, but obviously they're not as sort of well defined as those that we see in the UK. And that's something that needs to be worked on. And there's probably no concept of a crisis team back in India, I think. So there's definitely a long, long way to go. But going back to your question around sort of how and why psychology

Starting point is 00:19:42 came up for me, I think this goes back to when I was in school in India, I was in sort of how and why psychology came up for me. I think this goes back to when I was in school in India, I was in sort of high school. And that was when I first had psychology as a subject. And I had the most amazing teacher, who just made me fall in love with the subject. And if I wouldn't have had her as a sort of a guide for me, I don't think I would have fallen in love with the subject. And it was something that came so naturally to me that I felt that, you know, I could ace examinations without really having to study much. And I spent a lot of time reading things outside my syllabus

Starting point is 00:20:23 and sort of just wanting to know more and just get to understand things and I think that continued during my undergraduate degree as well where I used to do a lot of work outside of the the premed tater syllabus and I did sort of a research project, which subsequently got published. And I sort of had this idea in my head where I would say that, you know, by 18, by the time I'm 18 years old, I want to make sure that I'm a co-author. And by the time I'm 25, I want to be a first author, which I did achieve. I published my master's dissertation just in time. But yeah, the next step in the in the sort of aligned goals is to get onto the doctorate by the time I'm 30. So fingers crossed, hopefully that does happen.

Starting point is 00:21:27 Yeah, fingers crossed indeed. And so at the moment, that would be courses that offer self-funding um for the doctorate is that right yeah so i'm hoping by the time i'm 30 i should be able to uh apply for the nhs funded courses as well i see so you're hoping sometime in the next five years you get the indefinite leave to remain yeah absolutely okay amazing all right so tell us about some of the incredible opportunities obviously without sharing any client identifiable information but some of the incredible opportunities that that an assistant psychologist role affords to individuals i I think when you first start as an assistant psychologist, you're sort of at the absolute precipice of opportunities. You don't realise how much there is to do and how much there is to learn out there. It can be quite intimidating initially,

Starting point is 00:22:20 especially for someone like me who just likes to keep doing and doing a lot of work uh it can be uh can be quite overwhelming i i don't i my supervisor always says i i need to learn how to say no and stop putting too much on myself um but i think from the start i've sort of known that i wanted to get involved in research and I wanted to get involved in some more leadership roles as well. And I sort of had conversations with my supervisor around the core competencies of what it takes to become a clinical psychologist. And that's sort of the whole point of an assistant psychologist post where you sort of work on honing those skills so you've got clinical research leadership and within the clinical work I think starting up as an assistant psychologist in a crisis team has been absolutely phenomenal just being able to work alongside

Starting point is 00:23:20 service users who have such high risk to themselves, to others. And also, I feel like the more sort of crisis work I do, the more I realise that I thrive the most in high risk environments. I find it a lot more challenging, but also as rewarding as they are challenging um so with with respect to sort of clinical work i've i've seen how much i've changed just in the last year and how confident i've become in using the sort of interventions that we do with uh with service users and um we use a lot of uh cft and dbt uh interventions so compassion focused therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy skills. And also working in a crisis team, you realise that it's not a very long term support that's

Starting point is 00:24:13 out there. So having psychology embedded within a crisis team is important within itself. In fact, I'm one of the first assistant psychologists within the team. So I had to sort of start from scratch to work with patients we we do have sort of short-term interventions that we provide uh which is quite exciting um but on the other hand we've i've also been involved in a lot of research that um you know i'd like to sort of use to help the team understand team dynamics and working with certain patient populations. Ever since I worked as a support worker, I've been interested in understanding more about patients who've been diagnosed with the emotionally unstable personality disorder. I'm quite, I think I can use an entire hour just to talk about the disorder and why I'm so against it. I'm a huge feminist and I feel like this particular diagnosis is quite a stigmatised one,

Starting point is 00:25:32 which is used more often than not towards women. And in fact, I want to sort of work on this topic for my doctorate as well, which is why I feel this is sort of my stepping stone towards that dream maybe we'll talk about that for a separate episode maybe we'll get that booked in for autumn and beyond yeah well yeah definitely well done it sounds like you're doing incredible things but it also made me think about a service that I learned about recently which is actually only available in Wales currently. So if you're listening to this in Wales, you might already know about this, but it's called 111 Option 2.

Starting point is 00:26:12 And in Wales, that is a mental health, you know, crisis line, really, that we use in the same way for physical health stuff in England, should I say, and England and Scotland. But in Wales, there's one-on-one option too that you can, you know, you can do all sorts there. So you can phone up and say, I've run out of medication. What on earth do I do? Or you can say, actually, I'm really not coping very well. I need a referral to so-and-so team. Or, you know, I actually think I need the crisis team.

Starting point is 00:26:44 And they kind of help you do all of that so if anyone's listening to this and thinking oh i live in wales or near wales i'm looking for relevant roles they tend to be based within cmht teams um and there's a kind of a couple of people working for one one one option two so that might well be interesting for people but the work that crisis teams do is very specialist because what it is, it's like you said, it's acute cases of presentation, which I don't mind telling you that when I was an can you tell us what acute is and how that work might differ to a non-acute service? And it probably would have been really excellent for me to have properly looked into what the word acute meant. And I just sort of went, oh, no, really bad?

