The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Making the most of supervision and the supervisory relationship as an aspiring psychologist

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

Episode 2: Making the most of Supervision and the supervisory relationship Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Supervision can be one of the single most helpful things to getting you well on your way to where you want to be. In this episode I talk about how to get the best out of the time you spend in supervision. The Highlights: Welcome: 00:28Feeling safe in supervision: 04:18 Distress tolerance and containment: 05:58Boundaries and limits: 07:16Duty of Care 08:40 Cringing in supervision: 10:03Feeling safe continued: 11:14 Max: 14:38When supervision isn’t meeting your needs: 16:26Summary & Close: 19:32Links: To download your copy of the supervision guidance contract, head to: www.GoodThinkingPsychology.co.uk/supervision  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-brainConnect on Socials:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marianne-trent-psychologyFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodThinkingPsychologicalServices Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmariannetrent/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodThinkingPs1 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 this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Today we're going to be thinking about using supervision and the supervisory relationship. Now of course as an aspiring psychologist it's really important that we have got some sort of supervision which helps us feel contained, that helps us also ideally in a a really ideal world, advance our skills across, you know, a pretty broad skill set. So I have to say that I've always been reasonably fortunate with my psychology supervision, and that I've been able to use it and shape it to get, you know know to get the best out of me and to serve my clients and the service as well as I can and also you know to I get basically I always used to think of as an assistant psychologist

as a way of helping you know the qualified psychology team do their job optimally so in very much the way that I run my private business now if the job doesn't actually need to be done by me it can be done with someone with skills in a certain area then actually there's a school of thought that says I ought not to be doing it because it's not the best value for money so I don't have I don't have any assistant psychologists on my payroll currently other than writing blog posts which I will pay you 15 pounds to write for me if that's interesting to you do give me a shout but you know I recognize that I'm a good writer you know I enjoy writing I always have um but um you know it doesn't really make sense for me to write that stuff myself when actually I can use you know that hour of my time um in a much more, you know, lucrative way for me and in an effective way, hopefully, for my clients. So yeah, if you're interested in that, do give me a shout. But anyway, I digress.

So using supervision is a way for helping to make sure that I was supporting and that you would be supporting, you know, the needs of that qualified psychology team to help them do their job more optimally. So I know when I was an assistant psychologist, it meant that I was doing kind of some of the audit stuff and maybe helping to, you know, pre-score up some of the psychology measures and questionnaires. I had a job in a forensic setting where there was quite a lot of challenging and sexually inappropriate behavior and so I would log all of that and keep it in a database. I made a wicked Excel spreadsheet, I love a bit of excel and you know used that to be able to generate trends and then to be able to write reports for people's CPA reviews so that was you know I learned so much

there I'm going to ward rounds either with the psychologist or as a psychologist kind of deputy to go and feedback anything or to, you know, to try and contribute as much as I could with my burgeoning psychology experience. But me and meetings are still not great. You know, long meetings. Oh, I find that a bit of a struggle. So, yeah, if you're in that same camp, welcome to my world. Anyway, so using supervision effectively, it's it's kind of important that you feel safe and a way that you can help think about developing the best possible relationship is to think about contracting and that's something that I've always done in my own supervision but also when I'm supervising other members of staff, too. And you might be like, I don't really know what a supervision contract is.

And if you'd like to download my example of a supervision contract that you might want to use to shape your thinking and to shape your conversations with, you know, either current supervisors or new supervisors then do go to www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash supervision so www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash supervision and what I will do is you will automatically then be sent my supervision contract and I hope you find that really useful because it has been superbly useful for me you know across my career so I hope you find the same too but it gives you the opportunity to to take away that ambiguity to really know you know what happens if our relationship gets a bit tricky so it's got conversations to support that as well you know it helped me understand what the expectations are of me during supervision um and just to check in know, with the fact that I know what I'm being

asked to do and what I'm expecting of others in supervision. It can also be useful to think about, you know, how protected your supervisor's time is. So I think for me me it's important to think about developing your distress tolerance but it also takes time to work out what is appropriate you know distress tolerance and containment so containment um in case you're not sure is kind of the ability to keep stuff together without it leaking out every now and then so I know I was probably quite annoying in my first assistant post because anything that cropped up to me I'd be like emailing it and asking it as a question but over time I have got better and more contained at holding that unless it's issues of imminent risk to myself or the service user or the staff team. Because, of course, we ought not to be keeping that to the next available supervision.

And if you're like, well, why not? It's because, of course, we have a duty of care to protect and so if you are concerned about someone's well-being safety then we need to pass that on and that might involve making safeguarding referrals or contacting emergency services whatever needs to happen but again this is a useful conversation to have with your supervisor if you haven haven't had it already, you know, what do I do if something is so big that I can't keep it, you know, for the next supervision? What are the policies and know that you know you might be really busy and that you've obviously told me that um you know that your office hours are such and such and because some supervisors are very bounded um and some are obviously of course so busy that they don't really have capacity to be supervising junior members of the team but of course there was a duty of care to offer supervision but supervision for me isn't just about one hour a week you know or one hour a fortnight or whatever

