The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Is resilience as an aspiring psychologist always a good thing?

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 12: Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about resilience in psychology and whether the term is always a helpful one. The Highlights: (00:28): What is resilience? (01:37): Exercise and resilience(03:24): Realistic goals.(04:03): When should we not use the term resilience(05:20): Blisters mean friction. (05:52): Transference and countertransference.(06:26): Vicarious stress & trauma.(07:29): Using supervision to help. (08:31): Fresh perspectives:(09:10): Thwarted actions:(12:22): Flexible, plastic, not brittle:(13:23): The workloads of an aspiring psychologist. (14:17): Burnout. (14:48): Well-timed supervision. (15:21): Connecting with clients. (16:46): Summary. (17:13): Connecting on socials. (18:17): FREE Compassionate support sessions for interview season. Links: To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0To check out The Grief collective Book: https://amzn.to/3pmbz5tTo check out The Our Tricky Brain Kit: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/tricky-brainTo register for the upcoming free 5-day challenge: www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/aspireConnect on Socials:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marianne-trent-psychology Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodThinkingPsychologicalServices Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmariannetrent/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodThinkingPs1 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drmariannetrent?lang=enYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodThinkingPsychologicalServices   Like, 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. Today we are going to be thinking about resilience. Now resilience is a buzzword in psychology and it's certainly something that crops up really regularly in the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. And yeah, when I was reading that, I was thinking, well, that's a good thing, isn't it? How resilient we are. But actually, as I reflect upon that now, you know, when a profession is difficult to get into, then it's always going to feel like it's the most resilient people that get through. Because, you know, if you were willing to give it one shot and you didn't get on and then you didn't apply again,

then actually what we know is that typically it takes more than one application to get on. So in terms of your resilience and your ability to deal with rejection or things not panning out, then if you went into that with your eyes open, expecting that realistically you may not get on at your first attempt, then, you know, it's that resilience that's going to, you know, make it more likely that you'll get your end goal in the end. So, of course, it makes sense that more of us are going to cross the finish line if we feel like we have more skills in resilience. And I like to jog forward slash run. I don't think what I do could be classed

as running really, but I, you know, I put my trainers on and I go for a run forward slash shuffle. And I'm never going to be Mo Farah. I'm never going to be a marathon length runner. Although when I was in my early 20s, I did see a runner go past me when I was in the car and I thought, oh, looks fun. I could probably run the New York Marathon. That'd be fun. That'd be a good thing to do. And so I told my partner at the time and he was really excited, really on board with that. I really thought that was a cool thing to want to do. So then I was all excited, you know, looking at running gear and like, oh, it's going to be amazing when I'm in New York running the marathon. And I thought, well, I better just go for like a little test run, you know, to start me off with my running career before I start applying for for the New York Marathon I hated it I was rubbish at it hated it cursed every step and then didn't run again probably

for another 10 years so yeah you know that said everything about my enthusiasm for ideas but nothing about my resilience as a runner but of course my resilience as a runner. But of course, my resilience as a psychologist is a little different. Yeah. So let's pick our goals wisely and mindfully. You know, it's absolutely OK to want to be an aspiring psychologist, but it probably is going to be more likely that you get there if you have, you know, followed the route that makes it more likely. So it's likely that you're going to need to do a psychology degree or a conversion to gain you access to whatever next step you need. So yeah, I guess the equivalent of me running is that don't shoot for the New York Marathon if you're yet to shuffle around the block. You know, we think about listening to Will Smith's book the other day, and he talks about focusing on each brick, brick by brick, rather than the whole wall that needs to be built. And I thought that was a really powerful idea. So I think what we need to

be careful about as a profession is that we are not using the term resilience to be able to treat people badly as they are becoming aspiring psychologists. We are not expecting people to take and take and take and take and take because they have this end goal in mind. You know, we shouldn't be, you know, to further the marathon analogy, we shouldn't just be having our feet coated in blisters, you know, and just expected to carry on. You know, when we get blisters, it's a sign of friction and it's a sign of something not fitting well. So if you're finding that your body is covered in blisters from your experience within the psychology field, then there's a sign there that that's not really a good fit. I don't want to push you until you break, you know.