Starting point is 00:27:41 Oh, no. So yes, do always make sure that you properly understand the terms for the roles that you've been invited to, because acute means it's kinding kind of all elements of their life and we need to get involved we need to get involved now to to contain to diffuse to help people make changes that are hopefully going to make a difference how is that a better answer for if someone asked me what a cute is how would, how would you rate that answer? I agree. Oh, yeah, it's definitely a lot more than not good. But yeah, it's about sort of the intensity of work that we do as well that is needed for clients with acute presentations. And another aspect of crisis service that people often forget is that it's there to ensure that, you know, people can be supported in the

Starting point is 00:28:51 community rather than going to hospital. Yeah, excellent, excellent points between us. We've got a gold standard answer there, I think. So we are drawing to a close with our episode today. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. And I think this is going to be an invaluable episode for anybody looking to get an assistant psychologist role, but especially for those who, you know, might have additional challenges linked to visa or non-residency. How has the episode been for you and of course if you can think of anything what advice might you have for any aspiring psychologists to avoid burnout on the way to where they're going yeah I think I think the episodes uh been quite emotional for me if I can say so it's it sort of made me realize how far I actually have come um and it's it's been a while since I, you know, sat down and thought

Starting point is 00:29:47 about, you know, and I know from 2020, and how much everything's changed since then. I think, I think the only sort of advice I give to avoid burnout is to, I don't know, try and prioritise yourself as much as it might feel selfish, I don't know, try and prioritize yourself as much as it might feel selfish, or, you know, difficult to do it, or just you might feel that, you know, it's, it's an indulgent thing. But this is something that my clinical leads and my supervisor keeps saying that, you know, you can't pour out of an empty cup. So really, the only way I've sort of kept myself to not burn out is by convincing myself that if I take a few days off, when I come back, I'm going to do a better job. So just have that little nugget there for you to convince you that you do need to take time off to take care of yourself and also just practice what you preach especially you know as as as mental health professionals

Starting point is 00:30:52 working with patients who've who are going through very difficult times you're out there telling them you need to be kind to yourself but sometimes as professionals we need to be kind to ourselves as well we absolutely do and everybody should reach for some kind of education on compassion focused therapy, I think. And if you like, I don't want to just listen to my podcast. It is filled with compassion. I did a post on LinkedIn yesterday about our younger selves, actually, and what they might be proud of. So it's really nice to kind of have that resonated throughout today's episode as well but my post was actually the first time I was ever on tv I was 17 and it was in an audience for watching a tv show being recorded with a lady called Trisha Goddard and actually in the last six months I've been on the Trisha

Starting point is 00:31:42 Goddard show as a guest three times and 17 year old Marianne you know she'd have been absolutely thrilled with that so yeah it's really important to think about where we've come from as well as where we're going to and don't forget to be really you know give ourselves some pats on the back for for that hard work and that progress it's really important message well done Ananya. Definitely. Thank you so much for your time today I will be watching your career with eager interest and if you would like to do an episode on quite contentious diagnosis these days of EUPD then let's get that in the diary. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much for having me here, Dr. Marianne. And absolutely, yes, we'll definitely get in touch with you for another episode. I think it's going to be an interesting one.

Starting point is 00:32:35 Perfect. Thank you so much for your time and hope you have a lovely summer. Thank you. Oh, what an absolute privilege it was to speak with Ananya. I really, really valued our chat and I hope you did too. You know, she's absolutely reflecting in action. She's reflecting on action. She's doing all of those good things. She's just growing by the minute. You can almost see it. I would love to know what you think. What do you think of this episode? Has this ignited thoughts, feelings, questions for you? Do come and let me know in the Aspiring Psychologist Community free Facebook group, which is also the exclusive home of Marianne's

Starting point is 00:33:19 Mindset and Motivation sessions, which happen on Friday morning, please do come along and join the group. If you like this episode, then I think you'll like what Ananya said was one of her favorite episodes. And that was with the lovely Phil Pamperlove, who is an end stage trainee clinical psychologist. I recently saw that he just submitted his thesis. So well done to you, Phil. And the episode that she particularly liked was the reflective growth across a psychology career. So if you haven't yet listened or watched that one, please do because I think you'll really like that too. I did mention the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book and the Clinical Psychologist Collective book in today's episode if you haven't checked

Starting point is 00:34:05 those out please do the reviews are beautiful um if you've read those books and haven't left me a review please do because it helps us to demonstrate that they are worth reading please if you haven't left us a review on apple podcasts and a rating five stars would be lovely on spotify or apple podcast please do because it just takes a moment and it is the kindest thing you can do absolutely for free to help me know that you like the content that I create welcome some further nurturance and guidance the aspiring psychologist membership is available to you I'm currently in the stages of doing a website redesign. So who knows, by the time this episode comes out, it might be on its shiny new home. You won't be able to miss it on socials. I'll be talking about

Starting point is 00:34:52 that everywhere. So do come and follow me on socials where I am Dr. Marianne Trent, everywhere you could hope to imagine. Thank you so much for being part of my world. Be kind to yourselves. Let me know if you've got any future topic ideas for episodes i'll see you very soon the next episode will be along on youtube from 10 a.m on saturdays and wherever you get your podcasts from 6 a.m on mondays then let this be your guide with this podcast at your side you'll be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist with dr marianne 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

Starting point is 00:36:09 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 okay. But trust me you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How to become a UK psychologist as a non-UK citizen

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