it looks like for you um I really enjoy having um being a supervisor and having that ability to help shape someone. And so whenever I have had someone as my supervisee, I've made sure that I have time for them to be able to, you know, not just have supervision, but to be able to come along to things I'm doing, and to help advance their skills, you know, so to observe assessments. And, you know, sometimes when I was working in, you know, family service where there was a screen, sometimes patients didn't mind. If, you know, junior members of staff sat and observed the session through the window, you know, some did, of course. And you might need to pick um who you ask about that but if you are wanting to you know increase your experience and especially if it is a family session you know it can be useful to have an observer to be able to talk that through with afterwards so afterwards. So is that something you could offer? But yeah, I also used to do the very cringy thing of recording myself and the client on audio during sessions and bringing that to supervision

so that we could listen to bits, which I promise you feels horrid but you get over the sound of your own voice pretty quickly to be able to advance your skills so you know so if your supervisor doesn't have a chance to to observe you or can't sit in a room and obviously it's not always appropriate would a client let you film some bits so that you can go through that with them so but of course I didn't do loads of therapy before I got on to my doctoral course so done a bit and trust me oh when I look back on it now it was cringeworthy and I say a bit more about that in my story in the clinical psychologist collective book so check that out if you haven't already um but yes psychology supervision should feel safe you know safe to be yourself safe to be able to to say I don't really know

what the next step is I don't really know if I feel that that confident or that sure about how to get this result or how to do this and And, you know, if you're doing some neuropsych and you actually don't really know, you could do with a refresher on scoring or interpreting, then it's really important that you feel safe enough to be able to raise your hand in supervision and ask for, you know, some more explicit hand-over-hand guidance or examples so from time in that supervision to go through and problem solve and sometimes in supervision I will you know role play stuff that's gone on with me and clients to be able to demonstrate that with someone that I'm supervising. So that might be another way that you could ask for your supervisor to help shape you is to ask

them to do a little bit of role play with you. We're not talking about dressing up here, but just to say, you know, I'm not really sure how I'd explain that to a client. Could you maybe do that with me? How you think you would usually do that or how it would be appropriate for me to do that so that I can just really get my head around how to do that? And, you know, when you've done a supervision contract contract you know that it's okay to ask those kinds of questions so um I know that in the past I have worked with someone who kind of wasn't okay with me using supervision in that way and asking questions like that and that they felt that made me look like I was not really good enough but actually what I've been able to work through is actually that's kind of an erroneous viewpoint for me

because it's so far outside everything else that I've ever experienced about supervision. Actually, I think this was just the case of us not being that well attuned. And that does crop up in supervision relationships from time to time. I'm just going to take a short break for a little advert and let this be your guide. Filled with 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 It's the Clinical Psychologist Collective Hi, I'm Max and I work as an Assistant Psychologist in the Learning Disability Service in West Yorkshire. Like most people working in psychology, I'm slowly but surely working myself up to that seemingly impossible goal of getting onto the clinical doctorate. With that end goal in mind, I thought I'd have a look at what's out there and see what books might be helpful for this. I came across Marianne's book, The Clinical Psychologist Collective, and decided that this would be a great buy for me to help me on my journey.

I found Marianne's book really informative and most insightful. I especially liked how the stories reassured me that you don't need to be academically perfect to become a psychologist and that as long as you have good interpersonal skills such as compassion and empathy you will get there. I would highly recommend this book to all aspiring psychologists and also those who want to know a bit more about the world of clinical psychology and maybe want to work in that field one day. Thank you. come and take a look it's right here in this book it's the clinical psychologist collective it's the clinical psychologist collective so what happens if um you know if a supervision relationship just isn't really meeting your needs do you feel like it would be okay to ask you know to change that to amend it to try and strengthen and improve your relationship

could you even if things have broken down ask about a new supervisor and it might be that you know there's not anyone in your immediate department where that's possible but if you're in an NHS trust or you know private hospital it might be that there's someone else in a different department who'd be able to be able to support you in that. And it might be that you might need some, some support from HR to help you to improve your relationship. Or if you feel like you're being treated unfairly, that might be something that you wanted to speak about with HR. Really, really tricky, because the power imbalance, which can feel like it's around in this profession, because of course, I recall very well

that, you know, you want someone to be able to think that you're good at the job and that they think that you'd make a good, you know, qualified psychologist and that it's really useful to have their reference and so you know sometimes we can just have that pressure to think that we need to just keep plodding on but you do matter you are important and if if your needs are not being met or you're being treated really unfairly then it's okay to raise that so someone recently had said that their supervisor had said they didn't really have time to write their declensi reference so could they just write it themselves and they just made my heart hurt you know that's not okay you know if you don't have time to do that for someone then you don't have time to be a supervisor um you know someone shouldn't be writing their own reference and it's also how valid that then

is you know if across the country people have written their own reference that's not very that's not very honest you know it's not very probably very fair fair to the prospective clients that you might be working with if you do then get on to a clinical course because you know I can say I'm great but actually what would be better is if my my supervisor was able to demonstrate actually I am all right at what I you know say that I do and you know whether they're able to weave in any kind of you know feedback from clients to help strengthen that example of why I am good at what I do so it's not it's not an easy situation unless you have like a golden supervisor. But, you know, it's important that you're able to feel like it's okay to be yourself

and to use that supervision as a safe space. If you have got any questions or feedback or you'd like me to say more about anything, please do get in touch. And of course, do bear in mind that free resource that I mentioned for, you know, the example supervision contract, which you can get hold of a copy by going to www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash supervision. I hope you find this super useful. If you do, please subscribe, like, consider giving it a review, a rating, all of those lovely things. And I will look forward to catching up with you

on our next episode soon. Take care. Then let this be your guide With this podcast that you'll say 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 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 will be okay but trust me you will not put the book down once you start