So resilience is about having some movement and some ability to be flexible and adaptive. But it's not about making you concrete, because when we when we are concrete, we will, you know, we will bend too far and we will snap and we will break. And that's not what I want for you as an aspiring psychologist. I don't want you know, I don't want you to be suffering, you know, on your journey to being an aspiring psychologist. I want you to feel like you are operating from the comfortable area of your window of tolerance that you're not being completely burned out from this process. And so if you feel like this is, you know, quite painful for you to listen to, then it might be a sign that there's some tweaks that ought to be made.

Some difficult conversations to think about having because you ought not to be covered in blisters. And what we know is that, you know, working with our population as we do can be difficult and can can be challenging. You know, there can be transference and counter transference and what we know from working with people in you know from the police service for example maybe in you know non kind of beat roles is that they are being regularly exposed to trauma and they're not able to do anything that transforms that within them. So we sometimes see this in people who are just doing screening of referrals is that they are soaking up all this kind of misery but not getting the chance to make a difference to that client. So I largely used to do the assessments in my previous NHS service, but

didn't often do loads of the referral screening. So whenever I read a referral, it's because I was about to see them. And it was useful then for me to be able to, you know, discharge that distress in some way. Because I then had the opportunity to actually see to see the client to help them through that distress but when we're able to transform that it transforms it for us as well so that it doesn't sit with us and we don't take it home so that can be really useful thinking about how much client stuff might be around for you in your world and how you can, you know, use that or transform that. And it might be that it's useful to have discussions around this in supervision or, you know, to have some sort of theory and practice groups where you talk about the impact of your work on yourselves, you know,

in a safe place with no judgment, so that we make sure that it is true resilience, that we are building into you, rather than just expecting you to put up with terrible treatment. What we don't want is for you to feel burned out. Because what we know is that burnout leads to you know periods of sick leave and that's not it's not good for you and it's not good for the services we work in and it's not good for the clients that we serve and so making sure that we you know where possible are you know treating ourselves as humans with compassion and dignity and respect and and that the people we are working for do the same is really key and sometimes it takes a change of job to realize how much you weren't being treated with kindness and dignity and respect and how much

that was burning you out and then you get a fresh perspective in a new job or in a new relationship or, you know, whatever new setting it is. And you realize, oh, I just hadn't realized how hot the water was there. And now actually it's much more comfortable or I'm not in the glaring sunlight all the time. And that feels so much better. So, yeah, it might just be worth having a little audit um of of everything around you to just check check the temperature check it's not too hot and you haven't just got used to wilting so what we notice when we're working with clients is that um you know if we can't be with them we might notice you know there's thwarted actions and even when we are with them

you know sometimes we might hear something so awful that it makes you want to cry out or you know you imagine yourself wanting to punch the person um not not the person you're with please don't punch people you're with but the person that they're talking about in order to defend the person that you're spending time with you you know, and these thwarted actions, as we call them, need somewhere to go. And so it can be useful, you know, even after a session to allow yourself to do a slow motion, whatever you wanted to do, you know, to thwart that action so it doesn't stay within you, so it transforms. And sometimes it can be a really powerful thing to discuss is reactions to to people's stories and the things they say let me just take a quick break and I'll be back after this to think with you about some tangible ways of deepening that connection with you and your clients when you

are listening to their stories. I hope 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. It's the Clinical Psychologist Collective. Boom. Oh The Clinical Psychologist Collective is an encouraging read for anyone considering clinical training.

Reading the stories of people who have followed their unique path into clinical training with ups and downs is immensely encouraging. Thank you Marianne for writing this book and to all who contributed to it. This book is a true blessing, and I'm sure it can provide more clarity to anyone considering a career in clinical health and counseling psychology.

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. Thank you. right here in this book. It's the Clinical Psychologist Collective. It's the Clinical Psychologist Collective. OK, so welcome back. So we need to make sure that we are, you know, being flexible and plastic and not at risk of being brittle and burned out. And when we are feeling brittle and burned out, our compassion might feel like it's a low ebb for clients and it might feel like we're all just doing everything on autopilot. So, you know, absolutely, if you are unwell, then you need to look after yourself and you need to take the time that you need to take to get yourself well. But this is, you know, this is about prevention, this episode, rather than cure. So I want to really thicken the dialogue of helping you think about how you deserve to be treated and how you

deserve to treat yourselves and to help you hopefully have confidence to raise issues if you feel like you are being treated unfairly or the pressures upon you as an aspiring psychologist are too great you know sometimes I hear about the workloads of aspiring psychologists, and I'm thinking, I wouldn't even want to do that. You know, and I'm qualified. I wouldn't want to see that many clients in a day or a week. You know, and it's a lot that we're asking of you guys as aspiring psychologists. And no wonder we're getting you know high turnover

and job of jobs and you know staff burnout and and staff sickness you know that's not about resilience that's not about your lack of resilience that's about you know the sickness of an organization really um it's not about the sickness of the individuals within it um sometimes if we ask someone to do too much then then it's, you know, it's too much and, you know, that will instantly fall apart. But when pressure is applied over time, we become more used to that and we don't necessarily realise it's there. And then, you know, suddenly it can feel like we've snapped. But what we hadn't realised is we've been carrying all the extra weight on our shoulders

and on our neck and in our stress and in our brittle interactions with our children and our family and our loved ones. And then suddenly it's just like it feels like it's come out of the blue as an actual fact. It's been cranked up, you know, incrementally over time. So just want you to be on the lookout for that really um and to try as much as possible to not take your stuff home with you you know to so when i was um supervising assistant psychologists or trainees i tried to make sure that we'd have a supervision session on the last day of their

placement of the week so that they were able to leave that with me, you know, leave that here rather than worrying about that all weekend because supervision was, for example, on Tuesday or whatever. So it might be worth thinking if there's any flexibility about when you have your supervision session so that you are able to tie up any loose ends rather than take them home with you. Okay, a really nice way of helping you connect with your clients and helping advance your clinical work is when you hear them say something that does move you, you know, or you notice anything visceral in your own body

as you hear the story, it can be really useful if it feels appropriate to share that with them. You know, when I heard you say that, you know, I really felt really felt you know a deep sensation in the pit of my stomach or I felt my throat started to close up as you spoke about that or I really felt my eyes starting to water as I really connected to what you were saying because it can help them especially when they're traumatized it can help them with that mind body disconnect it can help them realize actually oh I have thoughts and feelings in my own body too. Where

did I notice that? Or you can mirror that back to them. So I noticed that within myself. You know, where did you notice that when you were speaking? And they might have that disconnect that they haven't done that, but it can be useful to open up that dialogue and thinking about that. And that might be one of the single most important things you do with that client, because it might be that they haven't had that experience with someone else before. And that in, you know, you doing that with them, that they're able to do that with others and they're able to have a different experience of life. It might just be,

you know, transformational. So in summary, you know, resilience is not all, you know, what we what we think it might be, what it might look like on paper. We're wanting to recruit, you know, humans and compassionate ones at that. We do not want computers, you know, because, you know, it's human connection that helps make the difference, especially when people have been affected by mental health difficulties and trauma and grief and all of that jazz. So, you know, please, I hope you've found this episode useful. And if you do, I'd love any feedback that you've got. Please help share it widely, like and connect, subscribe, rate, review.

Do all of the things and you'll be my new best friend. Come and connect with me over on socials. I'm on LinkedIn at Dr. Marianne Trent. Twitter, I'm Good Thinking PS1. Good Thinking Psychological Services on Facebook. And I am on Instagram as well as Dr. Marianne Trent. So please come and connect. Help me to help you. And yeah, let's get word out there about this wonderfully useful podcast. I hope this has been useful and it's OK to think that it's not you that's the problem.

You know, it's a service that you're working for it's okay that actually the service has unnecessary demands upon you and that it says nothing about your resilience that it's not feeling achievable I hope you found this helpful and I'll look forward to catching up with you next time take care being well supported during any interview season is so important. I have therefore planned some compassionate question and answer support sessions for you. You are absolutely welcome to come along to all of them, some of them, none of them. No need to book and here are the dates for you. Monday, the 28th of February from 7.30pm. Monday, the 21st of March, 7.30pm. Monday, the 4th of April, 7.30pm.

And Monday, the 9th of May, 7.30pm. And they will all be live streaming via my socials which includes twitter youtube linkedin and facebook so you can absolutely pick your favorite platform and they'll all be available on replay as well hope you find it so useful and i will look forward to catching up with some of you then take care if you're looking to become a psychologist 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 Podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent. 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 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.